The Delaware Antiques Show

Was it the buoyant stock market, the promise of tax cuts, realistic prices on dealers’ tags in a tax-free state, or the hard work of dealers who reached out to clients ahead of time that that made shoppers ready to buy at the Delaware Antiques Show in Wilmington, Delaware, held November 10-12, 2017? It was all of the above.

- Lita Solis-Cohen

Dealers, who rarely sell during the opening party, sold this time at the preview on Thursday, November 9. On Friday, serious collectors came and made it a bang-up selling day. “I never stopped writing sales receipts on Friday,” said Polly Latham, a Boston dealer in China trade porcelain. “Pieces made for the American market sold first,” she said. “People made up their minds right away, and I sold a variety of porcelain and a tea caddy with painted views of China in the mid-nineteenth century.”

“I had the best preview ever,” said Mark Allen of Laconia, New Hampshire. “I sold a collection of six Dutch Delft tobacco jars, English and Dutch Delft bowls and plates and figures,” he noted. Up until closing time on Sunday he said he continued to sell delft, brass candlesticks, especially early ones, some iron, a corner cupboard, and a bucket bench.

Ceramics filled the shelves of other specialists who said that they also made multiple sales. Martyn Edgell, who came from the U.K., sold early wares, Westerwald, and Bellarmines, as well as mochaware. A.J. Warren, who carries on Maria and Peter Warren Antiques, her late parents’ business in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, sold English cauliflower wares, a pineapple teapot, and Chinese porcelain. Paul Vandekar sold a rare pair of Staffordshire squirrels, a Chinese export garniture, English delft, creamware wall pockets, Westerwald, and Bellarmines. Greg Kramer sold American redware and stoneware. In addition to English ceramics and American redware, Samuel Herrup sold some 20th-century Jugtown vessels with a striking turquoise Chinese glaze to collectors of earlier wares who said they would start a new collection. Jesse Goldberg sold transfer-printed jugs, and his figure of Benjamin Franklin, labeled “Washington,” was bought for Mount Vernon.