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Maine Antique Digest, December 2016 23-A
-
FEATURE -
23-A
Scherer thinks of his
store as “a contemporary
curiosity shop.”
In the Trade
Sean Scherer of Kabinett & Kammer, Andes, New York
by Frank Donegan
M
aybe this is just a coincidence. Or
maybe it’s a trend. For the second
time in as many months, we have
visited open shops that are the primary outlets
for their owners who don’t do shows and don’t
do lots of business on the Internet. The one
other thing they have in common is that both
sell
new
merchandise along with antiques.
In most other respects they couldn’t be
more different. Last month’s business,
Greg Taylor’s Bloomin’ Antiques, is a
traditional local shop on a village green in
New Hampshire. He sells a general line of
antiques from many periods and places.
“Traditional antiques shop,” on the other
hand, is not a phrase that springs readily to
mind at Kabinett & Kammer. The shop sits
at the corner of Main Street in Andes, New
York, in the western reaches of the Catskill
Mountains, but it has a decidedly New York
City vibe. The shop, filled with vintage
objects and antiques, along with taxidermy,
skulls, antlers, and graphic scientific, edu-
cational, medical, and botanical charts,
would not be out of place in the pages of a
cutting-edge decorating publication. (Owner
Sean Scherer has, in fact, been featured in
the
New York Times,
which referred to his
aesthetic as “an artful clutter.”)
Scherer thinks of his store as “a
contemporary curiosity shop.” He is
enamored of the “cabinets of curiosities”
in vogue among European elites in earlier
centuries—hence the shop’s name (a
cabinet of curiosities was often known
as
Kunstkabinett
or
Wunderkammer
). He
unapologetically injects new stuff into the
mix to achieve the look he wants. After all,
if your design aesthetic calls for colorful bud
vases in the form of hand grenades, you’re
probably not going to find antique versions.
Scherer stocks new ones made by a local
craftsperson.
“Ideally, you want everyone to walk out
with something,” Scherer said. “You have to
have price points for everyone,” he explained,
adding that he simply can’t find enough low-
priced old smalls. “I’ve been crisscrossing
New York and Pennsylvania for twenty
years, and every time you go, more shops are
gone. It’s the same everywhere. If you go to
London or the Marché aux Puces in Paris,
there’s not any little stuff. Where did all the
smalls go? When I started nine yeas ago, I
was a hundred percent antiques.” Today, he
said, antique and vintage material accounts
for about 70% of his gross.
Most of the new objects, Scherer said,
“are things that fit the natural history aesthetic. It’s
stuff I like. I curate it.” Even the most mundane new
material—coasters, notebooks, matches—usually
exhibits artwork based on old natural history prints.
And then there are all those exotic shells, starfish,
antlers, and skulls scattered throughout the shop.
He explained that stocking inexpensive new smalls
helps to instill confidence in nonexpert buyers, who
make up the majority of his customers. “If people see a
$150 antique knifebox, it scares them. But they see they
can buy a box of matches for $4.50 and it makes people
comfortable. Then, if there’s something for $1800, they
figure it’s fair.”
The hamlet of Andes, NewYork, is not likely to strike
you immediately as a hotbed of artsiness. It’s a quiet
place, and like many villages in the western Catskills,
it’s a little rough round the edges, a place where the
ever-diminishing dairy industry can no longer support
local prosperity and where many high, rolling pastures
are gradually being recolonized by woods. As is the
case with many towns in the area, the local central
school appears to be the largest employer.
Yet as you look around, you’ll see that Kabinett &
Sean Scherer.
Kabinett & Kammer in Andes, New York.
The shop’s discreet sign.
New merchandise. (See text.) They’re orange and white ceramic bud vases
priced at $20 each.
Another interior view. Scherer often papers a wall with old prints. In this case, they’re
sepia toned. That’s a stuffed goose in the lower left corner of the picture.
Kammer isn’t the only “city” business.
The Andes Hotel, for example, has been
transformed fromwhat used to be a typical,
rowdy upstate joint into a sophisticated
operation with a menu that would be
appropriate in any big-city bistro where
salmon and Pinot Grigio have replaced
boiled hot dogs and Budweiser. It’s no
longer a place you’re likely to go to meet
the local bikers.
That’s because the Catskills—
especially the western Catskills—have
become a favorite second-home area
for New Yorkers, especially more
adventurous types in the arts.
Until fairly recently the Catskills
still suffered from its reputation as the
place where ethnic groups had flocked
to vacation. Urban sophisticates were
not all that eager to mix with Jewish
comedians at Kutsher’s and New York
firefighters drinking in East Durham’s
Irish bars. Instead, the boomers of the
Martha Stewart generation tended to buy
their upstate homes on the east side of the
Hudson River, in places such as Columbia
and Dutchess counties, which had a more
pastoral “New England” feel and a good
supply of Colonial, Federal, and Greek
Revival houses. The next generation,
however, has been drawn to the often
tumbledown, rural isolation found in
many parts of the Catskills, especially in
the northern and western hills.
A typical interior view.