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The Greater Boston Antiques Festival

by Jeanne Schinto

Kim Kassner sat in her booth knitting. Dennis Easter read a free copy of M.A.D. Another dealer, roaming the aisles, was asked if she was shopping the show. "No, I'm snooping," she said. Looking to see if others were making any sales, she described her own as "mediocre." Another dealer said dolefully, "We see the china people wrapping things." He had brought country items and described his own sales as "only fair." But the china dealers at the Greater Boston Antiques Festival on November 20-21, 2004, reported sluggish sales of their own. "Mellow" how an art pottery dealer described more positively the buying pace. "We're having a good show," she said, "but this has been more than good for us in other years."

To his credit show promoter Marvin Getman, who assembled 160 dealers for this event, which is held twice a year, did not fudge it in our conversation after the show. He's also smart enough not to blame the results on himself. "I went into it knowing that the economy had started to slip since my last show here in January [2004]," said Getman. "I don't follow economic trends closely, but I listen to dealers, and they were telling me how shows have been off and their sales have been soft. I heard that, but I still did the same robust advertising campaign I always do. I didn't increase it; I didn't decrease it. I wanted to stay the course."

Until the end Getman hoped he could beat the odds. "There's a little competitiveness in me," he explained. "So it was sobering to do the numbers and see that attendance was off by about twenty percent from last November. I'm proud of my previous numbers, and when I don't meet them, it's disappointing."

Getman offers dealers a choice of higher-rent walled booths or lower-rent spaces without walls. There is a waiting list to get into this show that's held in the Shriner's Auditorium in Wilmington, Massachusetts, about 15 miles north of Boston. Limoges dealers shopping it said they were among the hopeful ones on that list. "This is the best show around," one of them said.

Praised for his organizational skills and attention to detail, Getman aims for a big gate and a broad spectrum. He wants to pull in a general audience-- people who maybe haven't collected before. "I advertise on classical music stations, on NPR, on WBZ, which is fifteen-hundred dollars for a fifteen- second spot. Those places reach a specific, affluent audience, and sometimes it works. I think the people who did end up coming here this time were more of the hard-core buyers."

His impression was borne out by our interviews with about three dozen shoppers at the show on Saturday. Tired of interviewing anxious dealers, we decided to stop anybody carrying a parcel and ask them to tell M.A.D. readers what they had bought. It was as if we stepped through the looking glass. We were suddenly talking to some of the happiest people in the world--collectors who had found treasures. What struck us, besides their joy, was how specific their purchases were. They shopped as if with tweezers, not the shovels and vacuum cleaners they had used in the heyday we all remember too well before September 11.

One woman showed us her new silver napkin rings, bought from Bunny's Place, Marblehead, Massachusetts. There were four of them, engraved with the names Susan, Merve, Bruce, Edie. The purchaser, named Susan, said she had come to buy napkin rings.

A man showed us a pair of leather children's boots. "They have a Chicago label, so they were sold there, but they could have been made in Lynn--you know, the Shoe City." He lives in Lynn, Massachusetts.

These shoppers weren't spending freely. A docent at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston bought two postcards of the museum to add to her collection of postcards of that site. She also bought two calendar plates, one each for her parents' birth years, 1910 and 1912. A pug breeder bought a print of a pug and a little girl. Her husband found a pair of dessert knives in American silver by a New York maker. A collector of Roseville bought one piece for herself and one for a friend. An Andover, Massachusetts, resident bought a map of his town, circa 1856.

We were shown: an unsigned candy dish in blue; a stuffed elephant made from an old quilt and buttons; a Chelsea tile; a transferware Punch & Judy sugar bowl for a child; two children's lunchboxes, one featuring Charlie Brown and Lucy, circa 1965, the other action heroes, circa 1972; a Dutch figural lamp of Parian; a sterling silver and enamel clothes brush; a vase made in Occupied Japan ("I collect Occupied Japan objects," said its new owner); an early wrought-iron toaster; an early cookie press; seven milk bottles for a growing milk bottle collection.

We also heard about the ones that got away, such as the heavy black glass vase with silver overlay. "It was oddball, possibly old Steuben," the one who lost out on it said. "I never even got a chance to handle it...This is a nice show. You can find little goodies, sleepers like that one."

By the end of the weekend some bigger pieces were sold too: a tall clock; a Wesley Webber painting; a Connecticut blanket chest. And hope sprang as eternally as ever. One dealer, who claimed to have done only half the business she normally does, was heard encouraging another dealer to return in January. Under better circumstances, it was, as she put it, "a kick-ass show."

For more information, call the show office at (781) 862-4039 or see the web site (www.NEAntiqueShows.com).