Quimper faience was found with Red Horse Antiques, Bridgewater, Vt.
Review and Photos by Greg Smith
WESTON, VT. – Taking center stage on the October 3 opening night of Vermont Antiques Week was none other than the Weston Antiques Show and its theater of delights, appropriately housed and spread throughout the Weston Playhouse.
More than 40 volunteers and a 24-person committee come together to put on this show, the second largest fundraiser of the year for the Weston Community Association, which is responsible for four historic buildings and a park in the town. The booth rents, preview party, donations, sponsors and general admission tickets add up to the final fundraising total. Show chairs David Raymond and Bob Brandt oversee the event, which usually raises between $25,000 to $30,000, helping the organization sustain the upkeep of these historic places that add tremendous value to the town.
The show weaves its way throughout the building, placing the 31 dealer booths in rooms and hallways, the basement and on the performing stage. “It’s very challenging to do a world-class show like this in a building like this,” the chairs said. “Here we have nooks and crannies.” But they get the job done and they do it in style.
The 61st edition of this event carried on like it has in years past. The October 3 opening reception welcomed the addition of live music to the party, and dealers related that it was positive.
Spread over the seats of the theater were the colorful Oriental carpets of Walpole, N.H. dealer Frandino Antique Oriental Rugs. In her sixth year doing the show, Lori Frandino called it one of her best. “The good thing about the show is that Saturday is as strong as Friday,” she said. Early on the Saturday morning, Frandino said she sold two room-size rugs that spanned the spectrum: one of her best and one of her most affordable examples.
Antique brass was found with Marc and Marjorie Allen, Laconia, N.H. Here pictured is a circa 1725 Eighteenth Century Huguenot brass wine cooler and a mid-Eighteenth Century Iserlohner tobacco box.
White & White Antiques, Skaneateles, N.Y., featured a vast display of brass candlesticks around an American blown glass compote from the 1870s. Many of the brass sticks were English. One pair with a round base was circa the 1820s. Another pair with pushups was from 1815 and yet another was from 1830.
Henry T. Callan, East Sandwich, Mass., celebrated his 19th year selling at the show and related that it was again successful for him. Among his sales was a Danville, Vt. sampler stitched by a young girl of the Minor family, dated 1835. “It was an exceptional sampler,” Callan said. “It had a Federal house, a country inn and probably seven or eight houses in the village. It was a small outstanding piece.” Other sales included pottery ranging from soft paste English creamware to Chinese export, Staffordshire and mocha.
A selection of Quimper faience was on offer in the booth of the Red Horse Antiques, Bridgewater, Vt. These ranged from teapots to cups, plates, a double salt figure, a napkin holder, vases and a pipe. A colorful collection of nine early painted sap buckets from the Northeast lined the top of the dealer’s booth.
Debbie Turi, Roseland, N.J., brought along an eclectic mix, including a double cow hooked rug, advertising, stoneware and more. Folk carvings were found throughout the booth, including a nicely painted spiraling snake, about 2½ feet long, as well as a group of carved busts of three men.
Heller-Washam Antiques, Portland, Maine, was offering for the first time a 1948 watercolor, dry brush and ink on paper by Andrew Wyeth titled “Birchwood.” It featured Broad Cove Farm in Cushing, Maine. The composition featured birchwood logs piled after chopping. Broad Cove Farm was owned by Wyeth’s father-in-law, Merle James. In Vermont offerings, the dealers offered two Shaftsbury paint-decorated basswood boxes, one a blanket box and the other smaller, both from the first quarter Nineteenth Century.
Lori Frandino fills every seat in the house with her selection of Oriental rugs. Frandino Oriental Rugs, Walpole, N.H.
Four sales were recorded on opening night from the booth of Witt’s End Antiques, Wallkill, N.Y. The dealers sold a butternut highboy, an Eighteenth Century Connecticut bucket bench and a large 1913 oil painting by Cape Cod artist Arthur V. Diehl, “Seascape with Seagulls.” The dealers were exhibiting works by the Nemethy family of artists, including “The Mary Powell” by Albert Nemethy Sr – this was the work’s first time exhibited outside of the family’s home who commissioned it – and “Luminous Sloop” by George Nemethy.
A first-timer at the show this year was Norman Gronning Antiques, Shaftsbury, Vt. The dealer sold a Masonic stoneware jug early in the day on Saturday, as well as two Shaftsbury blanket chests and a North Shore Massachusetts four-drawer chest with inlay. On the wall above it was a painting by Italian/Vermont artist Luigi Lucioni, a still life that was painted in 1928 in the Chinese Room at Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall.
Among their inventory of fine paintings, David and Donna Kmetz, Douglas, Mass., featured an expansive Mount Equinox, Vt., scene from artist J. Hall Connaway. The snowy landscape work retained the artist’s original frame.
Grafton, Vt., dealer Dover House Antiques featured a nice Pennsylvania stencil and freehand decorated settle bench, circa 1840, as well as a George Washington reverse painting on glass from the mid-Nineteenth Century. The dealer said it had come from a Damariscotta, Maine, collection.
The show will again run during the same time next year, with Steve Stettler stepping in as show chair.
For additional information, www.westonantiquesshow.org.
