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For her sixteenth birthday, the wife’s future husband gave her a Saratoga trunk. “He knew I liked antiques,” she says. More than forty years later, antiques continue to be an integral component of this couple’s life together.

When the couple was first married, the husband was a graduate student at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. They would go to the Philadelphia Antiques Show each spring, and, says the wife, “though we knew we couldn’t afford objects of such quality at that point, we enjoyed viewing the booths and being inspired.” When they got married, her grandmother gave them some money, and the first thing they did was visit the antiques shops in New Hope, Pennsylvania, where they purchased an English Pembroke table, currently in their dining room, and a tiger maple chest of drawers, which their daughter and son-in-law now own. As they expanded their collection, the couple would attend the January antiques shows in New York—the Winter Antiques Show, the Piers, and Sanford Smith’s show to benefit the Museum of American Folk Art (now the American Folk Art Museum); increasing their collection slowly, but with items of quality. It was at a Sanford Smith show in the early 1980s that they first met Patrick Bell and Edwin Hild of Olde Hope Antiques. An instant bond was formed that continues today.

Behind the facade of a sprawling Mid-Atlantic stone house is one of the foremost collections of American folk art. Exuberant color and an affinity for sculptural and playful forms characterize this astonishingly layered gathering of objects. The common element uniting this collection is the extraordinarily fine quality of every piece. The collectors have meticulous instincts and have sought out the very best.

The adventure begins at the front door, which opens to an entry hall that is a blaze of color, the result in part of painted leather fire buckets that line the stairs and a pyramid of parade fire hats; a rare Shaker shelf clock and tailoring counter act as subdued foils. The ensemble hints at the treasures beyond. It is fitting to see Shaker pieces upon first entering the house; the couple began their collection acquiring furniture crafted by Shaker artisans whose intent was to create works of beauty and perfection.

Nearly half a century has passed since Clarence L. Prickett drove by a handsome 1800 stone farmhouse for sale in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and got out to take a look. A peek through the dining-room window revealed handsome beamed ceilings; then and there he realized it was the house for which he had been looking. In short order he moved his wife and three young children into the house of his dreams.

The large barn on the property provided ample space for his burgeoning antiques business. Soon he was spending time in New York at Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses, often on the floor studying the furniture from the bottom up. He has fond memories of the heady sixties and seventies, buying and selling with Harold and Albert Sack, John Walton, and Bob Skinner, among other leading lights of the trade.