Renningers Antique Extravaganza 2010

Published on 7/01/10

Antique and collectible dealers came together for the three-day Renninger’s Antique Extravaganza in Kutztown. Held on June 25-27, 2010, it was one of the largest antique shows of the summer season.
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Antique Homespun

All-purpose rural fabric to expensive eco-chic darling

Published on 3/29/10

Antiques must be the sexiest form of recycling. “Patina” is the richness of age; we all love the warm glow of old silver, the depth of antique woods, and the soft hand of old fabric. As “eco-chic” design grows in popularity, many people long for softer, simpler, “greener” options in decorating, and recognize the elegant role antiques play in that mix. “It’s about mixing natural materials in a sleek and sophisticated way,” says Sylvain Pitre in an online article about eco-chic style. Read More »

Winterthur Emerging from Short Shutdown

Opening of a new exhibition, Lost Gardens of the Brandywine

Published on 3/01/10

Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, famous for its regular schedule of garden tours and antiques exhibitions, has switched its focus to a seasonal calendar that better targets the museum’s programming and services. The popular Brandywine Valley attraction went into hibernation on February 1 and remains closed to the public until March 9. Read More »

Dream Garden

Philadelphia’s Tiffany treasure

Published on 11/05/09

When visitors come, what do you take them to see? When a friend showed us The Dream Garden in the Curtis Center in Philadelphia, it felt like a secret treasure unveiled. Dream Garden is a 15’ x 49’ glass mosaic, a collaborative venture between Louis Comfort Tiffany and Maxfield Parrish, completed in 1915. Edward Bok, who commissioned the mosaic, called Dream Garden a “wonderpiece, far exceeding the utmost expression of paint on canvas.” Read More »

Early Philadelphia

Portraiture from awkward to accomplished

Published on 9/05/09

Gustavus Hesselius’s 1732 portraits of two Delaware Indian Chiefs hang just steps away from John Singleton Copley’s 1773 portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mifflin at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In the vast stylistic difference between these two painters we can see Philadelphia’s emergence from colonial outpost to worldly city. Read More »

Pennsylvania Spice Boxes

Cabinetmakers’ elaborate craft

Published on 6/01/09

In medieval Europe, a pound of saffron cost the same as a horse. Spices were an economic force that carved ancient trade routes over land and 16th-century circumnavigation by sea. From the West Indies and beyond, spices came into Colonial Philadelphia for sale to the wealthy. In 17th-century England, and then in the colonies, valuable spices were often locked up in spice boxes. Read More »

Hooked

America’s humble homemade rugs

Published on 3/01/09

While wealthy colonists like Ben Franklin bought imported oriental rugs for their American homes, poorer and rural households were likely to make their own rugs, turning scraps of worn clothing and leftover yarn into hand-made hooked and rag rugs. Read More »

Time to Collect

Vintage wristwatches

Published on 12/01/08

With so many beautiful new watches to choose from, why choose vintage? John DiDonato of Farfo’s Vintage Watches in Franklin Lakes, N.J. (www.farfo.com) writes, “Vintage watches afford us the opportunity to wear or collect something truly rare and unique and yet at the same time, magically familiar. Vintage watches are for those who seek quality, craftsmanship, and style as a reflection of a lost era, a lost art.” Read More »

Pennsylvania Pewter

Silver’s poorer stepchild can now command high prices

Published on 9/01/08

Don Herr chuckled when asked whether local antique pewter treasures are still to be found. “It’s incredible the things I find out there,” he says. Herr, author of Pewter in Pennsylvania German Churches, visited “many little country churches” around Lancaster and was stunned by the ecclesiastical pewter there. “They had no idea what they had,” Herr says of one church. “There was a $150,00 piece of pewter sitting near a glass window. I told the minister what it was worth, and he said, ‘Bless you.’” Read More »