Date: Fri 02-Apr-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: MELISS

Quick Words:

winter

Full Text:

Winter Florida Shows: A Sunshine Break For Dealers And Collectors

By Karla Klein Albertson

MIAMI, FLA. -- When you ask people in the business about their annual show

schedule, they will often casually mention that they do some shows in Florida

during the winter, usually adding that the sales are great down there. When

cold winds blow in Cleveland or Boston, smart dealers pack up and head south

where the trade winds blow.

Tally up the hundreds of responses in this vein, and it becomes obvious that

the warm Florida winter season must be packed with large antique shows around

the state. Dolphin Promotions, for example, presented five events this year

during January and February, including a 300 dealer show in Fort Lauderdale

and a 400 plus exhibitor show in Miami on January 22-24.

The following weekend Miami was again the focus of attention when the D.S.

Clarke Antiques Show, managed by Bud and Muriel Maron, brought over 700

dealers to the Coconut Grove Convention Center January 27-31. Lou Baron's

Original Miami Beach Antique Show set up a thousand dealers at the Miami Beach

Convention Center for six days, January 29 to February 3. Both long-running

events are nearing their fortieth anniversary.

Coincidentally, the National Football League decided to have the Super Bowl

there at the same time. Hotel rooms were full from Orlando to Key West, and

far more visiting souls were in Miami than could ever fit into a single

stadium. The antiques shows became one facet of the larger weekend celebration

which felt a little like Mardi Gras and a bit like spring vacation from

college, with hundreds of people out on the street and immense cruise ships

disgorging more tourists at the pier. The Goodyear blimp was overhead,

searchlights cut through the night and the prevailing mood was "party-on."

Both shows included exhibitors who traveled across country from cities with

perfectly decent weather like Las Vegas and Los Angeles. There were also

dealers fleeing notoriously chilly spots like New York and London.

Some, like Roger and Sandra Butler of Lakeside Antique Galleries, enjoy a

winter home in Florida, far from the challenging climate of their other

residence near Syracuse.

The feel and tempo of the waterside Coconut Grove Convention Center was a bit

more relaxed and low-key. The brightly-lit Miami Beach show bustled with

dealers stretched side-by-side across a vast exhibition area. Baron publishes

a handy guide with an index of dealers and floor plan, which is really

indispensable in a 1,000-dealer event. Fortunately, both locations had their

own parking nearby, although the football crowds made getting there part of

the challenge.

Twentieth Century offerings -- furniture, art pottery and glass and paintings

-- are strong, as you would expect in a famous Art Deco city like Miami.

Collectors can find furniture and decorative arts from England, Europe and the

Orient. There was little country formal American furniture made prior to the

Arts and Crafts movement. The presence at the Lou Baron show of firms like

Treadway Galleries of Cincinnati and New York's Historical Design, Inc.,

demonstrate the importance of this period in the Florida market.

On the Miami Beach floor, Ignacio Granda-Cabarrouy of the city's Alhambra

Antiques Center was selling serious furniture, including a large cheval mirror

and a tour-de-force French cupboard from the end of the Nineteenth Century

with the Triumph of Neptune. He pointed out, "Look at the carving and the

expression on the faces. It went to a dealer, but for his personal

collection." Also doing well with furniture was Euro Exports from Boston,

which offered beautifully finished Biedermeier and Neoclassical pieces. An

Austrian ash and ebonized wood commode was $4,900, and a birch stand with

banded inlay, circa 1830, $2,700.

The Original Miami Beach Show is also particularly rich in fine estate jewelry

and silver. The great and glitzy pieces are put to bed in massive movable

floor safes that form a prominent part of the booth decor. Baron also manages

three jewelry and watch shows with many of the same dealers. They are held

later in the year at this convention center and in Las Vegas. Floridians seem

to have both the money to buy top quality and the chutzpah to actually wear it

in public.

"Wanted to Buy," signs and ads suggested that dealers were picking up

merchandise for later shows in other places as well as selling. Several

exhibitors suggested that intra-dealer sales were an important element in

their success. At the D.S.Clarke show, Sally Hoffman, Sarasota, Fla., sold ten

of her beaded purses to a dealer who hangs them as decor in his home, as well

as a large selection to a buyer from Spain. Hoffman, who does her own

restoration work on the bags, commented, "It's been an excellent show. Now I

have to go out and find some more bags."