Overheard at The Yard, the restaurant adjacent to the Best Western Executive Court, location of The Riverside Antiques Show: The lady said to a man at the bar, “Are you going over to the craft show next door at Best Western?” He replied “No, and it is not a craft show but an antiques show where a bunch of guys get together with some old furniture and try to sell it for lots of money.”
This was not the audience manager Linda Turner was looking to attract to her show, and fortunately it was not the one that came. “Was this year’s show okay?” she was asked and the reply, “It was more than okay,” as she listed off a good number of dealers who had good to great shows during the three-day run.
Riverside opened on Tuesday, August 8, at 4 pm and remained active for the next four hours. The gate on the first day was about the same as last year, according to Linda, and it remained in step with 2005 until closing on Thursday at 4 pm.
Staged in both the convention center of the hotel and a large tent in the parking lot, this year’s show had a drop in exhibitors, down to 31, but “size did not matter to those who came, and many of the dealers had sales to prove it,” Linda said. She mentioned that a number of dealers have expressed an interest in doing the show next year and she plans to have the 2007 edition right back to its former self.
Elizabeth Dettor of Antiques on Eleven, Verona, Va., was also glad that size did not matter when it came to selling her large seed painting on opening night. “It was 8 feet wide, 6 feet tall, and was done in a variety of seeds depicting a large dairy farm with barn and silo and animals in the foreground,” she said. She believes it was probably done for a state fair competition in the 1930s or 40s. Sales also included three tables, several lamps, and a good number of smalls, with activity all three days.
The Hanebergs of East Lyme, Conn., offered a pair of Connecticut yoke back armchairs attributed to Duran, Stratford, Conn., and a four-drawer chest, Hepplewhite, was in flaming birch with banded top and high bracket feet. The case was 38 inches wide. Hanging over it was a copper arrow weathervane, 60 inches long.
“The show was excellent for me and I think several of the dealers in the center were also have good shows,” Brian Cullity of Sagamore, Mass., said. His circa 1740–60 open top, step back cupboard was filled with interesting redware pieces, from miniatures to large jugs, and slipped in between the pottery were two pairs of brass andirons, one of rare form and dating circa 1815. Among the furniture in the booth was a paint decorated blanket chest with bracket feet, circa 1830.
Hanes and Ruskin, Old Lyme, Conn., showed several pieces of case furniture including a Queen Anne highboy from Rhode Island, birch and cherrywood, 34 inches wide and dating circa 1750. A pie crust tea table in mahogany had an urn turned pedestal, cabriole legs, and dated circa 1740. The diameter of the top was 29 inches.
Dennis Raleigh of Wiscasset, Maine, spent a good part of his day selling, recording a good show. He offered a Nineteenth Century Black Hawk horse weathervane with gilt surface, a hooked rug depicting a moose of Maine origin, mounted and from the 1930s, and a 78-inch-tall totem pole in old red paint, circa 1940, that spent most of its life at a summer camp in Northern Wisconsin.
East Berlin, Penn., dealer Brad Selinger offered a York County dovetailed jelly cupboard with two doors over two doors, paint decorated, and a bucket bench in old green paint that held a collection of cobalt decorated stoneware including three large pitchers.
A late Eighteenth Century chest-on-chest, Connecticut River Valley, in cherrywood, 76½ inches high, stood in the booth of New England Home Antiques, Wethersfield, Conn. Dating circa 1800 was a shoe-foot New England pine hutch table in old red.
Steve’s Barber Shop and Anthony’s Quality Feeds both had early trade signs hanging in the booth of Alan, June and Eli Goodrich Antiques and Folk Art, Langhorne, Penn. For the garden was a nice pair of cast stone compotes overflowing with fruit.
Eye-catching was the Nineteenth Century table rug hung in the center of the back wall in the Halsey Munson Antiques booth. It showed a checkerboard within a checkerboard, red and black, 41 by 53 inches, with trompe l’oeil corner blocks. This Decatur, Ill., dealer also offered an early Nineteenth Century chair table with a two-board scrubbed top, 42 by 36 inches, with maple base in old red wash. It listed Marguerite Riordan in the provenance.
Both land and sea were represented in the collection of paintings hung by Bradford Trust Fine Art, Harwich Port, Mass., including Provincetown Dock, an oil on artist board by Arthur Diehl, 18 by 30 inches; Port Clyde, Maine, an oil on artist board by Junius Allen, NA, 1898–1962, measuring 14 by 18 inches; and a New England Landscape, J.W.A. Scott, 1815–1907, an oil on canvas measuring 20 by 30 inches.
Mad River Antiques, LLC, of North Granby, Conn., found a very receptive audience at the show and doubled their business this year. “We could have sold our Crolius jug several times and had a number of buyers all considering it at the same time,” Steve German said. The jug dated circa 1800–1840, Manhattan Wells, N.Y., cobalt decoration and only 9 inches tall. It was among the first things sold along with a small courting mirror, Queen Anne with the original pine box with a carved heart knob. The paper liner in the box was an old flour bag from Wallingford, Conn., circa 1890.
Also reporting a strong show was Douglas Constant of Orient, N.Y., who filled a large end booth in the tent with furniture including a Queen Anne side chair in walnut, original condition, circa 1725, with Newport, R.I., origin, and a Massachusetts card table, inlaid with the original surface, circa 1800. A Federal chest with blue paint, oval brass pulls, heart-shaped apron and French feet, was from either New Hampshire or Vermont, circa 1810.
Vibrant blue paint covered a New England step back cupboard with one door in the booth of Jim and Victoria Emele Antiques, Dublin, Penn. It measured 32 inches wide, 6 feet 6 inches high, and dated from the mid Nineteenth Century. A long bench table with large overhang, mortised base, was 6½ feet long and dated circa 1840.
An English country farm table, circa 1850, and a rare carved and painted baptismal bowl depicting Adam and Eve, were shown by Manchester Antiques, York, Maine, while Lynne Weaver of Wenham, Mass., showed a John Avery mural, a mural painter in the lakes region of New Hampshire. It was from the early Nineteenth Century and one of two from a hallway of a house in Gilmanton Iron Works, N.H. It was removed from the house in 1993 and measures 51 inches wide, 73 inches high and 4 inches deep.
Claude and Sharon Baker, 1848 House, Hamilton, Ohio, offered a Nineteenth Century trade sign for a tailor and a pair of wooden finials from Portsmouth, N.H. Of special interest was an inlaid walnut hall piece made for the warden by a prisoner at The Menard, Ill., State Prison. The piece included a mirror and hat rack.
“Sales were thumbs up, dealers will be returning, and some new faces will be at the 2007 Riverside Show,” Linda Turner said. “I am already working on the next one, and it will be good,” she added.
