Decorative Arts Trust

Symposiums & Study Trips > Review: VIP Weekend 2003

WE TOOK MANHATTAN!!

It’s become commonplace to call New York “The Big Apple,” but during Antiques Week in January, the image that comes to mind is of a luscious candied apple-on-a-stick: shiny, super-sweet, with a skin like crackling jewels. And this year the weather collaborated to complete the image.

Eleanor Gordon, ‘grande dame’ of Chinese export porcelain, talks with Jonathan Fairbanks and Nancy Iliff about blue and white in her booth at the Winter Antiques Show.

The air was so cold it snapped; the sky was so bright it glittered; and a coating of snow lay on surfaces like sugar frosting. Into that candyland we stepped, ready to munch our way through the goodies.

Sumpter Priddy, of Sumpter Priddy III, Inc., energetically and knowledgeably takes Trust members through the Winter Show each year during our “early entrance“ privilege. Known as a scholar-dealer, Sumpter’s own booth is particularly fascinating.

The central element of VIP Weekend is the Winter Antiques Show, naturally. At 49, it’s one of the nation’s oldest and best; and it seems to get better every year. This winter, the central loan exhibit featured Vermont’s great Shelburne Museum. More a community of buildings (“a collection of collections,” its founder called it), the Shelburne Museum has been home to literally thousands of objects since 1947. Electra Havemeyer Webb was a collector born and bred; she couldn’t resist the attraction of a fine object. Very many of the things she acquired for Shelburne are landmarks of their kind.

Trust member Sara Donnem serves the show as one of its Chairmen. She and her husband, Roland, were our hosts at a preview tour of the show floor. Guided by dealers in the American arts, we visited booths and often spoke with their owners before the crowds poured through the doors of the Armory. After lunch in the Armory’s Tiffany Room, we were free to return to the show, to examine the many booths we didn’t visit in the morning.

Trust members Mary Anderson from Colorado, Sumpter Priddy of Alexandria, Virginia, and Nancy Iliff of Lexington, Kentucky, are introduced to Old Hope Antiques during our tours of the Winter Antiques Show.

The Winter Antiques Show gets the most press, but it isn’t the only game in town. A cluster of smaller shows are held during Antiques Week, and Trust Weekend-ers ranged happily among them, meeting each other, comparing finds, and hurrying on to others.

New York is a treasury of “Places You’ve Never Been,” and the Trust sees it as our mission to Take You There! This year, we visited Gracie Mansion, the Federal manor that’s the official residence of New York’s mayors. Set on a point of land in the East River, it provides astonishingly beautiful waterscapes. Its staterooms and chambers contain impressive Federal and Empire furnishings, among them a gracious mirrored Lannuier sideboard and a monumental Gothic Revival dining table by J.& J.W. Meeks.

Margize Howell, Trust Governor, lighting the last candle before Trust members arrive for tea.

While visions of 19th century sugarplums were still dancing in our heads, we sought the apartment of Trust Governor Margize Howell, where a gracious high tea awaited us. Margize provided us with the perfect opportunity for camaraderie and connoisseurship.

The two largest auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, hold major sales during Antiques Week, and their galleries are like interactive museums where you’re invited to pick up, turn over and ask questions about the displays. And when you’re done, you can watch — or join in — the excitement on the bidding floor. For many, that’s a high point of the weekend.

The city’s antiques and art dealers fill their galleries with tempting things. Many dealers prepare catalogues, hold extended hours, and host receptions for special visitors. We were Leigh Keno’s guests at a breakfast in his new galleries, where we spoke with him and his staff, and examined furniture on display.

Trust members devouring an early bound book of Edwards prints and watercolors at the Donald Heald Gallery. Donald Heald, second from right.

At the New York Historical Society we had the opportunity of visiting a special exhibit of rare maps from Colonial Williamsburg, just before it closed. Margaret Pritchard, a Trust Governor, had curated it with a colleague, Henry Taliafero; and she spoke with us about the maps before the two of them walked through the exhibit with us. Following it, we were the guests of rare print and map dealer Donald Heald at a reception in his shop. The opportunity of examining exceptional objects in a distinguished setting is one of the greatest privileges of attending an event like the Trust’s VIP Weekend.

Clifford Harvard of Leigh Keno Americana, who faithfully and exuberantly shows Trust members around the Winter Show each year, pointing out classical objects in the Carswell Rush Berlin booth.

The weekend concluded on a high, at a brunch in the Armory’s Tiffany Room hosted by John Smiraldo, founder and publisher of The Catalogue of Antiques and Fine Art, and Johanna McBrien, its Editor. We were carried again to Shelburne, Vermont, where Shelburne’s Director spoke about the museum and its remarkable founder. Trust member Russell Buskirk, cabinetmaker and conservator, demonstrated the art of inlay making. And Trust President Jonathan Fairbanks spoke while we viewed a tape of the demonstration of classical portrait painting he had done this past year at the Trust symposium at Yale. (It was as astonishing the second time around as it had been the first!).

When the reception broke up, we went our separate ways, repeating that this year’s Weekend was the best one yet. We have a goal to surpass in 2004; and we hope you’ll be there to watch us do it.