Bostonians are a "conservative" lot, veterans and first-time dealers kept saying on the weekend of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Boston Antiques & Fine Art Show at the Park Plaza Castle, April 1-3. Massachusetts is a blue state, it is true, so the word in this context doesn’t mean the opposite of liberal. It’s a euphemism for "cheap." It also stands for "unstylish," "old-fashioned," "stodgy," "stuck in their ways," or to express it more positively, "traditional." These characterizations are, of course, unfair; we can cite many exceptions, but like any cliché, this one harbors its element of truth.

If you want statistics, an easy one to find on the Internet is the generosity rank of the state whose capital is Boston. Massachusetts is 49^th, based not solely on how much a state’s population gives to charity but how much it gives in relation to how much it has. (Its cousin, New Hampshire, is dead last.) The statistic is significant for the Boys & Girls Clubs, which depends on this annual event to raise money for its programs. This year, $400,000 was donated even before the preview party began. At the party itself, nearly $100,000 more came in as Red Sox, Patriots, and Celtics ticket packages were auctioned ($19,000, $12,000, and $6000, respectively), along with a Palm Beach getaway ($7500) and a dinner for ten, prepared by a Boston chef ($9000).

And how generous or miserly was Boston toward the show’s 40 dealers, who decorated their papered booths with an eclectic array of artworks, objets d’art, and curiosities, as well as furniture, accessories, lighting, and rugs? (What we like best about this show, in fact, is that one is apt to find almost anything here, from a Shibiyama tray in layers of gold lacquer from the Meiji period [$175,000] to a toleware painted tray from the Victorian period [$1650]—anything except the Americana triumvirate of highboy, weathervane, and quilt. The Ellis show this is not and doesn’t want to be.)

At the preview party some sales were made in the first 90 minutes, including a reportedly significant one (an American painting to a major local collector), but when the live auction began, the dealers and philanthropists seemed at cross-purposes. The microphone’s volume was full bore, rendering conversation impossible. At one point we covered our ears. Dealers sat stoically, as if waiting for a storm to pass. We wondered if that pitch of excitement would be reached on any subsequent day of the show, or would sales reflect the current trend, which is that people lately seem more inclined to buy experiences to be savored than objects to be collected?

When we returned on Sunday morning, show promoter Meg Wendy warned, "You’re going to hear mixed reports."

Wendy partly blamed those results on the already well-documented state of the business. "This is a sleepy industry," she said, then repeated what she has told us in the past. Shows like these are "entertainment for the rich." It needs to be "fun." A sale in that situation is more often than not dependent on a customer’s mood than on the thickness of his or her wallet.

In that same conversation Wendy repeated another axiom that guides her: the word antique is anathema. Her preferred term: design. She pointed out that she has added the word to the title of the New York Armory Antiques & Design Show. Asked if she would someday drop the "A" word altogether in the title of that show or any other, she considered it, seemed tempted, but wouldn’t say yes or no.

"The business is sleepy, but we’re not sleeping," Wendy went on, introducing her secondary theme: accountability. "This economy forces promoters to be more creative," she said. "It is forcing the dealers to be more creative too." And the consequences of failing to heed her advice? In Boston they’re more dire than in New York, she asserted. "The dealer who doesn’t do his homework for this one is going to die."

We had noticed, of course, that ten dealers from last year had not returned, including one who had done this show for almost two decades. "The older dealers aren’t used to paying," Wendy said. "It costs more and more money for advertising and everything else."

When we began to move around the floor, asking for comments, we found that most veterans had done at least okay; one (rug dealer Gerry Arcari) said he had done extremely well. The first-timers and some second-timers, by contrast, were trying to adjust to the way things are in Boston, learning to take their cues from those who know the territory best.

Barbara Fine of B. Fine Associates, Beverly, Massachusetts, a well-respected print dealer, said, "I sent out a hundred and fifty cards." That list has been developed over time. "Because of doing the show houses in the area, I have worked with lots of the decorators. It helps that we know people, and we’ve built up a rapport, and if they don’t want something this time, they may have a friend who does. So for me the show was good and really always has been."

Fine did acknowledge that attendance seemed weak. "But I never think Boston has a very strong gate," she said. "It’s always a problem with Boston shows. There are not hundreds of people going through. I didn’t see people jamming the aisles."

Art dealer Tom Veilleux of Farmington, Maine, knows the city’s foibles—its citizens’ need to see a dealer multiple times before they make a purchase; their tendency to mull even when they do know you. He shrugged off those special challenges with a smile and these thoughts: "It’s Boston! It’s what we expect when we come to Boston. I think we’ll make some significant follow-up sales. We always do."

On the subject of Boston’s conventional taste, Veilleux said, "We used to bring the things that Boston buys. Now we bring the things they ought to buy." One was a 19" x 14½" watercolor and crayon by Guy Pene du Bois (1884-1958). A study for a painting owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, it was titled An American in Paris and tagged $95,000. "There are a few serious buyers of modernist art here in Boston, and I think there will be more," he predicted. "They’ve got to hang something on the walls of those five-million-dollar condos that they’re building."

Another locally based art dealer, Mark Brock of Carlisle, Massachusetts, summarized the show in this phrase: "The right stuff, the wrong place." He was only half kidding. "I have sold a two-hundred-thousand-dollar painting here. Boston takes a long time to get used to you. I cultivate people. I’ve gotten some great clients out of this show."

Roy Mennell of The Bradford Trust, Harwich Port, Massachusetts, likewise characterized Boston as "a good place to cultivate customers," ones unquestionably "well qualified to buy," but cultivation it does take. He looks forward to seeing his Boston customers this summer on Cape Cod, where he lives, but he did make sales here, including a 10¼" x 18¼" oil on canvas by Edward Burrill (1835-1913), a member of the Lynn Beach painters. Asking price: $7500.

Boston-based furniture dealer Chris Mizeski of Gallagher-Christopher Antiques obviously knows the scene, and he is comfortable with it. "People do take their time to make a decision around here," he said, "but it’s just that they want to be sure it’s right for them. Their approach is much more academic. They think; they come back and visit." Of course, those visits happen only if a dealer is local and has a shop. Mizeski’s is on Charles Street, the Mesopotamia of the American antiques market.

Mizeski is not in agreement with the others on one point, denying that Boston’s taste is provincial. "Boston has very, very sophisticated taste, on a par with New York," he said. "In fact, there are things we had at a New York show that got a lot of interest but didn’t sell there, and they did sell here." Example? "Twice we took to New York a treenware lamp, circa 1920, probably American, with original treen shade." Tagged $3900, it sold at the preview. "And we probably could have sold it twice more."

Mizeski is so convinced of Boston’s viability as a place to do business, he persuaded a young colleague from Lambertville, New Jersey, 37-year-old George Evans, to do the show this time. Evans, who has been in the business since age 17, said he would "definitely" return to Boston. Admittedly, his sales were minimal, "but people took a lot of pictures. Anyway, sales for us usually happen two weeks after the show."

While Evans is still learning about Boston, he does know New York. That’s not such an easy market, either, in his opinion. "What you perceive to be a New York piece may not be," he said. "It’s the nature of the business. It’s luck if you have what someone is looking for. Even expensive purchases are impulsive purchases, sometimes."

Jan and Craig Finch of Finch & Co., London, said they too will return. "For a first show I thought it was very good," said Jan, who described her booth’s conceit as a cabinet of curiosities. It was, in fact, a kind of wonder room filled with antiquities, fossils, tribal arts, as well as fine arts. One could picture Britain’s Damien Hirst buying out the place for his latest artwork, and maybe he does when the Finches are showing in London. Here, Jan said, "we met potentially new clients, people who we’ll send our catalog, which is a journey in itself, and designed to be one. I think we can build on what we’ve already achieved."