Joel White is a third-generation Mainer and antiques dealer who now lives in an 1830s brick farmhouse located on the same road in Waldoboro, Maine, where he grew up. “There used to be a brick factory down the road, and the clay for the brick came from the pond,” he explained.
Joel White of Curiosity Antiques, Waldoboro, Maine.
His path in the business that both his father, Brian White, and his grandfather Joe White were involved in, however, is his own.
“It’s in the blood,” he said. “While I have an appreciation for my dad’s business, it’s not really where my business goes,” the soft-spoken dealer said. Rather than the early American painted furniture and folk art that his family dealt in, Joel’s focus is on a different aesthetic, be it vintage photos and ephemera, vintage jewelry and clothing, or unusual objects “that existed before us that we help transfer. We’re caretakers, I like to call ourselves.”
His business, Curiosity Antiques (@curiosity_antiques on Instagram) has never advertised. Instead, he sells online and gets the word out on Facebook and Instagram and with three shops on Etsy. “I like to communicate directly,” said Joel, who with his wife, Steph Lane, ships to clients in Japan, Europe, Australia, and California to name a few. “It’s a worldwide experience,” he noted, much different from his father’s way of “cleaning out a house, selling up the line, and so forth.”
Joel recalls that when he was a child his family did “their own thing. There were no hourly jobs. My grandfather would have truckloads of antiques. Some were masterworks. When I visit museums, it’s rare to not see a piece that either my grandfather or dad had sold,” he explained. His father is now a sculptor, seashells being his material of choice, who has pieces in the Peabody Essex Museum (Salem, Massachusetts), the Farnsworth Museum (Rockland, Maine), and the Portland Art Museum (Portland, Maine).
“Maine bred the gig culture,” Joel stated.
Joel’s father built their first house, and he remembers times when his grandfather brought home a deer and “filled the freezer” for the winter. Joel was the first one in his family to attend college, but he didn’t stay on that academic track. He spent a decade working in special education, and along the way trained as a butcher in Camden while “still dabbling in antiques.”
Joel moved around Maine for a time, and five years ago he moved back to Waldoboro just before COVID-19. Some 90% of his business comes from estate sales, where “there are things that haven’t been seen for twenty to forty years.” About 5% he sources at auctions throughout Maine, and the rest he finds outside the state. Joel exhibits at some shows, most recently at the Deerfield, New Hampshire, show in August. He’s a member of The American Ephemera Society—“I love old paper and old photos”—and attends the annual show in Hartford, Connecticut.
“I have the things I love around me,” said Joel, referring to his wife, Steph, their two cats, Sabine and Augustus, and their garden, framed by sea roses. “I’m a homebody.” When they moved to their current house, the couple thought the front area would become a gallery and they’d put out a shingle. “Then COVID hit. The business has grown in a different direction. We don’t need a brick and mortar,” Joel explained.
When he and Steph are at a show, he’ll bring along a few antiques and unusual objects hoping to engage younger buyers. “I like to share with people who are enthusiastic. I guess that’s a bit of the teacher in me.” He has noticed that with many visitors under age 40, “They will dive into the story behind the object. They won’t dicker [on price], and if it fits, they’re going to own it.”
“I bring passion to the objects I find, and I always look for the aesthetic.”
We’ll buy that.
The theatrical prop of Tutankhamun from the 1920s came from a theater in Maine.
The architectural rendering is by Alain Suby (b. 1943). Below are a piece of studio pottery, artist unknown, and a single candlestick relic made from oak reclaimed out of the Cathedral Church of All Saints, Derby, England.
An antique tintype photo of a child is displayed with miniature 19th-century gaming items and a Taylor’s Mandrake Pills box.
In rough shape, this is a late 19th-century oil on canvas depicting Guinevere from Arthurian legend.
Seen here is a Victorian dress form with an 1870s lace dress from a Rockport, Maine, estate, bedecked with brass and rhinestone tiaras and crystal beaded necklaces from the 1920s.
In January Joel purchased some 2000 paintings by Elaine Niemi (d. 2020), an artist who lived on the coast of Maine in a “rundown bungalow.” Her family knew Joel’s father, so a connection had been made years ago. “Elaine was an obsessive artist. She would paint whatever happened in her life that day, on paper, on ceiling tiles, and it would go into a folder,” explained Joel. To buy paint, she would sell a few works once in a while at the local flea market, Montsweag in Woolwich, which has since closed, Joel said. Seen here are two examples of her art.
This cabinet is filled with Joel’s antique fortune-telling teacup collection and Steph’s collection of kaleidoscopes.
This “portrait of a young artist,” oil on canvas, artist unknown, from the 1960s, was originally from New York City, said Joel. He bought it about six years ago and said the work was done “by a skilled hand.”
Displayed in a divided wood crate on the wall is a collection of 19th-century flow blue transferware, surrounded by paper wasp nests.
Meet Sabine, an eight-year-old black female shelter rescue cat, and six-year-old Augustus, who came from a flea market.
Originally published in the October 2024 issue of Maine Antique Digest. © 2024 Maine Antique Digest
