Just after 8:00 on Friday morning, January 20, we left Conway to set up our booth at the Boston Antiques and Design Show in Wilmington, a few miles north of Boston. This has been an important show for us, providing important exposure to the greater Boston population. We’ve always brought a selection of our very best stock and made every effort to give it a dynamic presentation. This year’s show was no exception, and our van was packed to its limit with seventeenth century furniture, paintings, and smalls.

We knew that this would not be a typical show. The weather forecast for Saturday was dire, calling for snow throughout the morning and early afternoon. Since Saturday is always the stronger day of a two-day show, we were prepared for a discouraging weekend.

There was a further complication. For months we had been searching for an American slant-lid desk for a long-time client in New York. We had finally located a wonderful Boston Chippendale desk in the shop of a dealer friend from northern Maine, and he was bringing it to the show. If, after our inspection and evaluation of the desk, our client decided to purchase it, we would buy it and get it to Conway, from where it would travel to New York. If we sold almost any piece of furniture, it would probably fit in our van. But if we sold nothing large, we’d need to make a special trip to Conway from the show. We had negotiated a delivery fee to cover this expense and reimburse us for our time, should the extra trip be required. During setup, we inspected the desk and recommended it to our client, who decided to buy it. It was going home with us.

We finished setting up our booth, walked the show a few times, bought a few things from other dealers, and left to find our hotel.

The snow began just before we left our hotel on Saturday morning. By the time we reached the show facility, only a fifteen minute drive away, we had witnessed more than half a dozen fender benders, all caused by the increasingly treacherous highways. This did not bode well for the first day of the show.

As expected, the Saturday crowd was small - hundreds, where there would normally be thousands - and for most dealers, sales were far weaker than usual. We felt extremely fortunate that by the end of the first day, thanks to our computer and our iPhone, we'd sold the desk and a handsome brass honesty box - purchased by a collector in western Massachusetts through a series of emails - as well as two important smalls that we’d brought from home. In all a good day, but we’d not freed up even a square foot in our van. The desk would have to be brought to Conway before the show opened on Sunday morning.

Before we left on Saturday, Marvin Getman, the show's promoter, had stopped by our booth to see how we were doing. With few exceptions, promoters are conspicuously absent during quiet shows. Marvin has never been one to adopt this "head in the sand" approach. Today, while it snowed outside and dealers grumbled on the floor, Marvin spent the afternoon photographing booths throughout the show. He told us that he was planning an email that would go out to his mailing list early in the evening. It would include a link to a slide show of photos of the show and a discount ticket for Sunday.

When we left the show on Saturday, the temperature was in the teens, the wind was causing drifting, and the roads were still very slippery. We were tired, having spent the day standing on a cement floor in conversing with interested shoppers who had braved the weather. We decided that it would be prudent to postpone our trip to Conway until Sunday morning. We went to bed early, our alarm set for 3:30.

We checked out of our hotel at 4:30 a.m. and had the highways to ourselves. We reached home without incident, unloaded, spent a few minutes with a very confused Pippin, and then retraced our route, stopping only for a cup of coffee and to refill our 28 gallon fuel tank. We arrived at the show before 10:00 and secured a parking space near the building, which would expedite pack-out when the show closed at 4:00.

Sunday's crowd was considerably stronger than Saturday's, and we observed more dealers with smiling faces. Around noon a young woman entered our booth and began to inspect a painting by Dennis Sheehan that was hanging on the back wall of our booth. She had seen it in Marvin's slide show, recognized it as a Sheehan, and had come to the show to see it in person. She left our booth with two paintings and plans to visit our shop in Conway to see more. I immediately sought out Marvin and told him that his slide show had generated an important sale for us. I wish I'd had a camera to capture the smile that appeared on his face.

As we had in the morning, we traveled the route from Wilmington to Conway in darkness. Despite the weather, our show had been a success. Marvin's online slide show had brought buyers to the show on Sunday and had undoubtedly improved the bottom line for many dealers.

A good weekend, after all.

Postscript:

We had just finished reading Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, an interesting study of the antiques trade by Maureen Stanton. Much of the book's content is based on the author's friendship with a real-life antiques dealer, with whom she traveled to auctions and shows to gain insight into the business. This dealer, and most of the other real characters in the book, is given a fictitious name. By Chapter Six, we thought that we'd figured out the true identity of the book's protagonist, "Curt Avery." Our suspect would be at the show. We'd ask him.

As we were bringing the last few pieces from our van to our booth, "Curt Avery" walked by our booth. "Mr. Avery, I presume," I said. He answered, guardedly, "Could be," smiled, and continued to walk past.

Killer Stuff and Tons of Money is a good read, and we recommend it highly for its entertaining narrative, interesting tales of the trade, and its varied cast of characters. See how many you can identify.