Arion’s York Antiques Show

Some shows take on a life of their own.  They become the stuff of legend.  I’m thinking of East Side, Philadelphia, and the NHADA show, but there are others too.  If you think about it, these shows all have pretty solid premises.  New York in the Winter, Philadelphia in the Spring, New Hampshire in the Summer.  York, Pennsylvania around the coldest time of the year doesn’t have the same charm.  But it works, and it has a mythology of it’s own.

It’s hard for me to express how much I love doing shows in York.  The building is as easy as they come for setup and pack out, the crowd is reliable and interested, plus you can buy and sell some stuff at setup if you care to.  The Yorktowne Hotel is a neat old place to stay, with genuine wood furnishings!  “What’s that label there…Henkel Harris?  That guy’s stuff actually sells!  He may not be William Savery, but I think I could get a tank of gas for that at Crumpton.”  The Left Bank, within walking distance is a reliable place to eat.

And the porters!  Does everyone know what a porter is?  They’re the people that move all the stuff in and out for the dealers.  I’ve been to shows where the porters ignore the list they’re given by the manager and let dealers bribe their way to the top of it.  Not the York porters.  The best.  At some shows the porters stand out in the aisle while you’re pushing around the furniture they just sat down in the middle of the booth without asking where it should go.  The York porters ask you where it should go as soon as it comes off the back of the van, and they remember to put it there.  Then they step back and ask you if it would look better on an angle or flat against the wall.  You’re better off letting them load the van at pack out while you stay out of the way and fold blankets, because unless you’re really experienced they’re probably better at it than you.  This is such a rambling rave that it probably deserves it’s own separate post, but quality in this department is really valuable to dealers who stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars if one bad porter makes a serious mistake.

Now of course there are four shows in York each year.  Out of all of them, the winter show, managed by Butch Arion, is by far my favorite.  Despite the risk of crippling bad weather that has the potential to ruin a show, it just seems like in recent years this show has been fabulous for a lot of dealers, poor for very few, and on a steep upward trajectory.  Arion does his part.  He advertises extensively, he runs a tight ship, he selects new dealers carefully.

But only so much of a show’s success rests with the promoter and the buying public he attracts.  When you’re in the business of selling stuff, optimism is vitally important.  Great porters, good food, a comfortable mattress, a promoter who gets it because he used to be a dealer, all these things put us dealers in the mood to have a great show.  We’re all going to buy and sell each other lots of stuff at setup.  Maybe the buying public doesn’t want to hear that, but you come here for the truth, right?  In my opinion, setup business is good for the buying public because it puts dealers in a good frame of mind and it also puts them in a position to sell things a little cheaper since they’re already in the black.

Are you convinced yet?  How about a couple of top-notch dealers joining the show this time around, Philip Bradley and Fiske and Freeman?  I think it’s been safe to say that York is one of the best shows there is for Americana, but Arion is still careful to keep the show diverse too.  You’re not likely to find any million dollar Old Master paintings or signed Newport furniture, but that’s not necessarily what makes a show “great”.  There is a place for diverse shows with high quality merchandise that is accessible and appealing to a wide range of budgets and tastes.  York is one of the best shows of that category and close to the top in it’s strongest suit, Americana.

So you’re coming, right?  All the pertinent information is just a click away.

Happy New Year!

A couple days early, but it’s an appropriate title. A few years ago I bought a walnut Chippendale tall chest at a New Year’s day sale. A tall chest is a difficult object to examine thoroughly. I really like to flip a chest of drawers on it’s top, or at least it’s back, to get a good look at the feet and blocking, but with a tall chest that’s practically impossible to do by yourself and even worse in an auction house crowded with previewers and bidders.

So I buy it, get it loaded, and see that the long return section of one ogee foot facing has been cracked clean and reattached with glue and a Phillip’s-head screw that is so long it went clear through the foot facing and the base molding, leaving a nasty little pea sized hole in the latter. This is just one of many January First events when I can remember muttering under my breath “happy freakin’ new year.”

Many country auctioneers have special New Year’s Day sales. It’s a great day to draw in the retail public, and around here there are a lot of people I see only once a year. Maybe they get taken so badly that it takes them a year to come back, or maybe the auctioneers have done a good job convincing them this is their best sale of the year. In fact, much of what I’ll see at sales this weekend will be familiar or fraudulent, and sometimes both. There are plenty of honest estate and dealer lots too, even I hold a certain type of merch back for consigning to New Year’s Day sales.

The stuff I consign is usually in at zero cost. I could just haul it to Crumpton once a month, but those buyers have grown incredibly cheap and boring, and it’s not nearly so much fun. I take great pleasure in watching snobbish collectors and dealers who think themselves shrewd pay four times what I would have wanted for dregs that have been sitting around my warehouse for months. I’m starting to sound like a bitter old antiques dealer now, but watching fools fall victim to spiked sales can be a great and rare source of pleasure for jaded dealers, and they deserve all the encouragement they can get. If you spot an example this weekend, I’d love to hear about it!

What it is to be an antiques dealer

For me, this is the good life.  Most people dream of retiring, I dream of not having to live one day without being physically and mentally capable of having this job.  Working for myself, making my own schedule, not having a boss; I can’t imagine my life any other way.

In the last couple years I think I’ve been down to Hatteras Village, NC to go fishing two or three times and that’s about all the time off I’ve taken.  Every day is like a vacation for me.  The long drives and physical labor could be a big turn-off for some people, but I’ve never really minded either.  I remember working with my dad laying asphalt driveways and roads in the summer when I was sixteen or seventeen all too clearly to think of loading a van or moving some furniture around as hard work. And then some days are like a vacation not just for me but for normal people even, like visiting Maine and New Hampshire for a week in August.

The political aspects of the business can be frustrating.  Watching a collector you dream of selling to buy things that have gone through your hands, but never even walking into your booth.  Or buy dozens of things you’ve sent to auction, but never knock on your door or call you.  It seems like someone who cares should buy a great object of interest to them from whoever has it.  It used to bother me tremendously, but lately I’ve been getting over it.  Nothing in life is as easy as black and white; everybody sees things differently depending on what kind of mood they’re in, how much cash is in the checking account, where they are, et cetera, including me.

I love my job almost unconditionally.  As I write this, I’ve just gotten home from the Fairfield County show in Connecticut.  It closed at 4pm, I was packed and on the road by 5:30, almost wrecked on the Cross Bronx Expressway thanks to a three-lanes at once merger, drove straight home five hours making one stop on the NJ turnpike, unloaded the van, and now I’m writing a blog that’s long overdue.  I am sane enough to be aware that that seems absolutely crazy to most people.  On top of that, I lost money at the show.  Not enough to discourage me from doing it again; I saw great potential in the crowd that came through but it just wasn’t my turn.

Long story short: I just drove five hours in the dark, from putting a week of my life and a few thousands bucks into a business venture that incurred a loss, and the first thing I’ve sat down to do upon arriving home is write a blog about how great I think my job is.  There you have it.  There’s nothing left for me to write.

The Single Owner Sale

This past weekend’s offerings within my sphere of influence included a couple of single owner sales: the Breininger sale at Pook & Pook and the onsite Kellam sale on the Eastern Shore of VA, handled by Ken Farmer.

The latter was an old fashioned onsite brown wood blood bath that reminded me why I only usually see the Eastern Shore of Virginia on my way to the Outer Banks. Mediocre Georgian chests of drawers, with problems, for $3000-5000 each? Sure, three or four please. Run of the mill Canton? A couple thousand for a platter, another couple for a chesnut basket with one chipped handle. A few thousand for the household set of dishes that Farmer didn’t even bother to catalog? Mom-mom’s got to have it. But, just like most estate sales with a crowd of local crazies, the best few lots were bought for fair wholesale prices because $15,000 just seemed like an awful lot of money for an 18th century Massachusetts secretary, and about half that was unthinkable for a fabulous Regency hot water urn. Did anyone even comprehend the Ginsburg and Levy label on the desk? I suppose collectors who don’t get out much view this as a once in a lifetime opportunity and the merchandise as being of obviously superior quality since it belonged to good old Lucius. That’s a provenance of far greater consequence to them than Ginsburg and Levy or any other dealer for that matter.

The Breininger sale was different. A lot of the prices were justifiable, if a little surprising. Ben Austrian paintings brought phenomenal prices, but they were wonderful if you’re into his stuff. There were some incredible rarities in redware, and collectors were willing to accept condition issues if they didn’t think they would see a cleaner example. Some group lots of ceramics were inexpensive compared to what the individual pieces might bring under different circumstances. There were a few highlights that seem to defy logic, mostly items that had been sold publicly rather recently. The unicorn decorated chest came from the Shelley sale, where it brought $14,000 hammer. Granted, it’s overall appearance had been substantially improved by an apparent cleaning and coat of wax. This time around, it brought $28,000 hammer. Now, maybe there are some people who like Lester better than they did Shelley. Therein lies the magic of a single owner sale. It all becomes fresh and new, even if you can find two thirds of the redware in Conestoga auction catalogs from the past 10 years. One of the mysterious things is that you do usually have to be dead for your sale to go well. But, as Steve Still told me of the Marky sale at Bertoia’s “you know, he was a nice guy. Nobody ever really hated him.” I guess if you can deal in antiques or collect them actively without anybody hating your guts you’re deserving of a spectacular sale, dead or alive.

The moral of the story is that while provenance can be an important factor in determining value, the idea that something must be good because of the collection it’s in is a fallacy. Henry Francis du Pont bought some fakes. That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t all be at the sale if there was one, but through continual vetting even objects with seemingly golden pedigrees can fall out of favor. When you get enough people and few enough brains under a tent just yards from the bay on a beautiful day, all bets are off.

Burk’s Antiques Show, York PA

I know that I’ve been a very very bad blogger as of late, but a lot of people seem to have been checking it out so I’m thinking maybe less is more. I’ll try to do better soon, but this post isn’t going to have much to it either.

This past week I was in York, PA doing Burk’s show. I used to take a very lackadaisical approach to this show – if I didn’t have anything going on I would call a month in advance and sign up. If there was something else to do, I didn’t bother.  I’ve been taking it more seriously lately, and put together a pretty good booth this time.  It didn’t work.  I did some set-up business with regular customers that could have been done out of the back of the van in Adamstown or on my next trip to New England.  I sold a few things retail, but to customers who come to every show in York.  Shows used to be a place to meet new retail customers and for a young dealer like me that can still be true.  Unfortunately, they are more often an expensive dealer convention and a rather official feeling meeting place for regular retail customers to see a few things you’ve told them about already and make up their mind.

So to the point of all this…why do Burk’s?  A lot of dealers don’t anymore, but that’s not a good reason to do anything.  There are still some serious buyers who come through the show.  It’s relatively cheap to do.  If you’re an active, professional dealer you will sell at setup and you will probably find something to buy.  It doesn’t matter what Burk’s show was ten years ago, what it is now, or what it will be in five years.  As long as this show exists, there will be some serious buyers who visit.  I didn’t have a great show this time around – but I’ll be back in May.

For the collectors and even the dealers who would never consider doing the show again…why visit Burk’s?  Well, there really were some nice things on the floor – and they didn’t all sell.  If I didn’t do the show, I would not hesitate to make the drive Friday morning.  And if I was a collector with enough money, I would have bought a walnut hanging cupboard with four raised panels on the door, a collection of Lewis Miller watercolor portraits, an unbelievable chest-high wrought iron trade sign or display model of a betty lamp, and a Philadelphia Savery type side chair (granted, I would have been buying the chair from myself).  I can also say at least for the chair and hanging cupboard with certainty that this was the first time in many years that they have been at a show.

Fresh merchandise, of great quality, and in wonderful condition, for really not too much money.  That’s a good reason to visit any show.  Check my show schedule for upcoming shows just like that – I can’t tell you what anyone else is bringing, but I guarantee I’ll have something you haven’t seen.

Throwing out the baby with the bath water

With all the cautioning I’ve done about buying items with condition problems, this post might seem contradictory.  There are some things I’ve bought and sold that have been absolute wrecks.  And I don’t mean just things I’ve flipped to dealers or put through auction because they were bought so cheap; I mean objects that because of their extreme rarity, great provenance, or historical importance, could be forgiven their damage.

Yesterday, for example, I bid on a tall chest of drawers with replaced feet including the base molding, splices to the rear stiles of the paneled ends, new brass, two replaced drawer fronts, and a multitude of drawer lip repairs.  I didn’t bid at a level where I could have sent it to an auction or sold it to a dealer, I bid what I thought was real money, and apparently was competitive enough to underbid it.  I don’t know what I would have done with it, but I would have been happy enough to just own it.  No one I’ve talked to has ever heard of a paneled end Chester County tall chest in figured maple.  With a lot of the original surface on the top, the cornice, and one end no less.  It’s quite possibly the only one, and deserves to be restored properly and valued despite what a wreck it is currently.  I’m sure it probably made it into the hands of someone who will do that.

For another recent example, look at the line and berry chest that sold at Pook & Pook last weekend.  It’s probably not necessary to really harp on what these objects would have been worth if they were fairly straight, but if there’s a few people reading who aren’t sure, let’s go ahead and do that anyway.  Line and berry inlaid furniture is an early, beautiful, important class of objects made in Southeastern Pennsylvania that represents a probably unique use of the technique in America.  There is an obsessive group of collectors just for it, and a lot of other people who recognize it’s beauty and importance and want at least one representative piece in their broader collection.  Any chest of drawers with line and berry decoration is rare.  The degree of ornamentation can vary from one drawer front with a few rectilinear lines with two vines and berries, to chests of drawers like the aforementioned one with fully decorated drawer fronts and, extremely rarely, a decorated top.

I don’t want to get into a big analysis of the marketplace for this tradition, but I would have thought that this chest with only minor condition issues would be worth at least $125,000 and depending on what issues and the surface, maybe 30-50% more.  It brought less than half of that.  It does need some work.  I didn’t go over it because I wasn’t a buyer for it, but it looked like it needed feet, a lot of moldings, and the top to be reset.  Feet you basically have to expect with these chests.  They’re really old – like 270 years old.  The problems with the moldings, which I won’t get into here, were somewhat offensive.  They do affect the facade of the chest – but they can be fixed to where 99% of the people looking at it won’t even know they’re wrong.  I would usually say that a bargain is usually an object that is right as rain and so good that many people would just have to own it.  But I would say that the line and berry chest was really kind of a bargain, and so are many things of that level of importance with a number of “problems”.

I’m not encouraging anyone to go buy as many relics as they can tomorrow.  But I would say that people collect for all different sorts of reasons, and depending on why they collect, condition can be a less important factor for certain objects.  I collect region (Delaware), rarity (one outstanding example of a craftsman’s work rather than 20 mediocre ones), and provenance (signatures, original bills of sale, family histories of ownership).  Condition is not always a priority for me, and there are a few items that still haunt me because I threw the baby out with the bath water.  That is to say, I let myself become puritanical with regards to condition – it’s fashionable and it saves money – and forgot what a rare thing I was looking at.  A Sussex County Queen Anne dining table, one of the best signed and dated chests of drawers from the McDowell school.  When will I see one again?

So, when you see a great and rare thing, that fits your collecting goals and is represented honestly and priced appropriately, buy it.  It may be more money than anyone else in the world wants to spend on it, but we are all end users for something, and even if the marketplace doesn’t reward you, the pride of ownership in something that is just right for you will more than make up for it.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

As the U.S. Military puts this moniker behind them, scores of dealers and auctioneers continue to use a different version that helps make their operations profitable.  This is not a new phenomena, but rather a historically standard practice for a large segment of the antiques trade.

I recently sold a really small New England Queen Anne drop-leaf table that, upon semi-close examination, was not what it appeared to be.  The top wasn’t right – probably made up out of old boards but pretty well done.  Traces of a former coat of robin’s egg blue paint seemed to tie the top and base together from birth, but this is an old, albeit very clever, faker’s trick.  A marriage in uniform original surface is a paradox.  By necessity they are almost always refinished, or sometimes one part has had a fake surface applied, which is generally not all that hard to identify.  But if the faker initiates the marriage, skins both pieces, then coats the whole in blue paint, then refinishes it, the traces of the “original” blue paint could be used to lead the inexperienced astray.  One day I promise to take some extensive photographs of something like this and walk through it here.  Anyway, what does this have to do with “Don’t ask, Don’t tell”?  Well, the problems with the table were clearly written (even underlined for emphasis) on my label for it, and were documented on the sales slip.  The table was under a thousand bucks, and the buyer had a perfect place in her home for it.  It was a decorative table, for a decorative price, and everyone was happy.  No one had to ask, the assets as well as the liabilities of the table were out in the open for everyone to read.

I bought the table at an auction of a mixed bag collection from California that was formed in the 1940s and 1950s.  Just like my label for the table, the catalog accurately described the table for what it was.  The collectors had kept pretty good records of their purchases, keeping some correspondence from Sack and other top dealers, and some from people I had never heard of.  The table was accompanied by a letter from one of the latter, but it sure was a fun read.  Digging around in the warehouse the other day, I found the letter that accompanied the table when I bought it.  Let me summarize it this way:  “I hope you’re enjoying the little table I sold you.  It’s a wonderful thing and it’s so rare and I wish I had it back.  I only know of one other and it sold for a lot more money.  Looking forward to doing more business with you in the future!”  When the collectors bought the table roughly 60 years ago, they didn’t ask, and the dealers they bought it from didn’t tell.

This might be a little harder to get away with for dealers in the information age where there are very few secrets and good gossip tends to get out quickly, but next we’ll look at how this technique is used by it’s most zealous and effective practitioners, auctioneers.

The Fall Show Season Begins

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and I’ve been an awful blogger. I’m just finishing a three week marathon of back-to-back-to-back shows, and am looking forward to a little break and a long drive to an out of the way auction.

Two weeks ago (it feels like two months), was the earthquake/hurricane week and the Baltimore Show. I shared a booth and supplied a few pieces of furniture, some paintings, and some decorative accessories. I bought my way out, but only sold one thing. I think I underestimated the possibility of selling a good piece of American furniture or folk art, and therefore didn’t take anything like that. It was definitely encouraging to see that a weathervane, 19th century American School paintings, and period furniture could sell at that show, but I have yet to decide whether I’ll go back. It is a huge show with a stressful packout and a lot of rules. It’s a strong buying opportunity, but for the cost that might not be enough to coax me back next year.

Last week was the Labor Day edition of Butch Arion’s York Show, a show that has consistently been good for me, but this time around was very good to great. I bought well, sold well, and made a few sales to new customers. Overall it seemed like a bit of a mixed bag, but there were more dealers who did really well than those who did poorly. Even more encouraging was the variety of merchandise that sold. There seemed to be more enthusiasm for good Pennsylvania furniture than in recent years, with at least three dutch cupboards selling. One old time collector tried to put that in perspective, saying that in the old days that figure would have been multiplied ten times. That may be true, but ask any dealer how easy it is to sell double case furniture right now.

This weekend, I’m close to home at the Delaware Coast Antiques Show in Rehoboth Beach. It’s been a little below my expectations, but I’ve made money and did buy a couple of interesting local things for my collection. It’s a nice little old fashioned show with a diverse mix of dealers, and it’s getting a little better every year. I left most of my load on from York, instead of opting for a more inexpensive, half English, booth. It’s worked out okay, and I think there are more people here who understand real American things than I had previously thought – even if they’re not buying much anymore.

When this show is over (in about two hours) I’ll pack out, spend the next two days unloading, making deliveries, and picking up my purchases from all the auctions I couldn’t attend over the last five days, then get out on the road and hit the next round of sales late this week. That should give me some spare time to be more prompt with my next post.

Beating the Game 2011 (Part 3)

So you’re convinced that it’s of vital importance to buy from the right dealers, that’s the easy part. There are a lot of people in the antiques business who should be dealt with carefully, and very few who can be absolutely trusted. There are some who just don’t really have a clue about antiques, others who are willfully dishonest, and still more who might not mislead you, but certainly will not volunteer any negative information unless they are asked specific questions.

Figuring out whether the dealer fits into any one of the aforementioned categories might be the easiest first step to determining whether you want to buy from them. Ask questions. It doesn’t have to look like a deposition, but ask specific questions in the course of the conversation.

Are the feet right?
Clueless: Oh yes, this came out of an old family and I’m sure there’s never been anything done to it.
Dishonest: Of course.
Selectively Honest: They look okay to me but you’re welcome to look for yourself.
Trustworthy: Yes, let me flip it over and show you why.

How do you know it’s from Philadelphia?
Clueless: That’s how it was sold to me. It came from an old Philadelphia family.
Dishonest: I’ve been doing this for thirty years, I just know it when I see it.
Trustworthy: The two part glue blocks, the secondary woods, the through tenons, the following stylistic features.

What makes you think it’s circa 1750 rather than, say 1760?
Clueless: There’s an identical one in this 80 year old reference book and they said so.
Selectively Honest: Close enough.
Trustworthy: Based on handling dozens of these, this one strikes me as slightly earlier based on a couple of points.

There are certainly some other good ways to find out about a dealer. The thing that makes a dishonest dealer money is the same thing that makes them hard to identify: they’re really good at lying. Ask a dealer you do trust about the dealer you’re considering buying from. That might seem like an awkward thing to do, but as a young dealer I’ve watched it happen many times. A customer looks an item over, asks for the best price, and makes a bee-line for an experienced, scrupulously honest dealer. At this point I may as well start writing the sales slip. Though some dealers might feel distrusted at this, I know that what that dealer says about me will close the sale. Any dealer with a reputation for honesty will feel the same way. The only person you stand to alienate is someone you probably didn’t want to deal with anyway.

I think that’s enough to digest for now, but there’s more to come. If you’re in the Mid-Atlantic next weekend, visit my Shows page for details on Melvin Arion’s Original York Antiques Show. It’s a great show with a variety of dealers and a no pressure atmosphere.

Antiques Week in NH (Recap)

As planned, I made it up to New Hampshire last Sunday after an okay show in Rehoboth.  The turbulent markets certainly didn’t help the dealers at any of the shows, I saw a fair amount of action in the first couple hours of every show I visited.  Both Barn Star shows were reasonably productive; I bought a handful of things at each.  Deerfield was somewhat disappointing; with another dealer riding along we only managed to put two items into the van.  Mine was a miniature blanket chest from Delaware, bought from a Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, dealer.  It’s funny how you can travel so far to buy something local from someone so familiar.

The highlights of the week were definitely the trip along Rt. 1 in Maine and the NHADA show.  The shops out along the coast are still great places to find fresh merchandise, and offer a more relaxed buying atmosphere than the frenzied opening hours of the shows.  The dealer show is one of the most enjoyable shows I’ve visited.  Fresh merch, reasonable prices, friendly and knowledgeable dealers who want to sell.  And that’s largely across the board.  There aren’t ten or twenty dealers with fresh stuff they want to move, there are sixty.  I wish I had spent all day Thursday there, but I had a long drive ahead of me and headed out around 1pm with three shopping bags packed full.  I lose money on a fair bit of what I buy, and I usually know it pretty soon after I buy it.  I don’t think any of what I bought at the NHADA show will fall into that category.

I do think the retail business was a little bit slow all week from what I saw and the dealers I talked to.  A few of my favorite things at the NHADA show were still unsold as of my departure, which was disappointing to see.  Don’t get me wrong, there were many dealers at that show in particular that had sold a quarter to half of their booth by the time I left.  That being said, there were still some great buys left and I hope that more of them disappeared over the weekend.

In my next entry, I’ll return to the Beating the Game series and discuss how to judge the trustworthiness of dealers and auctioneers.