The Newport Antiques Show

September 28th, 2011

Roger King Fine Art, Newport, Rhode Island, asked $24,500 for Marginal Way, Ogunquit, Maine by Charles Woodbury (1864-1940). King said he had a good show and sold five paintings.

Aileen Minor of Centreville, Maryland, specializes in garden furniture and decorations. Minor asked $2900 for Le Semeur (the sower), a French zinc figure by F. Milliot, circa 1810, 40" high. The cast-iron zodiac tilt-top table, 1850-80, 29" x 32", was $5500. The pair of cast-iron chairs and settee, 1920's, were $4500. The wirework plant stands were $1500 the pair. The cast stone planters with Greek key designs were $1200 the pair, and the pair of antique French cherub statues was $5500.

James Kilvington asked $35,000 for this oil on canvas landscape by Walter Baum (1885-1956), Bucks County Bridge, 32" x 40".

Dawn Hill of New Preston, Connecticut, asked $6500 for the late Gustavian drop-leaf table. The Swedish rococo dining chairs, circa 1780, were $15,000 for the set of six. The Swedish cupboard, circa 1900, was $6400, and the French sconces were $2800.

Brugmansia is the name of the rare plant that was the centerpiece of the stand of The Village Braider Antiques, Plymouth, Massachusetts, specialists in garden statuary and more. It was in full bloom by Sunday. It sends out a distinctive aroma at dusk. The pair of Italian limestone putti was $3200; the hunters sold.

Middletown, Rhode Island

by Lita Solis-Cohen

Antiques dealers may not make a lot of money, but they have a good lifestyle. Take the Newport Antiques Show, for example. For the last five years, ever since Anne Hamilton decided that Newport, Rhode Island, needed an antiques show and asked her friend Diana Bittel to manage it, 40 dealers have been wined and dined in Newport in August. People from Newport and the surrounding towns come to this show to shop.

Hamilton not only supplies good sandwiches and cold drinks during setup, coffee and muffins every morning, and pasta, pizza, and wine during pack-out, but she invites the dealers to an elegant dinner on Thursday night. This year it was at Miramar, the house on Bellevue Avenue designed by Horace Trumbauer, a Philadelphia architect. The house was designed for Eleanor Widener and finished after her husband, George, and their son Harry went down on the Titanic.

Miramar was bought by David Ford in 2006, and he returned the house, which had been a school, back into a very grand cottage. He did not chill the champagne in the trough almost the size of a lap pool built by the Wideners to hold 200 bottles at once, but the champagne flowed freely and accompanied chilled oysters and demitasse servings of clam chowder. Chilled white Burgundy was the perfect pairing for the lobster at dinner. The full moon over the water, the cool breezes, and the good conversation made every dealer forget what hard work it had been to unpack and arrange the best stand he or she could muster.

The show, held this year August 12-14, filled the ice rink at St. George's School in Middletown and benefited the Newport Historical Society and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newport County. Hamilton said she is on both boards and decided an antiques show would be a perfect fund-raiser. She had hoped all her Newport friends would invite everyone they knew to come to Newport for that weekend to buy antiques and support the show, but she said she has never been able to get a hard-working committee of local summer people and full-time residents, so every year she brings a group of five friends from Philadelphia's Main Line to help her, and her five children and her husband, Matt, all pitch in. Matt's mother, Dodo Hamilton, a passionate and discerning collector, is every dealer's favorite customer.

Paintings dominated the show this year. A quarter of the dealers were specialists in prints and paintings, and three quarters of the dealers had some paintings for sale. William Vareika, who has been the sponsoring dealer all five years, not only took a large booth, but he filled the special exhibit spaces that led to the restrooms and the café with works by William Trost Richards on one side and John LaFarge on the other. Educational wall panels that discussed the artists' careers completed the exhibit.

The paintings in the show were largely 19th-century American landscapes and ship paintings, but Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, Delaware, brought works by the Wyeth clan, including an illustration and two easel paintings by N.C. Wyeth and works by Andrew and Jamie Wyeth. Walker-Cunningham Fine Art, Boston, offered 20th-century portraits and figure paintings as well as small works by the Provincetown Abstract Expressionist Taro Yamamoto (1919-1994).

There were two large Impressionist Pennsylvania landscapes by Walter Baum, one with James Kilvington of Dover, Delaware, and another with Chuck White of Warwick, New York. There was an abundance of botanical prints, some framed, some not, in all price ranges, offered by Washington Square Gallery, Philadelphia; Danielle Ann Millican of Florham Park, New Jersey; and Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge, Manhattan and White Plains, New York. There was a huge selection of woolies offered by Leatherwood Antiques, Sandwich, Massachusetts; Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge; and Diana H. Bittel of Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

American furniture was scarce, but Jim Kilvington sold a curly maple chest of drawers, and Chuck White sold a bold grain-painted New England blanket chest with two drawers.

One could have put together collections of all sorts: Black Forest carvings from Leatherwood Antiques; snuffboxes of tortoiseshell, seashell, and

papier-mâché from Rick Scott of San Francisco; and larger lacquer boxes for tea or sewing from Rick Scott and from Sallea Antiques, New Canaan, Connecticut. Historical blue Staffordshire with American views was available from Margaret Johnson Sutor of Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, as well as other English earthenwares from William Shaeffer of Glyndon, Maryland, who shared the stand with Sutor.

Philip Suval, Inc., Fredericksburg, Virginia, brought fine Chinese export porcelain. Susie and François Lorin of Asiantiques, Winter Park, Florida, offered a collection of rare Chinese Peking glass along with a large Tang Dynasty pottery camel, Japanese screens, and more.

Decorators could find 18th-century English furniture, painted Swedish Gustavian furniture, wicker furniture, metal garden furniture and statuary, fireplace accessories, and rugs. Some was reasonably priced for the vacation house, but most was serious antiques for the main domicile. There were two jewelry dealers.

It is hard to concentrate on serious antiques in the summer when the sun is shining and the wind is just right for sailing. Luckily Sunday was a rainy day; bad weather saved the show. After a well-attended preview party (underwritten by Freeman's, the Philadelphia auction house that recently opened an office in Boston), business was slow on Saturday, but an antiques show is the perfect activity for wet weather, and there was a good crowd and a flurry of sales on Sunday, some in the last hour.

Business was good for some; OK for others; slow for a few. It was hard to know how to generate brisk sales at a time when the stock market was tanking. A recovery in the housing market would help. When people have a house to furnish, the antiques business flourishes, but when real estate is not moving, and the old house is full, it is hard for collectors to justify a purchase no matter how appealing the object. Some of those who bought have multiple houses to absorb their passion, and they left happy with bags and boxes. Only a few pieces of furniture left the show on trolleys.

For more information, call (401) 846-2669; Web site (www.NewportAntiquesShow.com).

William Shaeffer of Glyndon, Maryland, offered Staffordshire deer with bocage greenery for $750 for the larger one and $550 for the small ones. He sold two pairs as well as some creamware.

The Hanebergs Antiques, East Lyme, Connecticut, asked $16,500 for the oil painting of the U.S.S. Arkansas by Antonio Jacobsen. The Japanese screen, left, was $3950. The pair of Rose Medallion vases was $7500; they stand on a pair of Chinese stands, also $7500 the pair. The stands sold. The bonnet-top cherry desk and bookcase from Hartford, Connecticut, 71¼" high x 35" wide x 22½" deep, was $48,000.

Susie and François Lorin of Asiantiques, Winter Park, Florida, asked $75,000 for the Tang Dynasty pottery camel on its knees with a Middle Eastern rider. The Japanese screen, Tosa school, early 19th century, was $12,000. The Lorins also offered furniture, netsuke, snuff bottles, and Peking glass.

Dealers were treated to a champagne party under a tent at Miramar, an early 20th-century cottage built by Eleanor Widener, widow of George Widener. George and the Wideners' son, Harry, went down on the Titanic. Eleanor survived. The architect of the house was Horace Trumbauer, who was also the architect of the Widener Library at Harvard, which houses Harry's book collection. Harry was in the Harvard class of 1907. David Ford, a retired investment banker at Goldman Sachs, bought Miramar in 2006 and has been restoring it.

Quester Gallery, Rowayton, Connecticut, asked $325,000 for this Montague Dawson oil on canvas, The Stone Jetty, 40" x 50". It once hung in the American embassy in Paris.

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