Review and Photos by Greg Smith
INDIAN LAKE, N.Y. – The roadside on Route 28 was alive and bustling September 11-15 as the annual Adirondack Mountains Antiques Show packed around the only intersection in town with trinkets and finds that delighted campers, glampers, collectors and the curious.
The roadside event is the informal sister show to the Adirondack Experience’s Antiques Show and Sale, held the same weekend just 15 minutes further up the road. And the roadside crawl is indeed informal – similar in presence to walking up the road in Brimfield, except there’s one ATM in town, it’s nearly all Adirondack material and you are surrounded by pine trees and pristine nature. It’s a breath of fresh air.
The weather proved mostly cooperative, with some early mornings drizzling clearing up to sunshine not long thereafter. One night was reportedly a bit unwieldy for dealers, with winds and rain blowing through the area.
There was no shortage of rustic material at the show. Taxidermy included moose, deer, bobcats, rams, black bears, beavers, gophers, fox, squirrels and fisher cats, in addition to mounted wildfowl and prize fish. Nearly every booth had a pair of mounted antlers. The accoutrements were there in quantity as well: traps, knives, carved decoys, lures and rods and reels.
The show had everything you needed to move to the great outdoors, besides your own wits. You could not walk 20 feet without stepping over a snow shoe, some of them dating back to the Nineteenth Century and others contemporary. Vintage flannel clothes and boots joined them in some places. Pack baskets were ubiquitous and were often accompanied by old wicker creels.
Adirondack furniture was present throughout in Old Hickory chairs, bentwood rocking chairs and tables, planters, camp stools and more.
Seven dealers set up with John Magoun and Robert Ross this year in their own independent settlement beneath a three-pole tent down the street.
“I thought it was busy most all the time, and we did quite well,” Magoun told Antiques and The Arts Weekly. “I thought the canoes were a little soft, but everything moose was good – mounted moose and the horns. And I had some interesting paddles that sold and quite a number of packs, as well as a half dozen good creels. It was pretty much across the board.”
Magoun also said that he found some good things from other dealers.
Robert Ross echoed the above statement, saying the only canoe he sold was on the phone following the show. Ross said he also did quite well with antlers from both caribou and moose.
They resolve to be back in the same spot next year.
And so do we.
For more information, 518-648-5112.
