Thomas and Julia Barringer, Stockton, N.J.
Tucker Frey Antiques, Woodbury, Conn.
The volunteers of Brandywine River Museum presented the 33rd Antiques Show on May 29-31. On Friday evening, May 28, a special preview party for the antiques show was conducted. Antiques show committee chairman MaryEllen Perri was assisted by a staff of more than 350 volunteers under the leadership of volunteer coordinator Donna Gormel.
All show proceeds benefit the Brandywine River Museum Volunteers’ Art Purchase Fund.
Thirty-two dealers from across the nation were again assembled by Robert Armacost, show manager. The dealers presented a variety of American and English furniture, Oriental and European porcelain, silver and bronze, folk art, paintings and handwoven carpets.
Accompanying the antiques show was a special exhibition, “Extreme Creamware: Surprising Forms and Diverse Decorations.” This exhibition featured approximately 50 pieces of creamware predominately from the Eighteenth Century that display unusual forms and demonstrate wide variety of decorations. The Brandywine Museum owns only one of the pieces in the exhibit. All of the others were lent by friends of the museum.
Originally known as cream color, creamware was inexpensive and durable and it boasted a smooth surface and brilliant glaze perfect for ornamentation. Creamware is attributed to Enoch Booth of Staffordshire, England, and was first introduced around 1740.
The majority of the dealers have participated from the first show on down to the present. Among the returning exhibitors were Autumn Pond Antiques from Bolton, Conn., David Morey of Thomaston, Maine, Kemble’s Antiques of Norwich, Ohio, and Campbell Antiques from Baltimore, Md. New to the show this year were Irvin and Dolores Boyd Antiques from Fort Washington, Penn., specializing in Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Century American furniture, with a focus on cupboards, desks and chests.
Thomas and Julia Barringer, Stockton, N.J., one of the “lucky seven” and dealers in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century brown wood, featured a pie safe with original red paint and extraordinary tins, circa 1830-1840, plus two E. Moran drawings. With only 12 exhibitions on their card, some consider the Barringers outlanders. In the next stall Charley Horse Antiques, Ruth Glen, Va., brought a Philadelphia, circa Eighteenth Century, chair. Charley Horse has done this show for at least ten years.
The painted mid-Nineteenth Century Dutch cupboard with smoke decorated doors offered by Country Lane Antiques was worth a second look. One of the few tall-case clocks seen at the show was offered by Irvin and Dolores Boyd, Fort Washington, Penn.
The 2005 show is scheduled for May 28-30. For information, www.armacostantique shows.com or 410-435-2292.
