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The 40th Annual Delaware Antiques Show

by Lita Solis-Cohen

The Delaware Antiques Show, which benefits educational programs at the Winterthur Museum, was held November 6-9, 2003, at the Bank One Center in Wilmington, Delaware, a multiuse complex where art museums rent temporary space next to corporate headquarters and restaurants and a strip of discount shops is anchored by an L.L. Bean outlet.

Even though it has been four years since the show was at Wilmington's Tatnall School, many people haven't gotten used to the new location, which is convenient to Interstate 95 for those coming from Philadelphia and New Jersey to the north or from Baltimore and the District of Columbia to the south, if interstate traffic isn't snarled. The committee says it is the only place for a show in the area.

Many shoppers and dealers yearned for the old days when the show was at Tatnall, a suburban setting that they said is more conducive to shopping for antiques and where all the dealers were in one room with wide aisles instead of in three separate rooms with no flow of traffic. Every year dealers ask why can't the event be transplanted to a tent pitched on the grounds of Winterthur or in one of the buildings on the grounds? "That would be a really classy show," one dealer remarked.

Now it is a show with many good dealers, but it lacks the ambiance that it had in the past when it was held in the Soda House at the Hagley Museum, then in a sunny Wilmington country club, and then in the Tatnall School gymnasium. In those days it was a destination show, a somewhat smaller fall version of the Philadelphia Antiques Show in April.

Five major dealers left the Delaware show this year and several left the year before because the show has not been a roaring success since the volunteer committee gave up managing it and the recession arrived. The date this fall, a week earlier than usual, was just a week after the Ellis Antiques Show in Boston and the three big shows in York, Pennsylvania. Several dealers sold in Wilmington what they had offered in Boston or in York the week before.

Judy Herdeg, who has worked on the Delaware show committee for many years, said Winterthur was pleased with the gate this year. There was a steady stream of interested shoppers, but the crowd seemed small at the preview party, sponsored in part by Northeast Auctions. Some big buyers came to the preview because free tickets were given to all members of the museum's Henry Francis du Pont Collectors Circle. For an annual contribution of $5000, members are wined and dined at local private collections and treated to lectures and tours by the staff at the museum for several days before the show.

Those who came to the early preview got to see some extraordinary things that left the floor immediately. A masterpiece Philadelphia needlework sconce, stitched by a student of Ann Marsh and dated 1748, was whisked away from Carol and Stephen Huber's stand. A rare 1725-40 Chester County, Pennsylvania, chest on legs offered by Philip W. Bradley sold to the second person in the door. "It is the earliest Chester County chest on legs known," Bradley said.

Everyone remarked that it was a pretty show. More important, it was a good place for comparison-shopping. For example, there were four Chester County tea tables, two Chester County valuables chests, and three Pennsylvania dressers from which to choose in as many booths. Three fine New England flat-top high chests, one from Salem, one from Connecticut, and one from New Hampshire, were on three different stands, and a Philadelphia flat-top high chest with Spanish feet, attributed to the Claypool shop, was on a fourth.

There were half a dozen tall-case clocks, more than a half a dozen painted dower chests, and dozens of 18th-century chests of drawers—some on legs, some on ogee feet, some tall, others with bow fronts, and still others with serpentine fronts. There was plenty of English and China trade china and some good silver, brass, and copper; some of it was early, and some of it dated from the 1850's. Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, dealer Michael Whitman sold 15 pairs of brass candlesticks.

A dozen weathervanes could be found in half a dozen booths, and they sold well, as did special collections. Mo Wajselfish of Leatherwood Antiques, Sandwich, Massachusetts, said he had sold children's ABC plates, Black Forest tobacco boxes, lots of Vienna bronzes, and some woolies stitched by English sailors. Diana Bittel also sold woolies, along with furniture and half a dozen shellwork sailors' valentines. John Sylvia sold half a dozen Nantucket baskets, Taylor Williams sold plenty of English enamel boxes, and Elle Shushan, of course, sold miniature portraits. Collectors with special interests make a point of coming to buy at Wilmington.

There was a broad selection of first-rate textiles. In addition to the Hubers, who brought very rare schoolgirl embroideries, Potomac, Maryland, dealer Stella Rubin offered quilts; the Herrs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, offered jacquard coverlets; and local dealer Jan Whitlock had early homespun and whole cloth wool bedcovers. Amy Finkel sold needlework pictures and samplers in a broad range of prices for advanced and beginning collectors.

The collection of first-rate China trade paintings offered by Martyn Gregory of London was a welcome addition to the show this year. A New York decorator made arrangements to try a group of them; let's hope her client finds them irresistible.

The Winterthur bookshop said more books on furniture and architecture were sold this year than in any other categories. The best selling title was The Main Line: Country Houses of Philadelphia's Storied Suburb, 1870-1930 (Acanthus Press, 2002) by William Morrison with an introduction by Mark Alan Hewitt.

With callbacks the show will probably turn out all right for the majority of dealers, but it had no energy and no excitement after the first few minutes when a couple of masterpieces were snapped up. It was a place for a leisurely stroll and plenty of good conversation with dealers.

There was a lot to see. To entice the uninitiated, Winterthur educators devised a treasure hunt that some found amusing and challenging. Several dealers said they know of no other show where their audience is so well informed, reflecting the good job that Winterthur has done over the years in educating the local gentry.

Unfortunately, this knowledge did not translate into lots of sales for every dealer. Formal furniture and silk embroideries sold far better than country things, and like every show in the last three years, business was "spotty." The fact that half a dozen dealers said they sold multiple pieces of furniture may be a good sign that the market is turning around, but just as many said sales were disappointing, even though dealers were willing to deal.

The challenge remains: how to bring more excitement into this show and make it a destination. Unfortunately, it has been on a downward spiral for the last four years. It no longer has a show catalog, just a wrapper with a floor plan and list of dealers attached to the current issue of the Winterthur Magazine, which contains a very small show section where only 11 of the 58 dealers advertised.

Many dealers worried aloud that the committee had threatened to change the date to October, when this show would compete with the newly revived ADA show in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the International Fine Art and Antique Dealers Show in New York City, and USArtists in Philadelphia. Dealers prefer November, when the weather is cool, the garden put to bed, and people are beginning to think about Christmas.

The Delaware show is struggling to become more than a local show now that it has big competition from the ADA show in Deerfield as a destination show in the autumn, when the leaves are turning and luring collectors from all parts of the country to head east for an antiques event. For more information, contact Winterthur at (800) 448-3883; Web site (www.winterthur.org).