Date: Fri 27-Feb-1998

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

Greenwich

Full Text:

Greenwich Winter Antiques Show

w/cuts

OLD GREENWICH, CONN. -- For 18 years it's been known as the Greenwich Winter

Antiques Show, but you wouldn't have recognized it from the event's latest

appearance.

Balmy temperatures and sunny skies greeted patrons at the Greenwich Civic

Center - a happy setting for manager Hal McLean, who remembered very different

weather conditions two years prior.

"A Nor'easter dumped 28 to 32 inches on us," he recalled. "We didn't get to

take the show apart until Wednesday." Bad news for a Sunday show, that.

All was forgotten this January 4, however, when 65 dealers arranged their

wares in an atmosphere filled with natural light and good humor. Further

reminders of spring could be seen in a long row of colorful orchids placed at

the foot of the main auditorium's stage, which dealers stopped often to admire

and even to buy.

"I still have mine from last year," said Randall Decoteau, of Warren, Mass.

"It's doing quite well." Decouteau's offerings of Nineteenth Century formal

furnishings and accessories and American Impressionist paintings also did

well. Highlighting his booth was Addison T. Miller's "Misty Morning" and

Robert Emmet Owen's "Snow in the Mountains."

The miniature chairs and table set out by Kathy Suisman, of Bloomfield, Conn.,

reflected her happy news: "I just had a grandson," she said, smiling. Despite

being up all night for his delivery, Suisman took the time to brighten her

booth with hanging quilts in patterns of red, blue and white.

While Bonsal-Douglas Antiques, of Haddam, Conn., had their usual impressive

display of fine art, unusual among their selection was a late Eighteenth

Century Tibetan ghi storage cabinet priced at $3,200, a pair of Nineteenth

Century Indonesian dinks with carved bone handles for $260 and $245, and a

late Nineteenth Century Tibetan treen vessel for $185.

Duck paintings by G. Stevens and two circa 1880 botanical watercolors by

Elizabeth Baker could be found at Gilann Books, Darien, Conn., while a

flowering rhododendron by Robert John Thorton, from The Temple of Flora ,

1799, priced at $9,500, lit up the booth of Frederick Roberts Antique Prints,

Wilton, Conn.

A spring theme was also reflected in the offerings of William Nickerson

Antiques, Orleans, Mass., who draped a lovely Nineteenth Century quilt in

shades of pink, green and white smack in the center of their booth. And

perhaps the most surprising item of all was an enormous, round, 25 «-inch

diameter art glass sculpture signed by Luigi Vettari, which reared its

colorful head like a budding tulip in the booth of Graybeard Antiques, Inc,

Yorktown Heights, N.Y. Offered for $1,200, it seemed a good buy in a market

all agog for Italian glass.

We hope the weather is just as good to Mr McLean and his dealers during the

next Greenwich show, to be held March 7 and 8 in the civic center.