Erotic Peach Pits $350 each

There was a tombstone carver in Deer Island, Maine who was a very fine whittler. Quite a while after he died one of his heirs sold his whittling work to a local antique dealer who then passed them along to us. Most of the work we got consisted of traditional whittling forms, ball in a cage, lovers knots and the like. In addition to the usual forms there is a bible, praying hands, the right hand of the carver (he was missing one finger) plus various animals and Masonic symbols. Looking at all that work one could easily assume the carver led a quiet, ordered, untroubled life except that is for the peach pits.
Tucked away in a little bag among all the usual carved forms were 14 peach pits carved front and back with male and female figures in all kinds of sexual positions and attitudes. They resemble as much as anything scenes from Dante's Gates of Hell. The quiet tombstone carver from Deer Island was portraying an inner life that most certainly was anything but conventional. These peach pits are fantastic.
We have added 14 carrot gold loops so they can be worn as a pendant. Hanging from a gold choker necklace against a black velvet blouse they are stunning.

Brian White Show until October 7th

Our current show is of the latest work of Brian White. For those of you who don't know Brian's work, he is a local artist who burst upon the scene 4 years ago with a show that featured full scale women's dresses made out of sea shells. That show, his first ever, resulted in two museums getting his work, something almost unheard of in the art world.
The show that is now going on has a marvelously diverse collection of things in it. Among the items on exhibit is a full scale wedding ensemble of dress, veil and shoes all out of shells. This piece is scheduled to be on display at the Peabody-Essex Museum in 2008. There are two lobster men's shell shirts, an American flag out of antique mirror glass, a wedding dress in a big blue Tiffany box and a suite of English pear sculptures the artist took from a old book of botanical prints.
It is hard to adequately describe the scope and diversity of such a show, suffice it to say that those who see it will go away knowing why Brian White is such a popular attraction in these parts.

T. Allen Lawson August Show

As a gallery owner, I’ve always felt that art is more than just a noun. Art informs our daily lives in many ways, and colors the unique path we each follow. Art is a process. It is how we choose to live and at its best, art can be who we are.

Really good painters are often eloquent explaining how art permeates the process of what they do. Tim Lawson is one such artist. Talk to him for a time and it becomes clear that while he always starts with an exquisite sensibility to the existing natural world, his art is not complete until he finishes a delicate dialog with the myriad creative elements that serve to connect him to his work. He works slowly, meticulously, and this creative dance can, and occasionally does, take years.

“I start with the recognition that if the painting is high key, it’s the darker areas that become important. Or if the scene is dark, it’s the lighter areas that matter. That’s my jumping off point.” Lawson goes on from there to demonstrate how design elements change with each successive drawing or thumbnail sketch of a scene, and how color, texture and hue get amended as he paints.

A tree loses a branch on one side; it grows back on the other. Certain windows in a house disappear. Shadows lengthen and darken and move slightly left. The white trim on a seaside cottage at dusk begins to glow in the gloom. A moon that once rose in the sky over a Maine lake finds itself hovering over a riverbank in Missouri. Tim Lawson slowly and carefully amends the existing environment and, when he is finally done, we are treated to a transcendent new world brought into being by his considerable talent.

Finally, there is a unique aspect of Tim Lawson’s work that deserves special mention. Because he does his own matting, framing and gilding to complement each particular piece, be it painting drawing or pastel, the harmonic emphasis that each frame gives to a Lawson work is pitch perfect. No commercial framer could ever have such intimate knowledge of what the artist is trying to say. Lawson’s skill in presenting his art is unrivaled.

What you are about to see will give you much pleasure. Enjoy the art.

John Ames

2007 New York Winter Antique Shows

Sarah and I just spent the better part of last week going to the 4 major winter antique shows in New York. For my money the hands down winner was The American Antiques Show in the Metropolitan Pavilion on 18th Street to benefit the American Folk Art Museum. Not that the grand dowager Winter Antiques Show at the 67th Street Armory show wasn't impressive, it was. It ALWAYS is. However, for me, seeing small displays of choice Americana beats big shiny Regency anytime.

We didn't get much (2 signs and a cane) until Pier 91 on the Hudson River opened on Saturday. Then we had fun and did a lot of buying. The Pier show is enormous with hundreds of dealers from as far away as Lyons, France and Santa Monica, California. The new "thing" this year seemed to be metal furniture from defunct factories. We bought a very heavy small square steel cart, quite low and with a great patina, that was used in a tannery to bring the newly cured hides to the tables where shoes were made. It will make a great coffee table for someone. In the same vein we also bought a very small working safe that will make a great side table, not to mention a terrific spot to keep one's single malt scotch out of harms way. Probably my favorite purchase of all was a long very simple two board console table from Belgium on lovely turned thin iron legs. Sarah bought a great collection of Lea Stein pins from from some very nice english dealers. (See photo)

The weather in New York that week was, as they say in Maine, wicked cold. I am reminded however that here at home fisherman and loggers have jobs where bad weather can kill them whereas in the Big Apple a winter storm makes it hard to get a cab. By the way if you haven't checked out the Whole Foods market downstairs at the Time-Warner Center on Columbus Circle you should. It's worth seeing how brilliant the art of selling good food can be and I am delighted to report that by the time you read this there will be a new Whole Foods market just opened in Portland, Maine. It would seem we're getting mighty "big city" around these parts lately.

Big Green Squirrel

The fun thing about folk art is its childlike unpredictability. Has anyone ever seen a green squirrel? No matter, the creator of this charming piece has. This great squirrel was done from a single log and it is large! (Almost 2 feet tall.) It's probably between 50 and 80 years old. Lord knows where it was carved. We got it from a Kentucky dealer. He said he got it in New England.

Somewhere in your house there is a shelf or a beam or a mantelpiece (in the living room or kitchen perhaps) where a large green squirrel would feel right at home. He can come live with you for $650.

A Great Country Cabinet

We have been back in Maine for a few weeks now getting organized for the 2006 season. As you might guess our place is currently overflowing with new inventory we acquired since closing for the season last fall. While we don’t want to tip our hand too much before we open officially the beginning of June, there are a few things that deserve special early recognition. The next few posts will talk about them.

While we were in Nashville we had the good luck to meet the family owners of an old, respected mid-western furniture restoration business. They had never been to an antique show as vendors before but decided they had too much furniture stored away in their barn at home and thus wanted to sell a few things. They chose the big Nashville show to do it. Everything they brought was choice but since we are New England dealers and didn’t want anything that wouldn’t look right in our part of the country we settled on only one piece. It is a wonderful pewter storage cabinet in great old barn red paint from the early 19th century.

The piece is perfect nothing has been fiddled with. In fact we bought it for what the gentleman had paid for it a number of years earlier. He showed us the bill. Not that it was inexpensive mind you but because it was a New England piece he really didn’t want to keep it and because it was big he definitely didn’t want to lug it back home. We came along at just the right time.

The cabinet is 19 inches deep, 37 inches wide and stands 77 inches tall. The soft patina of the old painted wood shelves gives off a dull red glow that makes a perfect background for a collection of china plates or small framed works of art. (The decoys in our photo look pretty good as well.) Ample storage down below makes the piece as practical as it is beautiful. This lovely piece of furniture has come back home to where it started from nearly 200 years ago and we are proud to offer it for sale for $5800.

Big Buying in Nashville

The parking lots are huge at Gaylord’s Opryland Resort in Nashville, like everything else about the facility. Tour buses, pickup trucks pulling large cargo trailers and thousands of cars co-exist happily on acres and acres of white-lined litter-free asphalt. Once our van and trailer have come to rest in this vast shiny pond of road warriors, we are very reluctant to move them again, ever. After the icy ordeal of the day before, I hate even looking at our frozen, mud-encrusted rig.

We unload our personal gear and for almost a full day do little more than clean off road grime and fast food grease. We rest. We read the paper. We nap. We swim. We walk around and through and over the gardens and fountains and river that fill the huge atriums of the 4 separate “neighborhoods” of our hotel. Our road nerves subside with a good night’s sleep.

The prospect of some serious inventory acquisition finds me at 8 a.m. with an early buyers pass at the Fiddler’s Inn Motel. The Fiddler’s Inn is just across the highway from where we are staying and is the site of what is known in the trade as the “Tailgate” show. It’s one of a number of lesser satellite shows that spring up around the mega “Heart of Country” show in the Opryland complex. The “Tailgate” show is not pretty. It’s a street bazaar for professional level antique buyers - nothing more. There is no glitz, scant creature comforts (in the form of a half dozen Porta-Johns) and most assuredly no mercy for the faint at heart or uninformed.

There is a dealer or dealers for every single room in the motel. They use their quarters as their selling space. Many - if not most - actually stay in another motel further down the road. Beds are pushed into the back and bathrooms fill up with packing material and additional inventory. In addition to the rooms, the parking lot and balconies fill to overflowing with antiques for sale.

To prevent chaos everybody has to wait for permission to set up shop. No jumping the gun allowed. Prior to the appointed time, the dealers are only allowed to get their trucks and vans positioned near their rooms. Precisely at 8 a.m. the word goes out from the show’s organizers that it is now OK to unload. Until that time they stand around and gossip like schoolchildren waiting for the bell to ring.

As I enter the motel grounds, permission to set up has just been given. Nothing is really on view yet but even at this very early hour I can see sharp-eyed buyers standing near the tailgates of certain favorite dealers looking intently at each piece as it gets unloaded.

“What’s that, Sam?”
“Federal…Clean as a whistle…Even got original brasses…Out of an estate auction in northern Indiana…Wish I had a dozen.”

A small man in red sneakers wearing a ski cap with earflaps peers intently at the small bureau. He’s a dealer from just around the corner. While his inventory, what I could see of it, suggests he deals primarily in porcelain and paintings, he gets on his knees and tips the bureau high enough to look closely at its legs. He opens the drawers quickly and peers inside each one. He runs his hands all over its dusty surface.

“What you want for it?”
“Thirty eight hundred.”
“For me?”
“For you thirty-three.”
“Will you hold it?”
“Joe, it’s not even unloaded. Ask me again at noon.”
“It won’t be here then.”
“I hope not.”
“I’ll take it you big bully.”

Total elapsed time? Maybe two minutes.

I can’t buy antiques like that. It takes me more time to think about things I see. Generally, if the time is available, I also like to check my impressions with Sarah, my wife and partner. So it’s about 11:30 and the unloading is well along before I make my first choices, a big heavy iron eagle that was once sat on top of a Chicago bank, a wonderful, big, carved wooden squirrel painted an improbable shade of green and a group of little carved song birds sitting on a rustic log.

I want Sarah to see a great country piece that, because it is expensive, I feel needs the two of us to agree on. It is a big pewter cupboard in a warm, worn red that looks like a New England piece because of the curves on the bonnet. There is also a very fine sailing ship model in perfect condition and I covet a group of 9 cast iron right hands that once to decorated an Ohio fence. (I know what you’re thinking but they are great.) It is with a hungry stomach and sore feet that I finally head up an alley and meet Sarah at the local Country Kitchen around noon for a quick bite.

The original plan was to give over my early buyers badge to her so she could do the afternoon shift. The badge was very expensive and we thought we could tag team the buying process and save money. As it turned out, even though we had heard from dealer friends that the security would be tight, we were able to walk around together in the afternoon.

I am happy to say that my partner loved the pewter cupboard, the model and the iron hands. That afternoon we also buy a child’s Windsor chair in great old, blue paint, a funky duck sewing box, a striking, red industrial wheel and an old, blue blanket chest in an unusually small size.

So it is that around 5:00 pm, after more than 7 hours on my feet, we stagger across the highway to the parking lot of the Opryland Hotel. We slowly drive back to the Tailgate Show and gingerly maneuver our van and trailer through the still busy, constricted merchandise aisles to retrieve our purchases. We had traveled over a thousand miles to do what we have just done. We are exhausted…and satisfied.