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Nashville, Tennessee

Music Valley Antiques Market: Strong Offerings Defy the Damp at Fall Edition

by Karla Klein Albertson

The fall edition of the Music Valley Antiques Market in Nashville, Tennessee, on October 26-28, 2006, assembled over 140 exhibitors in two conjoined tents rather than the show's usual home at the nearby Radisson. With the fall Heart of Country switching to a September date in Texas, Music Valley and its sister Tailgate show presented themselves as the main attractions.

A preliminary glance around the spacious interior revealed the pluses and minuses of tent vs. hotel. The tent allows for a more conventional antiques show floor plan-with wide aisles and headroom galore-than the varied spaces of the Radisson. Tents can provide glorious lighting when the sun shines, but unfortunately Thursday and Friday were rainy and gray. Tent floors—once moisture dribbles in—stay damp.

A good reporter sometimes asks the same question several times. For the fall show, why bring back the tents from an early version of Music Valley rather than use the comfortable Radisson next door? Jon Jenkins, co-manager of the show with Kay Puchstein, has consistently responded with the same answer: a seasonal increase in fall rates at the hotel would mean a hike in booth rents over spring prices.

Jon, part of the Jenkins show management family with his father, Steve, was happy to sit down at an antique dining table and expand on the situation. "This is a smaller tent than we used the last time we were in a tent, but we are in two interconnected tents this time. This tent has one hundred and one dealers; the smaller one has forty-two or forty-three. It's a big show. We're actually larger than we were in February by about five dealers.

"Some of the dealers who are here had done a tent show previously and just decided that setting up in a room in the Radisson didn't work. A lot of the people also do the Radisson, but there are some new faces here as well."

Music Valley also picked up dealers who do the spring Heart of Country show and had done the fall version in Nashville but did not choose to make the trek to Texas. These included Tennessee folk art dealer Bill Powell.

Jenkins described the weather as "kind of misty with periods of heavy rain" and continued, "I'd remind everybody we're in a tent-that's everything that's good about a tent and everything's that bad about a tent. The water runs through like it's supposed to. Typically the weather this time of year down here is pretty warm, usually in the seventies-my suitcase is half-full of shorts."

He did miss one advantage of the Radisson's nooks and crannies over the open-floored tent. "The Radisson is a more difficult show to shop, so customers stay around. They come back a second day. They realize they have to get into the rooms. In the long run, they buy more. The challenge it presents the dealers in setting up a room-they really embrace it. They think, 'I've got to make this a shop.' It never ceases to amaze me the lengths dealers will go to to make people forget they're in a hotel room."

Nevertheless, Jenkins said at the show and confirmed later, "Our feeling right now is the October show is going to stay in the tent, and the February show is going to stay in the Radisson, giving each a unique character. Customers love shopping here because it's wide open, more of a traditional show setup."

According to Jenkins, "Early buying was about what it was last year. Between setup and early buying, there was good activity. Without Heart being here, that was the great unknown. We realized the burden now was on us. We did a lot more local paper advertising. We went to a glossy card flier for the shows. We got really good write-ups in the paper."

The reporter's eye is drawn to the same attractive booth presentations that lure paying customers, so results of the "How did you do?" question are always a bit loaded by who you choose to ask. Set up near the entrance, Toni Perkins of Clementine's Antiques, Fairhope, Alabama, said, "I've had an excellent show. We had a great buying crowd on Thursday. I've sold a lot of smalls and furniture. This is all the furniture I have left." Perkins is still recouping stock after a road accident in which she lost the contents of her trailer and half the van.

Christine Waugaman of The Mustard Seed Antiques, Goshen, Indiana, also did well. "We had a surprising number of people yesterday. And we had a surprising number of people today, I thought. Usually by now, they're away at the Heart show, but this fall they're here. We have a more captive audience. Dealing with the rain has been a challenge, but the booths are farther apart, and people have an easier walk-through."

John and Deborah Melby of Eastport, Maine, said the best thing they brought was already sold to a dealer. "You missed it-it was an eighteenth-century room divider wall in red paint that went all the way across with a stairway that went up."

John L. Long of Mineral, Virginia, said, "I was enthusiastic about the response yesterday, in spite of the weather." Long had put coffee cups under his chair and table legs, explaining, "We gotta live with what we're dealt."

Jon Jenkins had a special event to encourage future attendance. "We're doing a 'Young Collectors Day.' Anyone who's under thirty gets in free. Everybody always asks that question: where is the next generation of young customers coming from? We've got to get them here and make them want to come back. They're not going to buy a five-thousand-dollar cupboard the first time they walk in the door.

"What we're worried about is ten or fifteen years from now. Can we turn that person with that small interest into a collector and an advanced collector? But we've got to get them in the door first, and that first time there needs to be something affordable. They need to have a good time, learn something, and want to come back."

David and Kim Leggett of Newbern, Tennessee, specialize in items sure to please a younger crowd, urban industrial antiques that mix well with modern interiors. Among their treasures was a rolling cart/coffee table for $2400 that had been made up long ago from a section of bowling alley floor attached to the wheel setup for a hay rake. The tag read, "Stunning art form that is functional as well"— very true, since the buyer would have a rolling table strong enough to move a diesel generator around an apartment.

The Leggetts normally do Heart of Country in Nashville, but they passed on the Texas version because it came back to back with the Marburger Farm Antique Show in Round Top. David noted that their industrial style is already popular on the coasts. "We have so many customers who are in L.A., New York." The couple planned to be at the Stella Pier show in January. Kim added that southern customers have begun to catch on.

The Leggetts make much of their own lighting from salvaged elements, such as the hanging bulbs circled by old iron spirals, $165 each, that they had in Nashville. They recently did the set design for the catalog of Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers, a line of fine modern wood furniture based in part on antique prototypes.

The Jenkins Web site has been updated with a new gallery feature that lists dealers and shows photos of merchandise. The spring edition of Music Valley will open with early-bird buying at 8 a.m. on Thursday March 1 and will continue through Saturday in the rain-free comfort of the Radisson Hotel Opryland in Nashville. For more information, see the Web site (www.jenkinsshows.com) or call Jon Jenkins at (317) 598-0012 or Kay Puchstein at (813) 545-9199.