A busy weekend raising money for charity

The last week I have been managing an antique show, The Main Line Antiques Show, the only antiques show held in the heart of the Main Line is in its sixth year. As chair and manager of the show set up and duration of the show is a busy time for me. We moved last year to a new location the Radnor Valley Country Club in Villanova and this year we improved the walls we have been using, this of course created its own problems as we built out the show, nothing that could not be overcome and on opening night the show looked fantastic. Whilst we are still analyzing the results we want to thank all our sponsors for this year who enabled us to hold the show and for it to be such a successful fund raising event for Surrey Services for Seniors.

We had had just over 300 people at the opening night preview party which ran from 5-9 PM. Some sales were made but sales really picked up on Saturday with many dealers around the show reporting having made sales.

There was an interesting mix of furniture, ceramics, paintings, textiles, vintage purses, silver and lots of other interesting objects.

Gallery51 from Philadelphia had a wonderful display of Swedish textiles, colorful and easily usable in room design, this was one of my favorite booths in the show. I really found these textiles interesting and their simplicity and vibrancy really connected with you on a very basic level.

Another popular booth was Perry Joce Fine Art from Michigan who had paintings and embroidery seen above as well as some smaller furniture pieces.

Majolica was displayed by Carol Ann Kooperman one of our ceramics dealers,

James Kilvington from Delaware exhibited for the first time this year

and Monroe Coldren and Son Antiques

The Sword and Pen had an interesting booth

We had several furniture dealers with American and English furniture as well as some with Europen pieces below is the booth of The Federalist Antiques all the way from Chicago

Some dealers combined to create a decorative look as these three dealers did Dixon Hall Fine Art, Wesley Sessa Antiques and Heller Washam from Maine, a lot of work but a wonderful result

You can see below a woolwork picture of a steam engine, tying in with last year's theme of The Main Line Railroads along with many other items

Another ceramics dealers was Paul Vandekar booth show above, my brother who had a large booth displaying engravings, wool work pictures as well as a wide mix of ceramics from China and Europe.

There was also a well attended lecture series, with lectures given by Jeff Groff and Frank Garrison on Mansions of the Main Line. Jeff can be seen below giving his lecture More English than England that focused on how the homes, farms and estates were built to replicate the English lifestyle.

Dates for next year are November 17 and 18 2012 so save the date as many of our dealers from this year will be returning in 2012.