Dried Apples

It's apple harvesting time here in Connecticut. We have these wonderful old heirloom apple trees on our farm, with these small apples, charming, but what to do with them? Usually, we leave them for the deer. But this year with a huge amount of apples, I had a brainstorm, lets dry them and use them for decorating.

This is such a beautiful time of the year here in NE, warm dry days and cool nights, and the leaves are just starting to turn, its a pleasure to be outside picking up apples.

You can see our sheltie Lucy is very attentive to possible accidental drops. Here I am cutting the apples into slices for the dehydrator.

Here is the final result. I strung the apples on linen carpet line, made them 4' long with about 3' of apples. I also dried some apples whole. It takes a lot longer, but the results are pretty great, see below.

If you'd like to buy some of these, you can go to my website, www.bluedogantiques.com

Thanks for looking, see you next week!

Sutton Antique Show

Hi, I am sending you some pictures of the Sutton, MA antiques show we did last weekend. The show is a small one day show that benefits the historical society, and sets up on the picturesque town green.  At the left you can see a few members of the historical society that appeared in their Colonial uniforms, just a nice addition to the scenery!

To the right is my booth, nice huh?

Here is the booth of Sue and Gary Wirth, and their daughter Molly, talking to a customer.

Here is the booth shared by the Bowl Barn Antiques and Country Plus. Lots of nice dried things for the fall season.

Can you tell what a pretty fall day it was? We had a great time, thank you all the hardworking folks at Sutton, and all the friendly customers. Next week, check us out at the Lebanon, CT antiques show, Saturday, also on the town green.

Arranging your pewter cupboard

Welcome to my new blog. I want to write weekly about living with antiques, being an antiques dealer, and well, who knows? Any ideas out there?
Today I had a customer call wanting some ideas for her treen display in her open top cupboard. How to arrange? What to do?  I’ve included a pic of my pewter cupboard, where I just arranged some treen I own and some from the shop stock.  You can arrange cupboards many ways. One way is to look at it as an artist would look at a painting or sculpture, by putting your larger items here and there, and balancing with groups of smaller items. Don’t forget to balance your lights and darks,  and your colors. It would look really silly to put all the red items on one side, no? Also silly to put all the darker items on one shelf.
But the look I like the best is when you are trying to duplicate a harassed housewife putting away her things after a very long day. Who cares what it looks like, just put the darn stuff up so the dogs don’t step on it. My best inspiration are old, what are called genre prints. As an example, I have a small black and white print that shows a Rev War housewife defending her home with a rifle. On her mantle piece is a jug, a napkin or cloth and a stack of books. Nothing symmetrical about it. As far as I know, symmetrical mantle arrangements became popular in the early 19th C. when classical design was all the rage.
So have some fun with you cupboards. Take it all out and try throwing it in. You may just get a look you’ll love! And if you are in the mood for a little shopping, check out my website, www.bluedogantiques.com 

Daybreak at New England Motel Brimfield

We open at 6 a.m. on Wednesday morning. It's not even light out yet! Here is a pic of John Melby's booth with his candles burning. What ambiance, no?

Here is my booth in the early morning.
New England motel is the field we set up in at the fabled Brimfield antiques market, think thousands of dealers spread out over several miles on each side of the highway. I think there are about 16 different shows, some open continuously, some open on different days and close that day. Some dealers set up at several of the shows, setting up and tearing down and moving up the road and setting up again. Why do they do this? Well, its an outdoor show, and this gives you a better chance to hit a good weather day. And not all of the customers come every day. So they work a little harder, and hopefully make a bit more money. At least that's the theory.

Here is my friend Edd Oberg from Richmond House Antiques in his booth on our field a bit later. It sure helps to have some daylight!

The reason for this post is to talk about what some of us dealers are doing at the New England Motel. A group of us decided it would be fun to set up together at a field. We all have somewhat similar antiques to sell, and we can watch each others booths, and probably my customer would like Edd's antiques, and John's customer would like mine, so its good for the customers too, they can see a lot of nice early stuff all in one place. So far it seems to be working. Many customers commented favorably this September. We are adding another dealer in the spring, Cathy Constantino from Nova Scotia.

Here is my friend Rick Fuller from Vermont's booth. Does this man look awake to you? That is the only down side of all this fun, that early opening time makes for a sleepy dealer later in the day.








Here is my friend Stephanie Chiappa, from New York's booth, also in our little group. Lots of great smalls.