I had hoped to be in Old Saybrook, CT, on June 1 to set up at the Old Saybrook Historical Society’s Inaugural Antique Show at the historic Gen. William Hart House, 350 Main Street. It opens at 9am and admission is free, yes, free! In addition to the dealers selling under tents, there will be several appraisers available between 10am and 1pm to give verbal appraisals of your antique and collectible items for a very reasonable fee that will help to support the Historical Society's projects. Alas, I won't be there... Instead I'll be in Chestertown, MD, at my wife's 50th college reunion where I intend to eat enough crab cake to make up for missing the Saybrook show.
A week later, however, on June 8, I plan to be in Cheshire, CT, set up at the Historical Society Antiques and Collectibles Sale on the Church Green across from the historic Hitchcock-Phillips House. This is a show I've never been to, even as a visitor, so I can't tell you what to expect (from anyone else, that is) but the antiques sale shares the green with the annual Strawberry Festival, so you know you really can't go wrong.
This is the "garden" time of the year, so among the things I'll be showing this spring (subject to prior sale) are a circa 1900 Rotating Bench that was originally intended to hold potted plants in your attached conservatory. It can still fill that purpose in your sunroom, or you may find an entirely new use for the three shelves, perhaps a server for an alfresco luncheon...
I also have what was touted as a "man-made hollow tree"...
It was designed as a working bee skep, but proved problematical because it took a long time to build out of strips of wood lath and because there was no efficient way to remove the honey when the time came except by following the custom of a bear, clawing it out in large chunks. Although it could still function today as a skep, it might better be seen as a wonderful sculpture, and if you were to add a light inside it, a most interesting nighttime addition to your garden.
And more, both large and small.
Then for July I am already planning what I'll take to the first Antiques in Vermont Summer Antiques Show to be held July 13 on the grass in front of Riley Rink in Manchester, VT. No question about what this show will be like. Tim Stevenson and Phyllis Carlson have been running the Fall Antiques in Vermont show for almost thirty years to wrap up Vermont Antiques Week each October and it is, hands down, as good a one-day show as you can expect to find, anywhere. We're all quite excited about being a part of this new show. More about that next time...
