Date: Fri 07-May-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: LAURAB

Quick Words:

NYBontanicalGarden

Full Text:

The New York Botanical Garden Antique Garden Furniture Show

(with cuts)

By Laura Beach

BRONX, N.Y. -- At 3 pm on Thursday afternoon, April 22, trucks were still

disgorging their substantial contents into a tent erected on the grounds of

one of America's premier horticultural institutions, the New York Botanical

Garden. Maple, hickory and willow trees had unfurled their leaves like tiny

welcoming banners. Across the NYBG's stately lawn was strewn a confetti of

fallen blossoms.

The occasion was the NYBG's annual Antique Garden Furniture Show. Although

only 24-dealers strong, the show is monumental in almost every other sense.

Managed by N. Pendergast Jones and only seven years old, it is a model to

which other garden antiques shows aspire. It is elegant and glamorous, with

content that is high quality though not uniformly high in price. Assisted by a

battalion of green-uniformed NYBG gardeners, the classy affair resembles in

its stylishness, if not in size and variety, the Chelsea Flower Show in

London.

Supported by one of New York's most prestigious charities, it is also a

trading venue of considerable heft. Among the 700 or so who attended the

preview party on April 22 were leading landscape designers, architects,

decorators, horticulturists and collectors.

"Attendance was wonderful, right through the weekend," Jones said afterwards.

"This is one show where good weather helps, and Saturday and Sunday were both

lovely."

Many garden enthusiasts are already acquainted with the NYBG through its

substantial calendar of classes. But for those who don't know, the gardens are

easy to get to and, once there, well worth the trip.

Still, it is a trip that shoppers from outlying areas are not likely to make

more than once in a weekend. Thus the preview party tends to be as profitable

as it is social. Exhibitors' only complaint was that the noisy proceedings of

opening night's rare plants auction interfered with selling. Next year Jones

hopes to move the auction to an adjacent tent near the show's front entrance.

With 25 additional feet of tent space, the manager added two new exhibitors

and carved out space for a cafe. Welcomed by exhibitors, the bucolic retreat

was handsomely furnished by Ralph Lauren Home Collection, Hermes and Cristal

Saint-Louis.

Sales were excellent, though several dealers said they had not exceeded last

year's results. "We sold right up to the last minute on Sunday," said

first-time exhibitor Kate Alex of New Hampshire. "People were interested in

jardinieres and planters, and not so much in furniture." Alex featured a suite

of iron garden furniture from the Henry Cabot Lodge estate.

"A lot of people were interested in horticultural items," added Princes Anne,

Md. dealer Aileen Minor. "The NYBG attracts dedicated gardeners. They are

looking for things they can use -- wirework hanging baskets and trellises, for

instance. This is definitely a place to develop clients."

Joan Evans of Lambertville, N.J. and New York City sold all her major items: a

cast stone table and four armchairs, a Fiske fountain, and a pair of stone

urns.

"It was outrageously wonderful," said Anne Elizabeth Rowe of the Sugarplum,

Danbury, N.H. "Our truck was overloaded and we came home with very little.

Cast stone is selling like crazy. The animals just fly out of the booth. We

tried to bring a variety of things, high end to items that are more

accessible. We sold across the board."

In a pre-opening tour of the floor, Jones called attention to some of the

show's unsung treasures. "There's a lot of grand material on the floor, but I

want people to know that there are little things, too," she explained. Prices

started at $6 for a filtration ball.

Aileen Minor gave her customers plenty to choose from, offering such

inexpensive items as a set of child's gardening tools, $85; an old cast iron

pump, $50; decorative bricks, $45 each; and a faux painted watering can, $125.

Three vintage lawn sprinklers ranged from $85 for one stamped Rainy Sprinkler,

Peoria, Ill., to an unmarked device in old paint, $35.

Two other novelties were vintage photographs and flower frogs. Bob Withington

of Kittery, Me., displayed the collectible devices for arranging flowers in

every medium and shape. "Bob, I want these," one exhibitor had scrawled on

napkin left in his stand, leaving the dealer to find the note when he returned

for the preview. The frogs cost about $50 to $275.

Charming and still inexpensive, garden photographs cropped up in several

booths. Aileen Minor featured a view of a Nineteenth Century brick residence

in Hagerstown, Md.. The print shows a rustic iron fence encircling a blowsy

looking garden and a homeowner parading a peacock, $575. A photo of a country

wedding with members of the wedding party proceeding in a wagon was $275.

Formerly Anchor & Dolphin Books of Newport, R.I., Hinck & Wall have relocated

to Washington, D.C. Hinck, who carries a sophisticated inventory of landscape

design and horticulture publications, says his NYBG clientele loves early

nursery catalogues and volumes on town planning. Proving that books are

neither dull nor impersonal, Hinck left open a private album containing tinted

photographs of a home garden, $750. Anchoring the daffodil-colored stand of

Lyons Ltd, Menlo Park, Calif, was "Narcissus." The hand-colored, engraved

plate from B. Besler's herbal dated to 1611.

When forklifts are involved, as they are in displays of heavy garden ornament,

two days of set up hardly seem enough. Dealers wore themselves out creating

imaginative settings for an extraordinary range of ornament.

Anne Rowe's husband, a carpenter, created a coolly classical enclosure for her

collection of tables, chairs, sculpture and garniture. A French iron garden

bench and chairs was $1,700; four Victorian stone columns, $1,450; and an

English cast stone statue of a lady, $2,300.

Drawn from a Buffalo, N.Y. home, a circa 1910 grisaille mural on canvas set

the stage for Pam and Gene Martine's refined display. The booth included a

French trade sign and Eighteenth Century carved marble lions.

At the Garden Antiquary, New York City, a pair of lions and a fountain with

dolphin and putto mingled with a wonderful marble mailbox and a pair of Gothic

stone planters.

Artificial stone, both fired and cast, was everywhere. Robert Ziesmer of

Danville, Ky. offered a bench with aggregate overlay for $4,500. The early

Twentieth Century piece was found in a rose garden north of Troy, N.Y. Aileen

Minor has recently retailed fired pieces by Galway Pottery of Philadelphia and

the Portland Stoneware Company of Portland, Ore. An unusual pair of cast

garden pots with aggregate surface for interest were $550 in her stand.

"Anything rustic sold at this year's show," Minor said afterwards. Rustic

furniture, planters and other accessories in every medium proliferated.

Artifacts of Nashville, Tenn. featured a cast stone birdbath, $1,150. Minor's

rustic cast-iron planter from the Nineteenth Century was $275.

Spheres also seem to be of universal interest. Pam and Gene Marine offered

shoppers their choice of a pair of iron strapwork spheres and a Nineteenth

Century bronze armilary sphere mounted on limestone. Made in Philadelphia in

the Nineteenth Century, Minor's pair of antique terra cotta ball finials on

square bases were $675.

The high end was sustained by Barbara Israel, a Katonah, N.Y., dealer who

exhibits at the Winter Antiques Show and will this fall publish her long

awaited reference, Antique Garden Ornament: Two Hundred Years Of American

Taste . The centerpiece of her display was a lead figure representing the

continent of Africa supporting a marble sundial, $59,950. It came from a

private estate in Stormville, N.Y. An identical sculpture was pictured by

Gertrude Jekyll in Garden Ornament in 1918.

There were a variety of fountains for shoppers to choose from. Joan Evans

featured a cast iron Fiske example in the form of an egret. In colorful

contrast to the stone and unglazed pottery in most of the stands was an Arts

and Crafts period tiled fountain, $15,000, at Webb and Brennan of Pittsford,

N.Y. The circa 1910 piece was accompanied by a pair of French terra cotta urns

with crackled yellow glaze, $4,400. Judith and James Milne of New York showed

a seal fountain from a New York estate.

Asked what he would keep from his balanced assortment if he were not obligated

to sell, Danville, Ky., dealer Robert Ziesmer said it would be a stylish pair

of French metal-mesh, sling-back garden chairs. "I wouldn't need a fork lift

to carry them," he explained.

One of the most unusual sets of furniture on the floor was a cast stone table

and four matching armchairs whose surface imitated tufted upholstery. Joan

Evans sold the imaginative suite. At Balsamo Antiquites, Pine Plains, N.Y.,

English garden benches, $1,200 each, nested among three-tiered topiaries of

rosemary and ivy.

One of the show's most eclectic displays belonged to Jill Nooney and Roz Novak

of Fine Garden Art and Ornaments. The Lee, N.H. dealers combined a Welsh

coffin carrier, $850, whose copper surface would suit an upscale potting shed,

with other implements, plant standards and furniture. The prize item was an

elaborate wire gazebo, $5,500.

Penny Jones and the NYBG exhibitors are to be credited for creating a stunning

show in a sublime setting. Though it is no longer the only garden antiques

fair in this country, it remains the queen of them all. Well established after

seven years, we expect the Antique Garden Furniture Show, like an exotic

horticultural specimen, to bloom even more profusely in the future.