The 2016 Main Line Antiques Show
October 2nd, 2016
Radnor, Pennsylvania
The Main Line Antiques Show is a benefit for Surrey Services for Seniors. Surrey supports independent living by providing companions, nurses, short-term care, live-in 24/7 care, house cleaning, money management, and help with insurance claims for those in need. Last year Surrey provided 79,000 hours of home services, 28,000 home-delivered meals, 27,000 nutritious meals at special sites, 17,000 rides, and 60,000 hours of volunteer services on Philadelphia’s Main Line. The antiques show preview party is a major fund-raiser. Anne Hamilton, who masterminded the rebirth of the Philadelphia Antiques Show (which benefits Penn Medicine), along with Maureen Brennan-Miller made this show and its well-attended preview happen.
Show manager Nicholas Vandekar, a local real estate agent, has been the show’s volunteer manager for the last five years. He rounded up an impressive roster of 33 dealers for the September 30-October 2 show, fewer than in years past, but a diverse group that brought enough furniture, paintings, prints, needlework, ceramics, and smalls to furnish a country or formal house and decorate gardens. It was a perfect place for decorators to shop.
Schorr and Dobinsky Fine Art, Bridgehampton, New York, asked $1295 for the cast stone dog in the center; the pair of spaniels sold. The faux bois birdcage, Belgian, early 20th century, was $1995. The lot of cast-iron garden edging, French, was $695 for the lot.
When one dealer took ill, Nicholas Vandekar convinced his brother Paul Vandekar of Maryknoll, New York, to come with a full truck. He put together an impressive stand of Piero Fornasetti plates, framed prints, watercolors, woollies, and English pottery. He sold a collection of eight Chinese watercolors of insects on opening night.
There was an impressive selection of English porcelain and pottery at the show. Malcolm Magruder of Millwood, Virginia, and A.J. Warren of Sandy Hook, Connecticut, shared a big booth, and Marcia Moylan and Jacqueline Smelkinson of The Spare Room, Baltimore, Maryland, offered a selection of English Regency porcelain and pottery, for which they are well known, along with Victorian and Georgian jewelry and snuffboxes.
A.J. Warren of Peter and Maria Warren, Sandy Hook, Connecticut, shared a stand with Malcolm Magruder of Millwood, Virginia. Both offered 18th-century English pottery. The creamware Whieldon-type fruit plates were Warren’s and priced at $1400 each; her pineapple teapot was $9500. The squirrel was Malcolm Magruder’s and like one in the Henry Weldon collection. It was $9750. The small yellow teapot with applied sprigged decoration, circa 1770, was $3200.
Gary Sargeant of Woodbury, Connecticut, offered an impressive selection of Georgian furniture, and Zane Moss of Sharon, Connecticut, brought comfortable English Regency furnishings.
Gary Sargeant of Woodbury, Connecticut, asked $14,500 for this George III satinwood serpentine chest of drawers with its original hardware, circa 1780. The pair of side chairs is from a set of six. Some of the slip seats retain a label from Ginsburg & Levy, Madison Avenue, New York.
John Hutchinson of Rose Valley Restorations, West Chester, Pennsylvania, offered a Philadelphia mahogany sideboard with a bottle drawer and griffin inlays that he had restored. Taylor Thistlethwaite of Glasgow, Kentucky, showing here for the first time, had a diminutive Philadelphia mahogany four-drawer chest of drawers in remarkably fine condition that had descended in an Annapolis family; it was fresh to market and hitherto unknown.
Stripey, a bronze cat, early 1960s, by Gerd Utescher (1912-1983) was $9500 from Dixon-Hall Fine Arts, Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. Born in Berlin, the artist came to Philadelphia in 1959 and taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He was part of a group of artists who founded Gallery 10 in Philadelphia that included Peter Paone, Adolph Dehn, William Smith, and others. Among his large sculpture commissions is the Emancipation Proclamation fountain near City Hall in Philadelphia. He traveled to Italy to oversee the casting of his work and settled there with his third wife. He died there in 1983.
Dealers H.L. “Skip” Chalfant of West Chester, Pennsylvania, and James Kilvington of Greenville, Delaware, have been loyal supporters of this show and generally find something to buy and sell here, but many of the local dealers who have showed here before opted out this year, which made it a smaller show. The show did have some new faces. The spacious venue of the Dixon Center at Cabrini University in Radnor is right in the middle of the Main Line and is a comfortable facility with easy access and parking.
A weekend of dreary weather was perfect for antiquing, and a steady crowd of shoppers came. The three jewelry dealers seemed busy, and print dealers made multiple sales. A few paintings found new homes, but most antiques dealers said selling was not buoyant.
Few fall shows have reported good sales for the majority of exhibitors. Dealers continue to blame the slow business on the uncertainty of an election year. Let’s hope there will be new energy after November 8. The Main Line Antiques Show is one of the few small charity shows to survive.
For more information, go to (www.mainlineantiquesshow.com).
The poplar paint-decorated dower chest with an arched panel with the name “Elisabeth Enderleinich, 1817,” Berks County, was $8500. The Chester County inlaid spice box, with line and berry inlay with herringbone surrounds and restored feet, circa 1740, was $52,000. The walnut tall chest of drawers with fluted corner columns, bold ogee feet, and bail and rosette brasses, circa 1790, was $8500. The walnut miniature blanket chest with original ogee feet and brass escutcheon and knobs, circa 1775, was $7500; all from H.L. Chalfant of West Chester, Pennsylvania.
There were three stands with jewelry that seemed busy. This is Johanna Antiques, Kingsville (Baltimore), Maryland.
This Ben Austrian (1870-1921) oil on canvas, Hen and Her Chicks, 18" x 24", was $25,000 from Peter Rudolph of McClees Galleries, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.
Originally published in the December 2016 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2016 Maine Antique Digest
