Cashiers Antique Show, North Carolina
Photos by Donna Prunkl
The August 7 to 9 iteration of the Cashiers 48th Annual Antique Show in Cashiers, North Carolina, will be its last at the Village Green Commons. Next year the show shifts ownership from veteran Hazel Giles to longtime Cashiers resident Lee Dages. Dages wasted no time moving the show to the Summit Charter School, a fully air-conditioned venue with plenty of parking 1.5 miles south of the Commons. Her decision should come as welcome news to the 26 dealers who set up in a large, rather warm tent on the Commons sloping lawn.
Dages also changed the dates of the 2027 show to July 30-August 1. She planned to see every dealer on August 8 with registration packets for the 2027 show.
The last time M.A.D. visited the show (M.A.D. October 2024, pp 146-149), Giles announced the show’s sale to Troy, Ohio, dealer Doug Supinger. That deal fell through long before the 2025 show, which was the twenty-second time Giles managed the highly successful show. “The show is a boatload of work,” said Giles in 2024. Then and now, she added “I’m tired.”
“I wanted the show to stay in Cashiers,” said Dages, who thought of other towns in the area that might be a good choice for the show. No stranger to the antiques world, Dages, 64, owns The Village Hound, an antiques, vintage, and contemporary gifts shop in Cashiers. She has traveled to Europe on antiques buying trips for decades. Recently, she experienced life as an antiques/decorative arts dealer at the 2026 Antiques & Garden Show of the Gulf Coast in Mobile, Alabama. Did she have any plans to increase the number of dealers? “Maybe,” she said, “but for 2027, I plan to keep the number the same as now.”
Chances are favorable that Giles’s loyal cadre of dealers will stay with Dages. That positive outlook is due to Friday morning’s frenzy when vendors and showgoers again experienced the annual Cashiers first-day inventory-depleting buying frenzy. To appreciate the buying frenzy, consider the five garden ornaments that Rosemary Shorr and Barry Dobinsky of Reading, Pennsylvania, brought. All five sold by 9:30 a.m., and paper sacks with other sold items stood in a row in their small booth. First-day, early buyers who arrived at 7:30 a.m. accounted for most of those sales.
“We always have a good show here,” added Margaret Alderman Ford. Her jewelry booth is an entire room at the Commons. She wasted little time saying “Yes!” when asked if she would be continuing at the new venue. Her jewelry store, eBay business, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest home pages are based in Columbia, South Carolina.
To change the focus of this year’s report, M.A.D. asked Giles for a list of the new dealers at the 2026 show. There were no new dealers. All 42 had been with the show for one or more years.
For more information on the 2027 Cashiers Antique Show, call Lee Dages at (630) 660-1824 or visit the website (www.cashiersannualantiqueshow.com).Cashiers is in the Nantahala National Forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.
Dillon Walling of Harrison, New Jersey, shared a booth with Doug Supinger of Troy, Ohio. He brought this circa 1890 antique brass dental lamp by W.D. Allison Company, Indianapolis, Indiana. The adjustable, wall-mounted, scissor-arm lamp was designed to swing over an open-mouthed patient to provide proper illumination. Walling priced it at $2800. It sold the first day.
Dillon Walling also brought this circa 1890 ceiling-mounted kerosene-burning wall lamp. The upper tank stored kerosene, which was then fed by gravity to the wick. Walling priced the lamp at $350.
Lee Dages of Cashiers, North Carolina, is the new owner of the Cashiers Antique Show. Her first show will be July 30 to August 1, 2027, at the Summit Charter School in Cashiers, North Carolina.
In 1857, when James Ives was a bookkeeper for Nathaniel Currier (1813-1888), Currier published four hand-colored lithographs of American feathered game birds. Josephine McDonough of Atlanta, Georgia, and Cashiers, North Carolina, had two of the four—mallards/canvasbacks and partridges—in what appeared to be period circular frames. She was asking $3250 for the pair.
For her full-page ad in the August Maine Antique Digest (p. 16), Margaret Alderman Ford of Columbia, South Carolina, included jewelry crafted by Willis’s Rock Shop, Bar Harbor, Maine. Margaret showed us three pieces from the 1990s with a DSG hallmark that were handmade by the family-owned business. The gemstones in the 11-stone necklace priced at $37,000 and the six-stone bracelet tagged $12,000 are semi-precious double cabochons such as aquamarine, amethyst, blue topaz, and quartz topaz. Several stones include needle-like strands of rutile. The clip-earrings with six single cabochons around a pink stone were $9750. “They received a lot of attention and were tried on,” said Alderman Ford in an email after the show, “but I’ve priced them at their true value.” Willis’s Rock Shop has been in business since 1937.
This girl’s dress from the early 1900s is made of soft cotton batiste that is pintucked and then trimmed with Irish crochet work. Connie Marks of Victoriana, Rocky Point, North Carolina, priced the unusual dress at $195.
Connie Marks of Victoriana displayed three woven ribbonwork jackets with mink collars. The one white and two black (not shown) jackets were made by Paul Freed in the 1950s. Each was priced at $295.
Joanne LaPoma of LaPoma and LaPoma, Franklin, Tennessee, is holding a circa 1820 Samuel Kirk coin silver repoussé teapot marked “S. Kirk & Son/11OZ.” Her price for the early teapot: $2250.
Although she’s an importer of European antiques, Antoinette Thomas of A. Vincent Antiques, Atlanta, Georgia, had these two tramp art items in her booth. The 17" x 11½" x 7¼" box with lid was $750. The notched wood cross and base with metal figure was $475.
Several dealers at Cashiers specialized in English, French, or Continental antiques. We stopped at Linda Ketterling Fine Antiques, Toledo, Ohio, for quick dose of spectacular non-Americana color. We found it in this rare Minton water lily and bulrush oval platter in stunning green, brown, tan, white, and yellow. Ketterling wanted $8950 for the 1876 English platter. Peter Rollitt who was manning the booth when we arrived said, “For the first three hours, boy, were we busy!”
Edwin C. Skinner of Point Clear, Alabama, turned over this framed oil on canvas to reveal a Vose Galleries label. The undated label includes the painting’s title, Clipper Sailing into Boston Harbor, the artist’s name, Arthur Rutherford Wilbur (1869-1949), and its size, 17½" x 25¾". Skinner priced the signed and dated “1889” painting at $4200.
Virgil R. Mitchell, Denton, Texas, explained in detail the construction process, history, and purpose of this sterling silver punch bowl and matching ladle. He stopped and said, “You can find out everything about it by Googling ‘Abraham Lincoln English punch bowl.’” From Mitchell and the internet, we learned that a young man who was helping clean out an attic in Alabama found and then bought the bowl and ladle for $4000. In 2014, he took them to Antiques Roadshow in Birmingham, Alabama, where they were televised and appraised for $8000/$12,000. In 2017, Pat Rankin bought the pair at Heritage Auctions for $12,500. Four years later, Mitchell bought the set from Rankin for a few thousand more. Heritage attributed the bowl and ladle to Dominick & Haff, the premier New York City silver manufacturing firm. The bowl and ladle were retailed by Caldwell & Company, Philadelphia. The front of the bowl has an acid-etched image of the yacht, Giralda, the flagship of the Philadelphia Yacht Club. Below the yacht image are repoussé kelp strands, enameled flags, and naval ensigns. Four figured and applied sea beast heads surround the circular base. On the reverse is the applied gold monogram “ALE” for Commodore Abraham Lincoln English, the president of the yacht club. English retired as president on February 3, 1904, the date on the 11" x 17½" presentation bowl. Mitchell’s price was $16,500. “It’s an incredible piece,” he said.
These are the five garden ornaments brought to Cashiers by Rosemary Shorr and Barry Dobinsky that sold by 9:30 a.m. on August 7, the sale’s first day. The paper sacks hold other sold items. The Reading, Pennsylvania, dealers do ten shows a year.
R-D Antiques, Jacksonville, Florida, brought a wide assortment of smalls to Cashiers. We selected a blue Rookwood pinecone production vase from 1919 for $225, a Weller six-sided porcelain vase for $65, and a blue Rookwood butterfly production vase from 1930 for $225. R-D Antiques is in Fans and Stoves Antiques Mall, the former Lakeshore Presbyterian Church.
Mountain Moon Enterprises also had for sale this circa 1840 Georgia jelly cupboard in heart pine from the estate of collector Dr. Carol Wahler (1937-2023). Price, $1195. On top are a copper torch priced at $188), a Vernon Owens salt-glazing jug tagged $88, and an A.G. Meaders jug priced at $238.
Jim Hensley of Mountain Moon Antiques, Robbinsville, North Carolina, purchased this 6" Cherokee carved bear cub and sinew-tied wooden hammers at Almond Auctions, Bryson City, North Carolina, 20 years ago. In all that time, he was unable to identify the bear’s carver. On the cub’s underside are the large carved letters “RLJ.” He priced the cub and hammers at $750. Hensley operates Mountain Moon with his wife, Amy Edwards.
Perhaps the show’s most unusual item was provided by John Pope Antiques, Charleston, South Carolina. This 7' x 3' board contains spent World War II ammunition casings, weapons, money, and an American flag as well as an enormous collection of Native American arrowheads and weapons. The collection was assembled by a veteran from Asheville, North Carolina. Pope priced the one-of-a-kind collection at $4950. Several (will) “be-backers” needed to take measurements before deciding. One asked to have it brought to his house. Pope called this M.A.D. reporter after the sale to say that the on-board collection sold. In front was a non-electrified slag glass lamp by Bradley & Hubbard, Meriden, Connecticut, with rectangular oil well for $750.
Have a fenced rose garden needing a 7' x 3' iron gate with latch lock? John Wilson of Wilson’s Antiques, Asheville, North Carolina, has one for $895. “It is hard to find tall ones,” he remarked.
Wilson’s Antiques also featured a painted New England open-top corner cupboard with carved diamond cornice, paint-decorated floral, vines, and ornaments with a shaped skirt on bracket feet. John Wilson had corner cupboard priced at $795.
Larry Thompson of Snellville, Georgia, said that this circa 1820 hunt board was discovered in an abandoned barn in Pickens County, South Carolina. He had the walnut and poplar piece refinished and the wooden knobs replaced. Thompson was asking $9500 for the 48" x 46" x 22" case on sturdy tapered legs.
To the right of the circa 1820 hunt board, Larry Thompson displayed a signed oil on canvas view of a woman sitting in an open doorway. The artist is Italian-American Arnaldo Casella Tamburini Jr (1885-1936), who ended his life by jumping from a window at St. Luke’s Hospital, Chicago, where he was being treated for mental illness, according to The New York Times, September 13, 1936. Thompson priced the charming Tamburini painting at $2800.
“Incredible figuring,” said Steve Sherwood of Sherwood Antiques, Auburn, Alabama, when we asked about this early 19th-century bowfront chest. The wood is figured cherry. Turned-out segmented and fluted legs drop from cookie corners on the front and back of the chest. Sherwood asked $3800 for the handsome chest.
From her huge inventory of purses, clothing, belts, necklaces, wallets, hats, pins, scarves, and “awesomeness,” Hilary Eiseman (a.k.a. The Purse Lady-Atlanta) selected these four items for M.A.D. From left to right are a John Romain saddle leather purse from the ’60s priced at $240; a leather-lined alligator purse with mirror from the ’40s was $850; a snakeskin bag with a large Bakelite opening clasp from the ’30s was $650; and a classic wooden house purse by Maurices, Gatlinburg, Tennessee, from the late ’60s was $275.
Tucked in a corner of Tomlinson Antiques and Art booth was this hand-hooked folk-art depiction of a stylized cat with letters and numbers. Tomlinson priced the 25" x 28" fabric artwork at $2800. The Tomlinsons have a warehouse in Sarasota, Florida, and a large showroom in Round Top, Texas.
Originally published in the November 2026 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2026 Maine Antique Digest
