The Magazine Antiques

The Scene | By Staff

Antiques Week in Philadelphia

April 10, 2010  |  

Philadelphia hosts two important antiques shows in mid-April, and free shuttle service between them makes it easy to see everything on offer. The Twenty-third Street Armory Antiques Show, now in its sixteenth year, opens on Friday April 16 and features more than forty dealers showcasing eighteenth- through twentieth-century American and European fine, folk, and decorative arts. A special exhibition entitled Patriotism: Red, White, and True, drawn from the private collections of exhibiting  dealers, will include nineteenth- and twentieth-century objects displaying patriotic symbols. 

The gala preview party for the Philadelphia Antiques Show also occurs on April 16. The show itself, celebrating its forty-ninth anniversary this year, runs from April 17 through April 20 at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. It includes fifty dealers, primarily from the Middle Atlantic and New England states, who consistently offer a wide range of formal and folk paintings and decorative arts of the…» More

The Scene | By Gregory Cerio

Hudson

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October 2, 2009  |  The official seal of the city of Hudson, New York, depicts a whale—which strikes the first-time visitor to a town more than one hundred miles from the Atlantic as odd. But then, Hudson has had an odd history. The site—on high land between two deep-water bays—was noted by Henry Hudson in 1609, during his expedition up the river that bears his name aboard the ship Half Moon. Later in that century Dutch farmers bought a large tract of land encompassing the present-day city from the Mohican natives and named it Claverack.

Beginning in 1783 a group of Quakers, and later whalers and fishermen from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, settled in Claverack. For their purposes, the area was perfect: two ports, on a river teeming with fish and offering easy access to the ocean whaling grounds. These transplanted New Englanders platted a street grid and chartered the city of Hudson in 1785.

Prosperity came almost immediately via a thriving maritime industry, and within twenty years the streets were lined with handsome Federal and Greek revival houses and public buildings. The synthesis of kerosene as a lighting fuel, however, eventually crushed the market for sperm whale oil. And while the building of the Erie Canal and the arrival of the railroad encouraged the growth of manufacturing in Hudson, the city moved through a long cycle of booms and busts. By the 1970s it was another forlorn Rust Belt town.

But toward the end of the next decade, hope arrived in an unusual guise. Many New Yorkers, priced out of the ever-tonier Hamptons, began to look upstate for vacation retreats, and a cohort of antiques and vintage design dealers began to trickle into Hudson to serve them. Hudson's moribund business spine, Warren Street, began to blossom with design shops and galleries. Restaurants, art galleries, and vendors of wine, couture, and jewelry followed. Today Warren Street alone is home to some forty antiques stores and vintage furniture dealers, with another half-dozen or so located on nearby side streets. The Hudson Antique Dealers Association puts out a map—available in any member shop—to center city stores, and has an attractive and informative Web site: hudsonantiques.net. Hudson is about a two-hour train ride from New York City (the tracks skirt the majestic river). Intrepid collectors can hit the bulk of Hudson's antiques stores in a day. Most offer a mixed inventory, where an eighteenth-century sideboard might share space with a high modernist desk. Our advice: take your time. Hudson is a city best suited to what the French call a flâneur—an observant, judiciously minded stroller. What follows is a brief, selective guide to the stores of the city that antiques rescued.
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The Scene | By Laura Beach

Santa Fe

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Santa Fe is a city made by hand; a place of no hard edges or sharp departures, whose centuries old past stretches indelibly into the future. Well known from the art it has inspired, the Royal City of the Holy Faith, dedicated to Saint Francis of Assisi, startles first-time visitors. Above the jagged crest of La Bajada to the south, it rises against the backdrop of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, blood-tinged at dusk. At seven thousand feet, the heavens draw near and the unfiltered sun bleaches the Santa Fe landscape to a desiccated palette of straw, sage, lavender, ochre, and salmon.

The city’s vibrant art trade began near its historic plaza, where the Museum of New Mexico was founded a century ago. Galleries still circle the old town square and extend from its center along San Francisco Street and Palace Avenue.
From the Plaza, it is a fifteen minute walk to Canyon Road. With its dense concentration of shops, roughly eighty at last count, this picturesque thoroughfare is the…» More

The Scene | By Cassie Walker

Chicago

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May 25, 2009  |  Walk into any Chicago antiques shop and you will see that hauteur does not work as a sales tactic in the Midwest. Neither, for the most part, does period purism. The Chicago market is vibrant but eclectic, driven in part by a demand for modern objects that reflect the city’s skyline. Chicago may be the only American city in which Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan are household names. Their contributions are reflected not only in the city’s architecture, but in the numerous galleries that sell architectural artifacts and decorative arts that draw visitors from around the globe.

Besides friendly dealers and a trove of mid-century goods, collectors will find competitive prices—25 percent lower than those of their counterparts on the coasts, according to several dealers. There is no central antiques district in Chicago. You will find a cluster of galleries near the Merchandise Mart (home of the International Antiques Fair May 1 to 4), and a number of excellent shops on the city’s North Side. Keep going and you will also find good shops and galleries in the suburbs.
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