Armory Antique Show
The Armory Antique Show is a crowd pleaser, offering a playful abundance of eclectic wares at a range of prices. Organizers promise roughly one hundred specialists in antique and vintage furniture, folk art, Americana, modern design, garden ornament, lighting, jewelry, silver, textiles, and ceramics. Under new management this year, the Armory Antique Show was recently acquired by U.S. Antique Shows, whose schedule includes events in Florida, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Snowbirds flock to its flagship Original Miami Beach Antique Show, planned for January 30 to February 3 and perhaps best known for fine art, furniture, jewelry, silver, and ceramics. Vice president and group fair director Dan Darby promises few changes to the New York show, a magnet for Americana.
January 24–26 • 69th Regiment Armory, 68 Lexington Ave. • armoryantiqueshow.com
Odd Fellows Heart in Hand staff, early twentieth century. Painted wood. American Garage, Los Angeles.
Metro Show
The edgy Metro Show prides itself on having a point of view. This year, as if to emphasize the fact, the fair’s thirty-five exhibitors have each developed thematic presentations of art and antiques. The “curated” booths, as director Caroline Kerrigan Lerch is calling them, will include a dedicated display of twenty-eight works by the self-taught master Bill Traylor, presented by California dealers Susan Baerwald and Marcy Carsey of Just Folk; and Southern Cheyenne ledger drawings gathered by Santa Fe dealer H. Malcolm Grimmer, to name but two. “Collecticism,” a lecture series organized by Randall Morris of Cavin-Morris Gallery, will consider the people, amateur and professional, who pursue objects and offer thoughts on what Morris calls “collecting without borders.” As the dealer explains, “an eclectic approach to gathering works of art is particularly appealing and appropriate for younger people.”
January 23–26, preview January 22 • Metropolitan Pavilion, 125West 18th St. • metroshownyc.com
New York Ceramics Fair
Ceramics are the shapeshifters of the art world, painterly, sculptural, or architectural to suit every taste. Their range, versatility, and universal appeal is celebrated by the New York Ceramics Fair, which, co-produced for the first time by founder Caskey Lees and veteran organizer Meg Wendy, returns with twenty-nine exhibitors to the Bohemian National Hall with a broadened mission—to satisfy confirmed collectors and entice new ones. Accordingly, the loan exhibition, Bacchanalistas: Passions and Pleasure Ceramics and Glass, samples objects of revelry from the sixteenth century to the present. In a related vein, on Saturday January 25 Ceramics in America editor Robert Hunter will address sacred and secular themes in mainly British and American ceramics. His talk is one of a series sponsored at the fair by the Chipstone Foundation. Other speakers are Angelika Kuettner, Leslie B. Grigsby, Ian Simmonds, Ron Fuchs II, and Leslie Ferrin.
January 22–26, preview January 21 • Bohemian National Hall, 321East 73rd St. • caskeylees.com/NY_Ceramics
