Maine Antique Digest, March 2017

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6-C Maine Antique Digest, March 2017
- SHOW -
6-C
Commissions and residual
sales were robust.
Boston, Massachusetts
The Boston Home Décor Show
by Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo
For exhibitors and visitors at the Boston
Home Décor Show, in its third year at
Boston’s Cyclorama building in the South
End, the theme was juxtaposition—the sublime
mix of antiques with the contemporary. Antiques
and art met contemporary home design. There
was much evidence overall of such blending,
and dealers were gratified by highly successful
results. Over the course of the four-day event,
November 17-20, 2016, business was done and
commissions and residual sales were robust.
The gala preview party on November 17
benefited DIFFA, Design Industries Foundation
Fighting AIDS, and CRI, the Community
Research Organization.
Throughout the show Trefler’s, the family-
owned restorers of Newton, Massachusetts,
provided complimentary restoration estimates
for visitors’ heirlooms—photographs only.
Newbury, Massachusetts, dealer Joan R.
Brownstein is well known in the antiques
business as a dealer in first-rateAmerican folk art
portraits, paintings, and objects of interest since
1980. Her even longer career is less well known,
however. For over 40 years Brownstein has been
a working artist. At this show she decided to take
a chance on a booth at the show and filled its
walls with over 60 of her creations—cut-paper
assemblages, colored pencil drawings, poured
acrylic on board images, and photographic
images, each offering deep study of its textural
layers. Artists and designers loved her work.
Brownstein’s poured acrylic images were priced
at $2500 each. She also showed works in clay by
Edwin and Mary Scheier, which she has collected
for some time.
Market Stalls at the Boston Design Center,
which had a booth at the show, provides antiques
dealers space in a facility that presents mostly
contemporary furniture and accessories from
interior designers. Shoppers can see how the
antique and the contemporary blend and enhance
each other.
Designers such as Jewett Farms + Co., Boston,
which specializes in fine cabinetry, soapstone
surfaces, and flooring, had a very productive
show, which resulted in commissions of interest.
Cut-paper works with colored
pencil by folk art portraits
dealer Joan R. Brownstein
of Newbury, Massachusetts,
filled an entire wall of her
booth. Her poured acrylic on
board images were priced at
$2500 each. She also showed
sculptural pottery by Edwin
and Mary Scheier, whose
work she has collected for
some time.
Newbury, Massachusetts, early
American antiques dealers Joan R.
Brownstein and Peter Eaton paused for
a moment in Brownstein’s booth, where
she displayed her artwork and some
of Edwin and Mary Scheier’s studio
pottery works.
Iris Gallery of Fine Art, Boston,
specializes in the work of
contemporary painters and
photographers. Freedom and Joy,
a 10" x 51" archival pigment ink
print by Ezra Gozo Mansur, an
advertising photographer currently
based in Israel, was signed by the
artist and tagged $5500.
Robert Four, co-producer of the Boston Home
Décor Show, is pictured with Fusco & Four
staffer Meaghan Flaherty.
From Cottage + Camp, North Egremont, Massachusetts, a pair of French iron
armchairs was priced at $2200 and the baseball game board from the 1920s was
$4500. A vintage Harvard subway sign repurposed as a tabletop was $1800. The
gallery also showed a pair of fancy iron squirrel gates from the 1920s.
Diseño, Boston, specializes in furniture and
accessories, including hide flooring from
Brazil, Peru, Argentina, and Chile.