Maine Antique Digest May 2015

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32-B Maine Antique Digest, May 2015
- SHOW -
The Original 164th Semi-Annual
York Antiques Show & Sale at
the York Fairgrounds Convention
& Expo Center, Memorial Hall East,
in York, Pennsylvania, held January
30 through February 1, attracted a big
crowd. People with cabin fever needed
to get out of the house, and dealers from
the North were glad to escape the snow.
A few dealers said they had to shovel
out before loading their vans, and they
arrived on Thursday, too late for the two-
day dealer buying at setup but in time to
set up for those in line to get in at 10 a.m.
on Friday.
Melvin Arion holds this three-day
winter show on the last weekend in
January and his fall show on the last
weekend in September (moved last year
from Labor Day weekend at the dealers’
request). Bob Bockius, Charles Whitney,
and Dave Strickler of Mitchell Displays,
who supply the showcases for Ari-
on’s show and many others, put on the
Greater York Antiques Show, two-day
events scheduled for May 1 and 2 and
October 30 and 31, with Bockius as the
frontman for show management. Many
dealers do all four shows, and many
shoppers never miss any of them.
Dealers said they were amazed at the
large crowds on Friday and Saturday,
January 30 and 31, and when the Super
Bowl Sunday crowd was sparse, many
asked, “Why a three-day show?” Then
from 3 o’clock in the afternoon until
closing time, there was a flurry of sales.
“I bet $150,000 was spent in the last
hour of the show,” said Delaware dealer
James Kilvington. Maine dealer James
Glazer, exhibiting at this show for the
first time in a long time, sold a tall-case
clock, the dial signed by John Fisher in
York Town, York County, Pennsylvania,
and a tall hoop-back Windsor chair made
in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, that he had
bought at Pook & Pook some years ago.
Local people came late in the show
and then rushed home to watch the Super
Bowl while dealers packed up to get out
before the next blizzard, which did not
hit the region until early the next morn-
ing and then turned to rain before a deep
freeze. It is not easy trucking antiques
around the country in winter, and a
number of those driving their vans from
Ohio, Alabama, Kentucky, or Pennsyl-
vania are women who go it alone!
This show was worth it. Business was
good, and some said it was the best it
has been in three years. Brown furniture
sold, as did some painted furniture and
many small items.
At this show, shoppers could com-
pare three 18th-century Pennsylvania
schranks: a small one from downtown
Philadelphia on Kilvington’s stand
($48,000), one made in the Bach-
man shop in Strasburg, Pennsylvania,
in Philip Bradley’s booth ($50,000),
and one from southeastern Pennsyl-
vania, dated 1785 and offered by John
Chaski ($17,500). Plus there were three
impressive tall chests: one from Berks
County, Pennsylvania, with leafy inlay
on the central drawers and line inlay
on the other drawers (Philip Bradley,
$14,500)—it comes apart, so it is in fact
a chest-on-chest; a rare small tall chest
from Maryland with three over two over
four drawers (James Price, $6250); and
a big, bold one from Chester County,
Pennsylvania, with three over two over
four drawers (David Horst, $8500).
There were many tall-case clocks;
Price sold four, Bradley sold one, and
Glazer sold another. There were plenty
of painted chests from Pennsylvania and
New England, and more than a dozen
graphic hooked rugs. There were plenty
of quilts, and more than a dozen of them
sold. Some fraktur sold, perhaps because
of the exhibition and catalog for Drawn
with Spirit, celebrating the promised
gift to the Philadelphia Museum of Art
of over 230 fraktur from the collection
of Joan and Victor Johnson. The exhibit
opened with a party at the museum on
January 30, and the illustrated catalog
by Lisa Minardi with the latest research
should give the field a real boost. Her
husband, Philip Bradley, brought ten
copies of the catalog to the show and
sold them all ($65 each); more are avail-
able at the museum and online.
The show also had a selection of
appealing rag dolls, some special sew-
ing balls, three rare hatboxes, and a
selection of woodenware, some of it
painted. There was very
rare redware; historical
Staffordshire china; ear-
lier pearlware, cream-
ware, and salt-glazed pot-
tery; and some Chinese
export porcelain, but not
as broad a selection of
ceramics as usual. There
was an early velocipede,
a painted wood tricycle,
and a doll’s surrey with
fringe on top. Holiday
decorations find buyers all year long.
Three items could have won a prize for
good design in any period. One was an
18th-century wrought-iron bird or fish
roaster, priced at $950 by Colette Don-
ovan. Simple and well-proportioned, it
turned with a flick of the wrist, and it sold.
Another was a Shaker-style staved keeler
for washing buttermilk from butter; John
Rogers priced it at $2500. The third, an
18th-century oak sieve, put together with
large rosehead nails and used for sifting
wood ashes to make soap, was $495 from
Cheryl Mackley.
There was an unpleasant moment
at the show on the crowded Saturday
afternoon. A group of five professional
thieves sneaked in without paying,
walked into James Kilvington’s booth,
popped the lock on a vitrine, and went
off with some jewelry. Dale Hunt ran
after them, and the police stopped two
of them, but since they did not have the
jewels, they were released. The others
got away. Their license plate number
was taken, and the type of car noted, but
they were not apprehended.
“It was a professional job,” said Kil-
vington. “Two of them distracted me,
and the other three went to work. I think
they got three pieces. I have to check my
inventory to see the value.”
The pictures and captions show just
a fraction of what was there and some
of what sold. Most dealers said they
sold well, some said they did just OK,
but most left happy, and a good number
plan to come to the York Fairgrounds for
shows four times a year—in January and
September for Butch Arion’s and in May
and October for Bob Bockius’s. York
has been a crossroads for antiquing for
generations.
For more information, call (302) 875-
York, Pennsylvania
The Original Semi-Annual York
Antiques Show & Sale
by Lita Solis-Cohen
Brown furniture
sold, as did some
painted furniture
and many small
items.
Rare large-size Bucher box painted with tulips
and a pot of flowers, late 18th/early 19th cen-
tury, $18,500 from Greg Kramer of Robesonia,
Pennsylvania. “There’s the Scott [Bucher] box
and the Shelley box and this one,” said Kramer.
There’s also one with a figure painted on the
top, currently on view at the Philadelphia
Museum of Art in Drawn with Spirit: Pennsyl-
vania German Fraktur from the Joan and Victor
Johnson Collection.
Found in Adams County, Pennsylvania, this
exceptional redware pottery teapot with
raised and molded relief decoration of birds
in heart-shaped nests, a chain link spout,
coggled rim, and black manganese glaze,
signed William Baker twice, was $27,500
from Greg Kramer.
Steven Still of Man-
heim, Pennsylvania,
asked $16,000 for this
26" x 50" Pennsylvania
German painted dower
chest from Berks or
Bucks County, made
for Barbara Erthmen
and dated 1802. There is
some restoration to the
feet, and the brasses are
replaced. The painted
box on top is an Odd
Fellows box, priced
at $1450, and the two
canes, one an Odd Fel-
lows cane with the name
of the member and
the other carved, were
priced at $400 each.
Michael Whittemore of
Punta Gorda, Florida,
asked $4800 for this 1907
model of the steamship
Florida.
David Horst of Lebanon, Pennsylvania,
asked $8500 for this Chester County, Penn-
sylvania, tall chest; he said he bought it
online at a New England auction. The 1890s
carved wood American eagle in gold paint
was $2950.
February is Presidents’Day
month, so Thomas Brown
of McMurray, Pennsyl-
vania, offered two plaster
busts of George Washing-
ton. The one that looks like
white marble, made in 1932
for the centennial of Wash-
ington’s birth, was $1200.
The one in black paint,
made in the late 19th cen-
tury, was $1800.