Don't look now, but the Wayside Inn Antiques Show is making antiquing fun again. Staged most recently at the historic Wayside Inn, May 13–15, this 46-dealer fair mixes business and pleasure, striking a calculated balance between affordable fare and choice specimens for dedicated collectors.
Everything about this show seems designed to give pleasure. There is the verdant setting, lushly beautiful in springtime but just 30 minutes from central Boston. And the festive tent offers 20,000 square feet of heated and air-conditioned luxury. The people are a happy mix of costumed interpreters, ardent collectors, supporters of the historic Wayside Inn, and, of course, experts from Skinner, the Boston auction house that generously sponsors the show. As evidence of the show's caliber, exhibitors include six from the Winter Antiques Show, seven from The American Antiques Show and 17 from the Philadelphia Antiques Show.
Two exhibitors, Diana H. Bittel and Ralph DiSaia, manage the two-year-old fair on behalf of Wayside Inn, a Massachusetts Historic Landmark. Bittel serves as show manager. DiSaia is the facilities manager. DiSaia's job was made more difficult by a downpour on Sunday afternoon.
"Show logistics went amazingly well, considering," DiSaia told Antiques and The Arts Weekly . "The tent is 120 by 180 feet. The floor is plywood over a two-layer under-structure that is about 4 inches off the ground. We had some seepage in the tent, but no leaks. Rain made the site muddy for move-out, but exhibitors were packed out by 10:30 pm on Sunday. Next year, we are totally regrading the area to address these problems."
"I think attendance was fine, though we were hurt by the rain," Bittel said the day after the show's closing. "We drew supporters of the old Ellis Memorial Antiques and a number of very prominent collectors from the area. Some exhibitors sold well. A few did not do much business at all. Overall, people love the show and want to come back next year. I can't say enough about Skinner. They were fabulous."
This year's Wayside Inn Antiques Show was especially rich in regional American painting. On Newbury Street in Boston, Childs Gallery brought a selection of paintings from its current gallery exhibition, "A Shore Thing: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Marine Paintings." The tour de force was "Maine Rock," by William P. Burpee, who worked in Maine and Massachusetts.
"This is my Modernist corner," said Sarah Cunningham of Walker-Cunningham Fine Art, pointing to a nook ornamented with Albert Wein's 1946 bronze "Man with Plow," his Prix de Rome entry. She paired the bronze with Virginia True's "Nude," an oil on canvas mediation of the human form as structure. A pen and ink study accompanied the painting.
"Henry Ward Ranger really founded the Old Lyme colony in 1899 before moving to Mystic, Conn.," said Old Lyme, Conn., dealer Jeffrey Cooley. Ranger's "Evening Sky" was a highlight of Cooley's display of mostly Tonalist paintings.
