When the show opened, one of the “destination” booths was that of post card dealer Jack Lowney, Westport, Mass. John Bruno commented that the post card dealers offer an easy, inexpensive way to get new customers interested in collecting.
Review & Onsite Photos by Rick Russack
BOXBOROUGH, MASS. — John and Tina Bruno have been managing various types of antiques shows for more than 35 years. Both have backgrounds in engineering, and, in fact, met while both were in that field. Tina was one of the first women involved with micro-chip design and John was a NASA engineer. Their interest in antiques is long-lasting, John said, beginning for him when he was a teenager.
Their twice annual Paper Town paper and ephemera show at the Boxboro Regency Hotel had its first edition of the year on June 8, with about 40 exhibitors who gave shoppers much to choose from. In addition to what one usually thinks of with the word “ephemera,” there were also vintage cameras and a dealer with a large selection of historic medals.
Much of the material offered for sale was of local interest, ranging from advertising documents to postcards. Richard Thorner, Resser-Thorner Americana, Manchester, N.H., had a window hanger and other items relating to Manchester’s Amoskeag Mills. At its peak, the Amoskeag Mills was the largest textile producer in the country with 64 mill buildings that turned out more than 500,000 yards of cloth a week. The mills were in production for more than 100 years and many of the buildings remain today. Thorner offered a chromolithographed window hanger depicting many of the buildings ($325) and an earlier black and white advertising piece ($350). He said it depicted an earlier stage of the mill’s development. He also had a handwritten log and photographs relating to the first flight of an airplane from a Navy ship, which took place in 1910. The log was kept by electrician wireless operator first class, James Frank Monton of Hampton Roads, Va., and he noted that “Mr Ely (Eugene B. Ely [1886-1911], the first man to land on and take off from a naval vessel) started his machine and took off like a bird.” The ship was the USS Birmingham, a US Navy armored cruiser, and the event marked the beginning of aircraft flights from naval ships. Thorner was asking $3,000 for the collection.
Richard Thorner, Manchester, N.H., had several items relating to the Amoskeag Mills of Manchester, N.H. Thorner explained that roof lines changed over time but this example was an early one; he had priced it $350.
Another of the several exhibitors with items of local history was Bob Perry, Perry’s Old Newsstand, Marshfield Hills, Mass. He had a table with hundreds of neatly organized postcards; nearly all were related to nearby towns or places of interest and he also had supplies for card collectors. While Perry had plenty of cards, another dealer, Jack Lowney, Westport, Mass., had nothing but postcards, filling an entire booth. When we asked how many he had, he thought for a moment and said, “about 32,000.”
Mid and late Twentieth Century pop culture material was abundant. Robinson Murry III, Cambridge, Mass., had early Playboy magazines, Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club Magazines and programs relating to Boston sports teams, such as several for the Beanpot Hockey Tournaments. Much of his material was priced less than $10. Fred Calabretta, Mystic, Conn., had boxes of Beatles memorabilia, magazines and songbooks, MAD magazines, National Lampoon and Rolling Stone magazines. Like Murray, much of his material was priced less than $10. Calabretta also had items of Western interest: a full-page advertisement for the 1926 movie Custer’s Last Fight, which promised “a Cast of Thousands of Indians, Cavalrymen, Pioneers and Scouts,” was priced $165. The same advertisement also promoted another film, announcing, “The Greatest Frontier Film Ever Shown, Sitting Bull, A Picture You Will Never Regret or Forget.”
Evie Eysenburg, Cold Spring, N.Y., offered a copy of one of the earliest board games produced in the United States. The Reward of Virtue was published by W.&S.B. Ives in 1850 and priced $375.
Toys and games were offered by several dealers and ranged in date from mid Nineteenth Century to late Twentieth Century, including board games as well as toy radios in the form of robots. Evie Eysenburg, Cold Spring, N.Y., had an 1850 copy of The Reward of Virtue, which was published by W.&S.B. Ives in Salem, Mass., and is one of the earliest board games published in this country. It was based upon the 1801 English game Reward of Merit. Eysenburg priced the game $375. She also had other early paper toys and early hand-colored valentines.
One dealer, Mark Surowiecki, Three Brown Dogs Antiques, Meriden, Conn., had a selection of cameras and numerous daguerreotypes and tintypes. He said that he had been collecting cameras for about 12 years and that his favorite one in the booth was a Century 5-by-7-inch wood and brass dry plate example, for which he was asking $350. He told Antiques and The Arts Weekly that it was his first time exhibiting at the show and that he found Instagram a good way to promote his material to new customers. Another dealer, Snapshot Maven Photos of Gloucester, Mass., filled a booth with hundreds of often over-looked family snapshots of everyday people doing everyday things.
Dan Stezko, The Picking Fields, Springfield, Mass., had a large map/timetable of the Old Colony Railroad for rail service to coastal points with connecting steamship lines to Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, which he priced at $350.
Al Roy, Tiverton, R.I., had several circus posters. He sold this Cole Brothers poster, which he’d priced $100.
Posters were a staple of several ephemera dealers. Examples relating to both World Wars were available, as were ones for circuses, travel and protest. The World War posters, in addition to being decorative, depicted the history of the period. One example that demonstrated that in particular was a black and white poster titled Twice a Patriot. Unusual for this genre, it pictured Black ex-private Obie Bartlet wearing welding safety gear and read, “Obie Bartlet lost his left arm at Pearl Harbor, discharged December 1941 and is now working as a welder at a West Coast Shipyard.” Joe Reilly Antiques, Portland, Maine, priced the poster $1,250. Al Roy, Tiverton, R.I., had several circus posters, including one for the Cole Brothers circus with three young women, priced $100; another for the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus promoted animal trainer Terrel Jacobs. Jacobs was considered the best trainer of his time, and his fame was partly based on an act in which he was in a cage with 50 lions and tigers at one time; the poster that showed this stunt was priced $200.
We mentioned earlier in this review that one dealer had numerous medals awarded to commemorate significant accomplishments of the past. That dealer was Robert Moffat, Auburn, Mass., who also had lapel and other pins that were given to the families of men who had enlisted in the armed services during both World Wars. A collection of more than 30 was in a Riker display mount and was priced $1,000.
A few days after the show, Tina and John Bruno both said that it had been a successful day. “The crowd was good and we were glad to see the number of shoppers in their twenties. And they were buying. Some of the dealers, like Fred Calabretta, deal in posters and magazines that are familiar to that generation. We’re also believers in encouraging adults to bring their grandchildren. There’s stuff here that appeals to all ages.” Tina added, “As the show progresses, I like to count a random group of 10 leaving the show and see how many are leaving with packages. I did that a few times and generally eight out of ten people were leaving with bags. Nearly all of the dealers told us they’d be back in the fall — just what we wanted to hear.”
The fall Paper Town show will take place at the Boxboro Regency Hotel on October 12.
For information, 603-509-2639 or www.flamingoeventz.com.
