Jan and John Maggs Antiques
Conway, Massachusetts
Newsletter -- June 15, 2004
SHOP TALK
Thanks for opening this, our fifth, monthly newsletter. We continue to hear from many of you, and your encouragement is deeply appreciated. Please continue to e-mail your comments and suggestions.
May was a very busy month for us, at shows and in the shop. We spent most of the week of May 10-14 at Brimfield, where we enjoyed excellent sales at both of our selling venues, thanks in part to huge crowds of buyers. Perhaps more importantly, we shopped Brimfield every day of the week and were able to acquire several excellent pieces, two of which earned us mention and a photo in Antiques and the Arts Weekly. The momentum continued through the end of the month, culminating in our best-ever Rhinebeck show. Shop sales were also strong, beginning with an excellent turnout for our post England opening, and continuing throughout the month with several significant retail and dealer sales. Conversations with other dealers reinforce our feeling that the antiques business may be experiencing a minor rebound from the slump of the past two or three years.
June began with a new show for us, the Woodbury Antiques Fair at Three Rivers Park. This was our first show with promoter Frank Gaglio of Barn Star Productions, and we found it to be as well organized and dealer-friendly as we'd been told. The show attracted many serious buyers, though in smaller number than hoped for, due in part to a dismal weather forecast. One dealer commented, "It was a great gate. Too bad more people didn't go through it." Still, our receipts at the end of the day more than justified the investment of time and money. We'll be back in 2005.
OUR NEW BUSINESS CARDS
For several years our hand-drawn business card has attracted attention and helped to keep us memorable. Our names, address, and phone number, printed on four slats of an early ladderback chair were tiny and not easy to read, but became part of our identity, suggesting a combination of knowledge and naiveté that are the hallmarks of our business.
For years we hand-stamped or hand-wrote our website and e-mail address on the backs of these cards (of which we still have hundreds). But when the town of Conway changed our physical address by eliminating Pumpkin Hollow from the map, the obsolescence of our business card became more apparent. A change was necessary.
Our new card retains the image of a ladderback armchair, though this one is not a tracing of a picture in a book, but rather a computer-generated adaptation of a real chair--in fact, the one pictured in the Brimfield article mentioned above. Our vital statistics--including proper address, website, and e-mail--now appear in easily readable type next to rather than on the chair. We like it almost as much as the old one; we hope you do, too.
Featured Inventory
The downside of a period of active selling is that inventory shrinks. A glance at our website will give you an idea; a look at our showrooms makes the point even more strongly. Nonetheless, we've managed to acquire a few excellent pieces, some of which are spotlighted in this newsletter. Click on the highlighted text for more information.
It's a well-kept secret that we are the leading source for back issues of The Magazine Antiques, that bastion of the antiques publishing world, with an inventory of more than 6000 back issues, from 1922, the first year of the magazine's existence through the present. We have provided back issues to researchers at the Smithsonian and The Washington Post, as well as dozens of dealers and collectors. At the moment we are offering for sale the full run of the magazine, from January 1922 through January 2001. Click HERE for more information. Our current inventory of individual copies may be viewed on our website through this link: TMA
Upcoming Shows
In this issue, as usual, we'll give you an insider's look at our shows for the next two months. Click here to go to this month's shows page.
This Month's Feature
With this issue of our newsletter, we offer the first in a series of twelve pictorial articles on our restoration of our home. Starting with our discovery of the derelict property in 1985, each installment will illustrate a phase of the demolition and reconstruction which have occupied us in the intervening years. Click here to begin.
Tales of the Trade
So many of you have commented on the excerpt from Bill Hubbard's memoir, AUCTION or "Madam, You Cannot Possibly Go Wrong On This Bed", published in our April newsletter, that we felt another selection might be as enjoyable. Click here for a bizarre tale.
Links
To visit the Jan and John Maggs Antiques website, click HERE.
For directions to our shop, click HERE.
To e-mail us, click on the envelope.
For past issues of this Newsletter, click the links below.
Visit our Links Page by clicking HERE.
The first lecture in the Longmeadow Historical Society's Deerfield Curator Lecture Series, consisting of talks by four prominent Historic Deerfield historians, was a great success. Information on the remaining three lectures may be found on a printable card or by visiting the Longmeadow Historical Society website.
Thanks for taking the time to read our little monthly. As always, we encourage you to e-mail any comments that might make the newsletter more useful to you. Just use this link.
And we thank you for being a customer.
John and Jan