The Friday of Antiques Week in New Hampshire has taken on new life this year, the Pickers Market Antiques Show is back where it all started. And not only is Pickers back to its original roots, it is there drawing a large audience and creating sales for its vendors.
The show opened at 10 am, August 10, following a late night set up after the dealers doing Mid*Week Antiques Show vacated the building, and with final preparations in the morning, all was ready to go when Frank Gaglio of Barn Star Productions opened the doors of the Douglas N. Everett Arena. Forty dealers were on hand with a good variety of antiques in attractive booths, and the crowd was also there to take advantage of the show ending the week of shows.
Management made sure there was a good mix of exhibitors, a shipper was on hand, and a cafeteria was open with fresh sandwiches, chips and drinks to wash it all down. And people did come to Concord, as the line grew before opening, extending across the front of the building and down the left side.
Pewter & Wood of Enfield, N.H., offered a nice selection of smalls, including large wooden bowls with red painted bottoms, wooden scoops, large red painted dominos decorated with nautical scenes and red, white and blue sand pails in different sizes.
Jim Yeager of Lees Summit, Mo., showed a selection of toys and banks, including a cast iron fire ladder truck drawn by a white and a black horse, with driver, and a Jones Fallows tin horse with rider on wheels. Darktown Battery was one of the mechanical banks in the case, and a number of still banks included a silo, blue and orange deer with antlers, and several cupola building banks.
Fresh off the VADA Show in Woodstock, Henry T. Callan of East Sandwich, Mass., offered several samplers and a large selection of Rose Medallion. One sampler by Frances Williams, 1842, was from Mount Vernon and had a surround of white roses, while a Pennsylvania sampler, dated 1816, has a scene with a large house, several trees and birds.
An early Twentieth Century pair of bottle dolls was shown by Baker & Co., Soquel, Calif., and arranged on a shelf were six doorstops with flowers in urns and vases. A large Amish homemade cloth toy dog, all brown, from Lancaster County, Penn., was being packed in a bag for an antiques dealer from an earlier show, taken from a collection of animals that included two more dogs and one seated pig.
A large carved and painted seagull, in a position as if just taking flight from a body of water, was shown in the booth of Pioneer Folk Antiques, Ellsworth, Maine. An early sign pointed the way to “the Elm Street Steambath,” and a beaver was depicted on a medium-size hooked rug.
A large hand painted patriotic banner for Kansas, circa 1860‱870, hung in the booth of Debbie Turi of Roseland, N.J. She also had a New England pine tavern table with two-board top and stretcher base, and a selection of doorstops included a very nice clown in red, flowers, jester and dogs.
Seven long guns, including an English flintlock “Farmer 1759,” were against the back wall in the booth of George A. Downer, Needham, Mass. A bronze cannon was on the table, signed by F.M. Brown of Warren, R.I., and an Indian knife and sheath had a name inscribed on the blade.
Home Farm Antiques, Bolton Landing, N.Y., offered a large wire birdcage that was found on a dairy farm in upstate New York, and a farm table, circa 1900, came from the Alsop Americana Collection, Saratoga, N.Y., and, over the years, had been written on and lightly carved with pictures of boats and figures, as well as hundreds of names of people who must have eaten from the table. A sawbuck table, circa 1780‱820, was from Schoharie, N.Y.
A wooden fish with copper fins was in the booth of John Bourne Antiques, Pittsford, Vt., along with a furnished dollhouse with dormer, porch, front steps and double chimneys, all in white paint with brown trim.
Chris Hall Antiques, McLean, Va., had a circa 1830 bucket bench in salmon paint, a 6-foot-tall figure of Uncle Sam, and several signs, including “Briarwood Beagle Kennels” and “Lee Riders †Cowboy Pants.”
Witt’s End Antiques, Wallkill, N.Y., showed an Eighteenth Century Hudson Valley shoe-foot hutch table with two-board top, breadboard ends, measuring 42 by 43¼ inches. A maple tavern table with splayed legs, oval top in maple, dated circa 1750‱770, and a Nineteenth Century dark red painted 32-drawer apothecary was on turned bun feet.
Colleen Boland Frese of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Suzanne Baker of Westville, Ind., offered a Queen Anne tiger maple drop-leaf table, circa 1750, and a smoke decorated blanket box with cutout ends. A trencher was filled with nine treen plates, bowls were painted red, yellow and blue, and six firkins of various sizes retained the original blue, green, red and gray painted surfaces.
Richie and Susie Burmann of New London, N.H., had a nice selection of furniture, including a New Hampshire desk in maple, Queen Anne slant front, with bandy legs, original finish and from the Bartlett School, Salisbury, N.H. A paint decorated dressing table, green design on yellow ground, once belonged to William Bager of Gilmanton, N.H., governor of New Hampshire, 1834‱835. A large steer weathervane with great surface, probably Cushing, dated circa 1880.
Bill Powell American Arts, Franklin, Tenn., had a sign for the “Acme Pawn Shop” and a large top hat trade sign. A 4-foot-tall clown with a lollipop was in colorful dress, and another sign directed anglers to “Fish Bait.”
A gray running horse on a red ground was depicted on a hooked rug in the booth of Francis Crespo Studio, Newark, N.J. A pair of wooden and painted wall planters were in the form of flying ducks, and a large sheet iron sign in the form of a pig was painted salmon.
Three large wood barrels made from tree stumps, called log barrels, were in the booth of Mary Elliott of Pepperell, Mass., the largest one with a sold tag attached. Also sold was a gray painted wall cupboard with two doors.
Bittner-Kohn of Burlington, Vt., and Elkins Park, Penn., had many interesting things and collections, including a dozen framed miniature baseball gloves dating from the 1940s and six leather cutting dies for making regulation baseball gloves. Three hand-blown jars were each filled with different colored fishing bobbins, one of all green, another blue and the third yellow and blue. A collection of 11 violins was shown, each with a carved head at the end of the neck, so when it was held by the player the eyes of the head were on the audience. Several carvings of just the neck and the head were in the collection. Ken Kohn, once a familiar figure at antiques show with a strong interest in American flags, said, “This is my first show in ten years and it is good to be back on the scene.”
Pilgrim Roy, Warner, N.H., had a number of colorful quilts, including one in the square-within-a-square pattern, Mennonite, Pennsylvania, circa 1880, red and green on a bright yellow ground, and a mosaic variation, circa 1860, green and yellow on white. A double Irish Chain quilt, also, Pennsylvania Mennonite, dated circa 1860.
Sandy Klempner Antiques and Interiors, Canaan, N.Y., had a large sign for “Poultry & Dairy Feeds †Albany, N.Y.,” and a red leather sofa with horse heads on the back cushions. Two carousel scenes by J. Guthrie, circa 1940, showed a mountain and lake scene on one, and a man fishing on the other. Mark & Lynda Suozzi of Ashfield, Mass., had a carved wood tiger with saddle and “Princeton” lettered on the saddle blanket, a carnival clown from Moss Landing, Calif., and a poster advertising Grape Nuts showing a young girl walking with a St Bernard with her home and mother behind a picket fence in the background.
“Things are being sold, I have been watching people with bags leaving the show,” Frank Gaglio said a couple of hours into the show. He added, “It is good to have Pickers back where it started, and no one has complained to me about the short drive to Concord from Manchester.”
The Pickers Market is again on the schedule for next year and, as Frank would say, it gives shoppers the perfect place to “end your week with a great antique.”
