Tomorrow is the “soft” opening of the High Point Antique and Design Center’s Spring 2013 show running through next Thursday at noon.  Friday is official opening day for the HPADC and Saturday finds the entire 7.5 million square feet of exhibition space open–and yes, every square inch of space is leased!  Like guessing jelly beans in a jar, how many miles would one walk to see every exhibit!  Fortunately for antiques lovers and vintage design lovers, the HPADC is a manageable space equal to a very large antiques show in a major metropolitan area.

Here are some photos of our booth at the end of today.

The covered area on the left is Donnie Grissom’s fabulous jewelry booth–we share this area at the entrance to the show.  I will shoot a few photos tomorrow when the jewelry is in place to give you the entire effect!

Sideboard and more

The sideboard is George IV, c; 1825-30, of mahogany–a brilliantly robust example from Scotland.

All of the pieces featured in the booth can be viewed in detail by going to our website, www.whitehallantiques.com.

Country French elm dining table

Far end of the Booth

The deer heads are from an Oxford, North Carolina family, as is the deer foot lamp–all 50-80 years old and in gorgeous condition ideal for a mountain house!

Through our gates to the booth beyond filled with architectural fragments and other neat things!

The French clock works perfectly, has a rare double strike system, and on the pendulum children see saw up and down with every sweep of the movement.

George III Chest on Chest and Welsh George III Tall Case Clock from Cardiff

Period French Buffet and Wall Shelf with blue and white ceramics

Since the earliest years of my antiques businesses,  I have been deeply involved with the American Society of Appraisers, one of the three leading appraisal societies in America devoted to professionalism in the business of appraising.  I am pleased to include here a connection to an interview/member profile which is being published this week and next week on all of ASA’s various social media.

I hope you will read and enjoy it.  Also please follow the links to learn more about ASA and the important contributions to professionalism made by ASA originally, then joined by ISA and finally in recent years by a transformed AAA.

http://bit.ly/Xe4JxC

The seventeenth annual Antiques in Alexandria opened in the Waterford (not Watergate!) this evening with good ffod and libations and a modest, interested crowd.  Tomorrow night’s party features the roaring 20′s in a Speakeasy setting and is heavily sold.  Daily hours are 11-9 tomorrow, 11-6 on Saturday and 11-5 on Sunday.  So far we have lightened our load–always a happy way to begin!  Here are some photos of different dealers from many you have encountered in my blog over the year as this show is more concentrated with Mid-Atlantic and New England Dealers.  The mix here is delightful and there are three intriguing Designer Vignettes, borrowing antiques from the dealers to augment and enhance the designer’s various concepts.  Hope you enjoy!

Whitehall Antiques booth leading into the show.

Some of the furniture is the same as in Thomasville, but a very different presentation.  The  dining chairs are a different set, as we sold the painted set in Thomasville.  It is always fun to create a different setting as booth sizes vary enormously from show to show.  Here we again have a narrow side aisle but as you will see a huge area on the left outside of the booth.

Narrow right side aisle with fireplace equipment display

Display case shelf

Many new arrivals not yet seen at the shop are displayed on this shelf including 4 c. 1820-40 dog whistles and a cased set of gilt sterling and polychrome enamel Hunt Motif Place Card Holders–all from a Vero Beach collection shipped to us this week to sell on behalf of two sisters who inherited them.  Many of the pieces are still in their James Robinson velvet bags–a superb provenance for such little jewels.  The salad servers are 1799 from Edinburg–again sterling, as is the marvelous London skewer in the fiddle, thread and shell pattern (also George III).

Enameled sterling place card holders in a presentation case

Left aisle view of Whitehall Antiques--the bamboo and country area

Mid-century Modernism

Not yet showing in this fabulous booth by Brennan & Mouilleseaux of Northfield, Connecticut are period American federal furniture as a counterpoint to the mid-century pieces in fresh linen upholstery.

An explosion of great English Porcelain -- The Spare Room, Baltimore

Jackie Smelkinson and Marsha Moylan always have an exceptional array of period jewelry, superb Englis porcelain and excentricities of the tastiest types!  Amazing!

Treasures of Imperial Russia

Another delightful visual feast for the serious collector is Lacey Greer of California’s icons of Russia in the time of the Tsars.

Baldwin House Antiques, Strasburg, Pennsylvania

As one would expect, there is great American furniture in this show–none more spectacular than this tall chest with huge eagle inlays.  Hope you can read the next slide describing this marvelous piece.

Tall Chest Description

That is all for tonight–more tomorrow!  (Gosh it is already “tomorrow”!)

Thomasville, Georgia sits at the heart of the plantation region of  the southwestern part of the state about 30 miles north of Tallahassee, Florida.  Vast single family plantations fill the landscape for perhaps 50 miles in every direction, plantations dedicated to the preservation of the land and its abundant wildlife, yet also dedicated to hunting (quail in particular).  These historic pieces of land range from 7,500 acres for the smaller properties to 40,000 acres for the larger holdings.  This past week during the 24th annual Thomasville Antiques Show I was the very happy guest of one of the wonderful local families who have long supported this antiques show, this gracious Victorian town and this remarkable way of life which has brought the great families of America to annually take up residence for a few months, hunt, party, attend various arts events and simply spend quality time with their families and friends.  Now many have settled into a semi-permanent residency with perhaps some escape during the humid summer months.

I took two photos of a painting in the dining room, painted about 1994 by an artist I failed to annotate–sorry!  What is so interesting is it shows the landscape of towering pines with low ground cover for the quail families to hide and forage.  The hunt wagon is pulled by a mule or horse in a tradition dating back over one and a half centuries.  On the wagon are the dog care team with the pointers in particular caged on the wagon bed until the point of the hunt is reached.   Two dogs have gone on point.  The hunters are a short distance behind them–with guns.  The men on horseback to the right foreground are the guides who know every inch of these thousands of acres!  A retriever is sitting on the wagon seat–one of several that will retrieve the birds once they have been shot.  So there is a tidy division of labor among the hunting dogs–pointers and retrievers.  For three months every year this hunting scene is recreated hundreds of times across hundreds of thousands of acres as it has been since the middle of the 19th century.

A second full photo:

The next photo is fun because it recounts the creation of the painting from the sketch to finished piece.

And here I am being served breakfast while looking across the beautiful landscape from the breakfast area of the dining room!

I am always amused when folks say:  ”we can’t have a nice antiques show, we have no facilities” (by which they mean no convention center, no grand hotel ballroom, etc).  And then there is Thomasville, Georgia where the prefab metal buildings normally housing displays of vegetables, rabbits, pigs, roses and more at the fairgrounds are transformed!  Take a tour through this amazing transformation!

Tented facade connecting two "quonset huts"

What those tents are hiding!

The grand entry is through the flanking bathrooms for the fairgrounds, yet look at this magical transformation!

Grand Entrance

Dining area set-up

Tenting in the large metal hut!

All of the lighting was by candlelight from “chandeliers” of cascading fairy lights to massive candelabras.

Side view of our booth

The other side view

Turner Reuter, America's leading sporting art dealer

Katherine Denny Blair--fine English and bamboo!

Katherine also specializes in fine Old Sheffield Plate which covers her banquet table.

William Secord Gallery, America's leading expert on dog paintings

No show is complete without great Asian art and Antiques

More tomorrow with some photos of the plantation where I am visiting as well!

Nashville was an exciting show with tremendous buying across the entire floor.  The carts carrying furniture, art and garden accessories to the loading docks seemed endless and from our booth at the entrance to the show we watched literally thousands of people carrying out antiques and garden items  (from exquisite plants to bundles of pussy willows).  I wish I had photographed our and other booths at the end of the show–simply decimated.  Here is a photo filled and I will tell you what disappeared to give you an idea.

Off to the Thomasville, Georgia Antiques Show on Tuesday–look for some posts from there!

Center View

From this photo the tall case clock left corner sold, as did many objects from the etagere.  Then the massive Regency sideboard, the French mid-century Maison Jansen table under it, the 18th century Delft jars of monumental size, the pair of Bernard Bloch terra cotta black figures all sold.  Additionally we sold a great watercolor of the Hudson River by Jasper Francis Cropsey painted in 1889 as well as Tiffany flatware, a sterling punch bowl and tray, a wonderful Dutch pastel portrait, bamboo tables, fireplace equipment–just on and on and on!  What fun–it seemed like the 1990′s!

After unloading our truck last night–Ari haven driven 11 hours from Chapel Hill–we ate dinner at 9 pm and collapsed, beginning again this morning at 9 am!

Here is Ari attaching a southern pine classical period mantle to the front of our booth.

No idea where the water drop looking stuff came from but given the billowing dust from garden construction projects on the floor, it could be monster sneeze drops floating through the air!!!!

A view of chaos!

Here Ari is gluing on a piece of veneer knocked loose in transit–no works in the clock yet–they get installed tomorrow.

Just out the back of the convention center is Broadway with it’s Music City dives filled 24/7 with live groups playing C&W music, etc.  We are on our way to the noon repast (a daily pig out on Jack’s Barbeque).  And here is the entrance:

Does my lunch make you want a midnight snack?

There are six different sauces from which to choose–my favorites are Jack’s Traditional and a Hot and Spicy, both served hot as well!

Nashville Antiques and Garden Show link for lectures, events, hours, and most importantly the dealers!   www.antiquesandgardenshow.com/

Come see us now ya hear!!!!

For those who followed and contributed to the discussion of my article on Art, Antiques and Luxury Design Blog, here is a link to a summation of the discussion to this point.  I think it makes for fascinating reading of ideas from many dealers around the country.

Most of us are now home–or well towards home–after yesterday’s close of the show.  You saw the show going up–a process requiring two full days from each dealer, plus the days to build the walls, paper the booths and install electricity.  While we do our booths, the various show committees labor to transform a sterile building into a magical space suited to grand parties, interesting lectures, and the sale of fine antiques.  Then in three to four hours everything is packed in boxes, loaded on trucks, walls are taken down and the building will once again be empty!

NEW this year at Jacksonville was a Young Collectors Booth in which young committee members worked to create a great setting filled primarily with antiques “borrowed” from the dealers–all to be sold to collectors young and old, mostly priced $50.00 to $400.00.  Shows have long struggled to convince young buyers and others with limited resources that they too could begin a collection at their show.  Some years ago the younger set in Houston started a Young Collectors Booth at the Theta Show, with every item priced below $400.00 in a show with a vast number of pieces priced above  $50,000.00.  It has been a huge success both with the dealers making lots of small sales and for the clientele finding very affordable buys of guaranteed high quality!  This was the inspiration for Jacksonville’s new event (and I might add suggested to this year’s Jacksonville show chairs by my partner and daughter Elizabeth who at 35 has a keen sense of what excites her age group).

The neat twist added by the Jacksonville crew was to create a theme–a den for men filled with many items ideal for men to collect, their wives to give them–and happily for many moms attending the show to acquire for their kids!  Here are two shots of their set-up:

Wing chair is new and borrowed for color and to show blending old and new--it was not for sale.

Modern bookcase for display and the antique table was quite a bit above $400.00!

They worked so hard on the project and sold dozens and dozens of antiques to the joy of the dealers–truly a fun time for all.

One of the most colorful booths in the show is Kinda Ketterling’s wonderful majolica, set in a lavender booth that adds panache to her brilliant antique English, French, American and German majolica.  In the Grand Court bathed in bright sunlight, her booth sparkled!

Linda in her booth!

More wonderful antique majolica

While for centuries majolica was tin glazed earthenware (delft and faience mean the same general thing), the majolica seen here, and now avidly collected, is lead glazed, a product of some the greatest and most eccentric ceramicists of the 19th century.  Because the body of both the early tin glazed pieces and the later lead glazed is relatively low fired it is not unusual to find many minor chips on the early pieces (generally the preference is to not repair) and minor rim repairs on 19th century examples as the chips are so much more disturbing visually.  Such repairs are considered normal for the product.

Lisa and Steve Sherwood's booth

Look carefully and you will notice in the Sherwood’s booth tables and cabinets of 18th and 19th century blue and white porcelains and delft, as they are leading suppliers of the rage among collectors and designers for blue and white (a classic historic design change, as blue and white seems to burst forth and fade in cycles about every 10 years).  Their stock is primarily Chinese porcelain and Dutch faience.

One of the leading dealers in fine antique rugs in America is Dana Kelly of Lexington, Kentucky.  He is not actually using a prayer rug on the right side of his booth–just checking some inventory cards before sending a quantity of carpets on approval!

Frequently dealers let clients try items in their homes, even over night at shows, or take major pieces to show to clients in their homes.  No one does that more often than the carpet dealers where issues of size and color are both equally important!  I cannot count the times Elizabeth and/or I have spent hours in clients’ homes all over America trying pieces, rearranging rooms to accommodate new pieces, planning for future additions to complete a setting for a client–all part of the service dealers provide their clients.

And after a successful show that saw a resurgence of buying and attendance, I am about to curl up in bed, read a novel, and fall asleep!

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