Antiques in Vermont ends the quintet of Antiques Week in Vermont shows with a flourish.
Nearly twice the size as its four siblings, the 75-dealer fair managed by Phyllis Carlson and Tim Stevenson was designed by dealers, for dealers. As such, it’s dealer-friendly, from move-in to pack-out.
On Sunday, October 1, this year, the one-day selling event is a place to see, buy and be on one’s way. With Manchester crawling with tourists and part-time residents on a typical fall weekend, some of whom are in town to load up at the area’s upscale outlet stores, and dealers heading home from Antiques Week, the Carlson & Stevenson enterprise is a natural.
Now in its 22nd year, Antiques in Vermont sets up at Riley Rink. Exhibitors can drive onto the rink’s large floor. Set up is that easy. There’s plenty of convenient parking nearby.
Antiques in Vermont starts with early buying from 8 to 10 am. General admission continues until 4 pm.
“Overall, we were extremely pleased,” Carlson said after the show. “We’ve had nice increases in attendance both this year and last. It was a beautiful day and I think a lot of exhibitors sold well.”
Carlson & Stevenson themselves exhibit. The Dorset, Vt., dealers — who also participate in the Ellis Memorial Antiques Show in Boston, Antiquarius in Greenwich, the Washington DC Antiques Show, Antiques at the Armory in New York and the Charleston International Antiques Show — are known for Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century American folk art watercolors.
Raccoon Creek at Oley Forge Antiques, in Oley, Penn., were polished and pulled-together in its presentation. Top specialists in folk art and painted furniture, dealers George Allen and Gordon Wyckoff featured baskets in all sizes and shapes; furniture, both painted and scrubbed; pottery and sculpture.
Cape Cod dealer Brian Cullity’s choice array included a curly maple cross-based Pembroke table, $4,200; a miniature curly maple one-drawer stand, $2,200; and a vibrant paint decorated dome-top box.
Thomas Jewett and Charles Berdan are one of a handful of exhibitors who participate in more than one Antiques Week show. (They also do Okemo.) The Newcastle, Maine, dealers offered redware, a black rag doll and folk art smalls.
Danville, N.H., bookseller Rick Russack was touting Consuming Views: Art and Tourism in the White Mountains, 1850–1900. The catalog, which Russack sells for $40 hardcover, accompanies an exhibition of the same name at the Museum of New Hampshire History through May 6. Guest curators John J. Henderson and Roger E. Belson examine paintings by Jasper Francis Cropsey, Thomas Hill, Benjamin Champney, Frank Shapleigh, Bradford Freeman, Franklin Stanwood and Erdix Tenney Wilson, among others.
Joseph Moffett was busy showing off teal green shutters — “all original, and pinned” — and cobalt decorated stoneware, most of it from New York and priced from $195 to $1,450. The dealer also had an early Twentieth Century Windsor child’s chair labeled Nichols & Stone, Gardiner, Mass. It was $445.
A five-drawer apothecary chest fitted with a reverse painted glass door and Bennington pottery pulls was $750 at Denise Scott Antiques. The country furniture and accessories dealer from East Greenwich, R.I., paired the chest with a carved wood sitting eagle with an upstretched head and beak, $1,150.
An Eighteenth Century New England spoon rack in old red paint was $1,650 at Harts Country Antiques, New Oxford, Penn.
Most intriguing was an oval hide-covered travel trunk from Rochester, Vt. Its maker used brass tacks to embellish it with hearts and the initials “MS.” The trunk cost $575 at Bobbie Pries, Westfield Center, Ohio.
Yorktown Heights, N.Y., dealer John Gould had a circa 1790 two-drawer Hepplewhite cherry stand, while Ziegler Antiques showcased a one-drawer decorated Sheraton dressing table, red with green paint, $2,400.
Colleen Kinlock unveiled a circa 1788–1820 hutch table, $4,900. “It’s been in storage, put away since the 1920s and has a real attic finish,” said the Bristol, Maine, dealer.
The only formal furniture seen in the show was at Painted Pony, Montvale, N.J., where George and Linda Hecker displayed a mahogany veneered Hepplewhite chest of drawers and a ball and claw foot side chair.
Jeff and Cathy Amon, Jamestown, Penn., dealers in American country antiques, marked a set of six Harrisburg, Penn., plank seat side chairs in salmon paint with freehand decoration $1,800. The chairs are stamped “J.B. Boyds Chair Factory.”
An Eighteenth Century iron standing candle lamp was $2,600 at Gail White Early American Antiques, Wiscasset, Maine.
Pat Reese and John Rice of Portsmouth, N.H., offered a New York State indigo and white jacquard coverlet, $1,275, in an American eagle pattern by James Alexander with a large, shapely carved and painted wood finial, $750.
At Grafton Gathering Place, Grafton, Vt., a miniature blue German beer wagon with red and white striping dated to the late Nineteenth Century and was $1,350.
Two endearing monkey dolls, $295 and $175, cuddled in a child’s wheelbarrow, $250, at Betty Anne Lavallee, Hampton, N.H.
Valentine specialist Susan Voake of Forget Me Not Antiques in Norwich, Vt., had assorted Nineteenth Century mementos of “a gentler time.”
Solidly country, as the photographs reveal, Antiques in Vermont is a fitting conclusion to four antiques-packed days in the Green Mountain state.
