Just before the show’s opening, the line stretched through the lobby.
Review & Onsite Photos by Madelia Hickman Ring
YORK, PENN. — For those Americana collectors who bemoan the increasing number of antiques shows that drop the term “antiques” from their name, or ones that expand the focus to include Twentieth Century design, the Original Semi-Annual York, Penn., Antiques Show and Sale is for you. More than 50 dealers, from as far away as Wisconsin and Georgia, to those local to York, gather twice a year in the spacious Memorial Hall East, on the campus of the York Fairgrounds and Convention Center.
The show retains its long-held model: dealers brought genuine antiques of high caliber for die-hard collectors who lined up ahead of the show’s 10 am opening on Friday, September 20. Its two-day run — it closed late in the afternoon of Saturday, September 21 — gave shoppers a sense of urgency and the show was busy on both days, with families and weekend collectors comprising a sizeable portion of Saturday’s attendees.
Many of the dealers who did the February 2-3, 2024, edition of the York Show said it was “the best in recent memory,” so we asked show manager Melvin Arion how this most recent event shaped up.
“The Fall show will never match the Winter Show but, for this day and age, I thought it was very good. The gate was good Friday and fairly good on Saturday. I was pleased with how it went.”
For those who have attended the show in the most recent years, there were some missing faces (Art & Antique Gallery, Holden, Mass.; B. Hannah Daniel, Athens, Ala..; and The Norwoods Spirit of America, Timonium, Md.). In their places were a few new or ones returning after an extended hiatus: Frank Gaglio, Rhinebeck, N.Y.; Firehouse Antiques, Galena, Md., Mark & Kelli Saylor, Cape May, N.J., and Charley Horse Antiques, Petersburg, Va.
Frank Gaglio (not pictured) had an owl weathervane that got a lot of close-up attention from the woman on the right. Both it and the Schoolhouse quilt on his back wall sold during the show. Rhinebeck, N.Y.
“I did well both days, it’s a worthwhile event to do,” Gaglio shared. “I sold a schoolhouse quilt on Friday and a Navajo rug I put up in its place, an ironing marble, a pier table, an owl weathervane and a dolphin fountain, as well as lots of smalls.”
Back after a couple of years, Mark and Kelli Saylor made an institutional sale within an hour of the show’s start, selling a reproduction painted bucket cupboard to Lisa Minardi for the collection at Historic Trappe. Minardi confirmed it was a replica of one featured in Historic Trappe’s newest exhibition and would be included alongside the original.
An area between the show’s main floor and the atrium housed a small number of dealers who enjoyed being not only the first booths shoppers could visit, but also short proximity to both the restrooms and the concessions stand. Jane Langol said the first morning was “a good start, with a big sale of a very important quilt at the opening.” She’d had interest in lots of smalls as well as “serious interest” in paintings. Her outside wall featured a Raggedy Anne doll as well as an important braided rug from Maine that had provenance to Merrimacport, Mass., dealer, Colette Donovan.
In the same space, Helen and Larry Bryan were H&L Antiques. Larry showed Antiques and The Arts Weekly a butterfly table he’d sold, an Eighteenth Century desk on frame and an Eighteenth Century open stepback cupboard that dated to circa 1840.
H&L Antiques, Princeton, N.J.
Michael Paul Gunselman was on the other side of the café from Langol. The Centreville, Del., dealer said he had sold an apothecary cabinet, a Coca-cola cast iron door handle and a couple of toys.
Once shoppers were inside the show’s main floor, there were several booths front and center that offered a diversity of choice.
A boldly colored Pennsylvania star quilt, dated to the late Nineteenth Century, anchored Joe Lodge’s booth near the entrance but our eyes were drawn to a miniature smoke-decorated bench with a single drawer that sat on a painted table, and the three miniature painted pantry boxes on top of it that the Lederach, Penn., dealer said he’d found — and was selling — separately.
Bob Haneberg had paintings by James King Bonnar, Antonio Cerio and Anthony Thieme, as well as a lovely Hudson River School landscape after Victor de Grailly. The East Lyme, Conn., dealer also had maritime, weathervanes and furniture, notably a circa 1820 mahogany card table with pineapple-carved base, tiger-maple tilt-top stand and a two drawer table with a gameboard top and sewing bag fitted to the bottom drawer.
The Hanebergs, East Lyme, Conn.
“I sold a really good Pennsylvania inlaid iron ladle, a Windsor chair, a piece of woodenware and an early Nineteenth Century Southern yellow pine table that I found in Massachusetts but is going to a Southern buyer,” reported Hilary Nolan, whose booth was around the corner from Haneberg.
In Steven Still’s booth, a Lancaster County (Penn.) sampler dated 1826, powder horn owned by Thomas Leatch of Fitchburg, Mass., and two portraits by Jacob Eicholtz were shown alongside a Queen Anne walnut dressing table with drake feet.
Chadds Ford, Penn., dealer Richard Worth paired a diminutive circa 1780 Rhode Island Windsor rocking chair with an Eighteenth Century painted Berks County (Penn.) Mennonite cupboard. These were next to an early Nineteenth Century portrait of a mother and child, which hung over a Soap Hollow painted blanket chest that had been published in Monroe Fabian’s book, The Pennsylvania-German Decorated Chest (Universe Books, 1978).
Weathervanes were a popular category with Green Lane, Penn., dealers Keith and Diane Fryling, with lighthouse, cricket, swordfish and rooster examples. Standing out from their other offerings of stoneware, painted boxes, decoys, gameboards, hooked rugs and fraktur was a bentwood veneer sculpture by P.V. Schleck titled “Phoenix Series #18.” According to the card that accompanied it, Schleck was a self-taught New York City artist who specialized in creating art forms from veneers of exotic woods.
The dramatic veneered sculpture by P.V. Schleck, shown on the right along the back wall, was an interesting and unusual object, on offer with Keith and Diane Fryling, Green Lane, Penn.
Next to the Frylings, Pat and Rich Garthoeffner were doing a brisk business, selling a cast iron rabbit bank and talking to clients about many of the things in their booth, including an album crib quilt, holiday and a child’s Daisy wagon.
In the same aisle as the Frylings and Garthoeffners, Rockingham, Vt., dealers Steven Corrigan and Douglas Jackman shared a booth with Canfield, Ohio, dealer Steve Sherhag. Their wares went well alongside each other, with each showing painted furniture, portraits and small decorative objects.
Zac Ziebarth is the president of the board of directors for the Antiques Dealers Association of America (ADA) and he’s been coming to the York Show from Wisconsin for a couple of years. When we caught up with him after the show, he was packing to go to London to participate for the first time in the Decorative Fair, where he would be the only dealer of Native American works of art.
“York was superb for me. It was helpful to have the militaria show happening on the fairgrounds — several of those folks came in and shopped. I sold some good Civil War ephemera, stoneware, Native American items including beadwork, textiles and folk art. For me, it’s a unique show in that those who shop the show know the material; many have been long-time collectors but its always fun to meet new collectors. I was happy to sell to existing clients and make new ones as well.”
Zac Ziebarth, third from right in the light blue shirt, had strong sales throughout the event. The trapunto-decorated quilt on his side wall was one he found in the Midwest; it sold to a local collector. Ziebarth’s Antiques, Madison, Wis.
Across from the Garthoeffners, John Kolar had several objects of significant historical importance. These included a Chester County (Penn.) slat-back side chair once owned by William K. Dupont, an armchair in original green paint that had once been in the Connecticut State House that related to one published by Charles Santore that he had acquired from the late dealer, Wayne Pratt, a long rifle made by Jacob Metzger and a powder horn with Noah’s Ark iconography once published in the April 2015 issue of Early American Life.
Nancy Douglass brought a theorem that had been sold at Christie’s in 1999. It hung in her Willow Springs Antiques’ booth alongside a stack of two cream and brown hat boxes, a cow weathervane, a red-painted rooster weathervane made by the Rochester Iron Works, a circa 1820 cherry dry sink and a circa 1880-1900 clam or oystershell patterned hooked rug she’d found in Vermont.
“[Business] has been surprisingly good for an election year,” observed Don Heller. The Portland, Maine, dealer brought several theorem pictures, a white-painted rooster weathervane, a portrait of a child seated in a chair that was done on a cradled board and some painted furniture. When we were in his booth, a prospective buyer called him over to discuss the construction details of an early Eighteenth Century Rhode Island paneled settle.
A paneled settle with lollipop-carved arm terminals, made in Rhode Island between 1700 and 1750, was among the pieces Don Heller, left, had interest in. Heller Washam Antiques, Portland, Maine.
Across the aisle from Heller, Dan and Karen Olson were also having a good show. Sales in multiple categories were reported after the show, which they described as “busy for us, both during set up and while it was open.” Among furniture pieces that traded hands were an early Nineteenth Century inlaid walnut tall chest, a two-door dry sink with drawers, two Eighteenth Century New England tea tables and a New England Queen Anne cut-corner candlestand in old finish, an early Nineteenth Century one-drawer stand, an inlaid mahogany card table from Connecticut and an English inlaid satinwood liquor chest on stand. Bennington candlesticks, baskets, decorated tin, painted pantry boxes, trade signs, glass lamps, an 1845 mangle board and an Eighteenth Century needlework from Litchfield, Conn., were among the smalls they found new homes for.
Grenfell mats, decoys, stoneware, weathervanes and folk paintings — the usual bill of fare for A Bird in Hand Antiques — were among the pieces Ron and Joyce Bassin brought to the show, but an unusual standout was a large brass and leather telescope made by Ryland & Son in London in 1916. Made for field artillery and general staff, it was reputedly used to monitor German activities off the Dover coast during World War I. Its descriptive card noted it to be “a rare and positively outstanding telescope for the particular user or collector.” A Clark Vorhees carved and painted wall-mounted narwhal, made between 1940 and 1970, was a sale the Bassins made early in the event.
Towards the back corner, conversation with customers kept Mike Newsom busy. Animals populated his booth, in the form of a carved white fox by Frank Finney, a good selection of small carved birds, a swan and various fish decoys, chalkware cats, a stone squirrel and a rooster weathervane, not to mention two hooked rugs with animal motifs. He had a selection of six folk art carved canes — which he said were usually good sellers — from a selection of more than 100 he owns; two at the show were carved with dog’s-head handles.
Newsom Berdan, Hallowell, Maine and Thomasville, Penn.
John Forster, the Sarasota, Fla.-based owner of Barometer Fair, does the Fall York show but not the Winter edition. A restorer of barometers, he brings ones he’s working on to the show as well as complete examples. By noon on Friday, he had sold a ship’s bowfront barometer and a boxed sextant. A particularly unusual antique he had prominently displayed on his outer wall was a large papier mâché harlequin mask that was probably made and used during Mardi Gras; he had found it in North Carolina.
Drew Epstein and Sandy Jacobs were kitty corner from Forster. Among signs, painted boxes, toy vehicles, folk portraits and a phenomenal folk art étagère was a restored 1950s outboard motor on a custom stand that was Epstein’s “thing,” meant to power a canoe.
Tom Jewett, who with Butch Berdan was also adjacent to Forster, Epstein and Jacobs, sent a good report of the show a few days after it closed.
“We sold across the board, but holiday was on fire! Some of our sales included a large clockwork Santa, a clockwork reindeer, Belsnickels, ornaments and Halloween but we also sold trade signs, a carved curtain panel, an Oddfellows pedestal and lots of smalls.”
Sandy Jacobs, right, selling jewelry while Drew Epstein got some bubble pack out. Behind him is a phenomenonal folk art étagère that was made in Lancaster, Ohio, by an unknown artist and featured in Wendy Lavitt’s Animals in American Folk Art (New York City: Knopf, 1990). A copy of the book is next to it. In the far corner was a restored 1950s outboard motor. Scott Bassoff – Sandy Jacobs, Swampscott, Mass.
Just across the aisle from Epstein and Jacobs, Chris Evans was manning the booth by himself. An early sale on of a three-gallon cobalt-decorated stoneware pitcher to dealer/collector Roy Wadsworth gave him a strong start to the event.
Clifton Heights, Penn., dealer, Marc Calciano sold a set of 12 Royal Doulton plates on opening day as well as crocks, Asian foo dogs, Native American objects and artwork.
Blandon Cherry was back at York after debuting in February. The Paris, Ky., dealer had several good things including a walnut and poplar one-drawer stand made in the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century in Pennsylvania. It provided a great place upon which to showcase a folky carved Black man he had acquired in Virginia.
Joan Staufer had interest in an unusual mustard-colored whole-cloth bedcover that had been deaccessioned from Colonial Williamsburg, which she displayed folded in half on one of her side walls. Another piece of note — a rare New England chimney cupboard that retained its old surface and original butterfly hinges — was something she’d acquired just before the show and described as being “a 10 in both form and condition!”
The 184th Original Semi-Annual York, Penn., Antiques Show & Sale will take place at the same venue, on January 31-February 1. For information, www.theoriginalyorkantiquesshow.com.
