The East Hamptons Antiques Show - Scott Estepp

Scott Estepp is definitely one of a kind, and I mean that in the most flattering sense. Anyone who is familiar with Scott can recognize his quirky and often off the wall inventory of found objects, American folk art, period and continental pieces often squeezed together in an unexpected yet somehow perfect composition.


Always humble about his work, Scott is never too proud to ask "what do you think" during setups. He's always ready to help out when I'm splitting hairs about my own booth setup, and I have to say he's one of the guys at the shows that taught me that its ok to think "out of the box" when it comes to collecting, display, composition and the importance of presenting your merchandise in the best way that you can.


For as long as he can remmember Scott has been a collector of things. As he says "I have a love of good design - anything that is well designed" is fair game for Scott's unwavering eye. He sums up his look as "sculptural objects" and for some inexplicable reason he says he's drawn to circular forms. We can see that from the folk art wheel sculpture made from fence pickets secured with handmade iron rings.







He travels hundreds of miles up and down the American back country, working with local craftsmen to fabricate armatures, stands, and bases for his numerous oddly shaped found objects and folk art that he has become known for. I once saw a wooden Winebago motorhome the size of a breadbox hung from fishing line in Scott's booth, it was a birdhouse. It was very "Scott", as dealers have been known to say.

Scott's selections for this year's East Hampton Antiques Show were no less odd and certainly no less amazing than any of his other shows. I especially loved the wall sculpture made of antique hand trowels, it is wonderful.
Scott can be found at scottestepp.1stdibs.com
and at "The Modernism" Show at the Downtown Amory in NYC, and at "The Pier Show", as well as The East Hampton Antiques Show annually.

The East Hampton Antiques Show - Linda Elmore Antiques

Linda and Dennis Elmore, like so many of the antiques dealers out there who are married couples doing what they love to do, exemplify what it is to be entrepreneurs.
Linda will tell you that their adventures into the antiques business started over 30 years ago when her husband had an extended business trip in Manchester, England.
Linda, a housewife at the time, was along for the trip to enjoy the countryside and shop for some furniture for their home. What comes next is a familiar story to many, the dealer convinced Linda to take a few more pieces to defray the cost of shipping just a few. Not only did Linda like the stripped antique pine she was buying for herself, she saw the opportunity to open a small business back home.
Once her container of stripped pine 18th and 19th century furniture arrived she took out a full page ad in the NY Times, and in two weeks she sold everything!. That was 30 years ago. During the next 14 years the Elmores transitioned from light stripped pine to darker woods such as mahogany.
More recently as the dollar has fallen and the price of fuel as increased Linda said they have transitioned once again to American furniture, and have included some mid century Danish. I saw Dennis wheeling two Danish end tables out of their booth when I stopped by to interview Linda.
Linda loves this 19th century Italian dresser. I love the lamps as well.
Linda can be found at www.elmoreantiques.com .

The East Hampton Antiques Show - Linda and Howard Stein

Linda Stein's booth was directly across from mine at the most recent East Hampton Antiques Show at Mulford Farm. I feel as though I've known the Steins for a long time since we constantly run into each other at various show venues either as exhibitors or when I'm browsing through shows. The Steins always have time to share a story, some advice (they've been in the antiques business for over two decades), and a laugh.


While at the show, I couldn't help notice the matched pair of creamy white dressers in Linda's booth. They were so compelling I had to walk over and touch them. My suspicions were correct, they were covered completely in genuine parchment.
Linda explained that they are 25 year old interpretations of original pieces from the 30's. They were not only beautiful, they were imaculate.


In between sales I had some time to ask Linda how they got started in the business. She explained that like many people in our business their love of good design and high quality home furnishings led them into collecting and then into selling at various shows in the tristate area.
Linda and Howard have built their business together from its start. Although I only saw Linda at this show since Howard was minding their two year old shop at 2400 Montauk Highway in Bridgehampton.
Linda describes their look as "elegantly eclectic" and their booth at this show was certainly that.
The dressers were definitely one of my favorite picks for the East Hampton Show this year. Linda had a special fondness for the coral in irridescent glass bottles.
Linda and Howard can be reached at 631-537-8848 and at lindahowardstein@mac.com
and at lindaandhowardstein.1stdibs.com

East Hampton Antiques Show - Marianne Stikas

I've known Marianne for nearly a decade. We have a mutual love of dogs and eclecticism. I found out some fascinating things about Marianne when I interviewed her for this blog. My conversations with her prior to this were usually about objects, people, and of course dogs, never about herself.
It was Marianne who said "what are you waiting for, just get a dog already, you'll laugh so much and you'll wonder why you waited", during the time I was hesitating to make the comittment to get one. She was right, we laugh so much more now that we have Kona. I loved meeting Izzy at the show, Marianne's pug.
Marianne Stikas is an artist with a career that spans three decades. She has shown in galleries in NYC including Holly Solomon, Leo Castelli, John Davis, and most recently with Baskervile Watson. Her medium is oil.
Marianne's eye for composition is evident in the often quirky objects she sells. Her antiques business was started out of her Walker St. loft selling to people she knew. A love of collecting became a business once she started selling out of her home and later at shows like the "Modern" , and "Bronx Botanical Garden Show", "The Pier Show", and the "East Hamptons Antiques Show".




Today you can see Marianne's collection at various shows like ones mentioned here, and in Stamford Ct. at the Hamptons Antiques Center, and at www.mariannestikas.1stdibs.com Marianne can be reached at 860-927-0028

Marianne and I love the wall decorations in teal blue, made of cut steel, they once hung in an amusement park.

Custom made alcove cabinet for a dining room

My client, designer Leslie Claiborne, and I designed this piece for her client's East Hampton home. It was made to fit into an alcove perpendicular to a dining table I am working on.
The material is the same as the media cabinet, pictured in another post on my blog, it's smoked oak from Germany paired with a solid oak face frame. The doors are trimmed in solid American walnut, with walnut handles and feet.

a horse finds a home in Georgica, EH

My Han Dynasty (circa 206 b.c. - 210 a.d.) horse , pictured on the left side of the photo found a beautiful home in Georgica. I was asked by my client, an East Hampton Interior Designer, to bring the piece to her home a few streets away from Mulford Farm, where the show was, to "try it out" in various rooms. After moving it from room to room it was settled on a huge coffee table between glass hurricane lamps. It looked exquisite.

The East Hampton Antiques Show June 08

Last week was the first time I participated in The East Hampton Antiques Show. Tom and Brian were great "hosts" for the event. The evening opening was typically "Hamptons" : live music, white linens on the tables, champagne, celebrities and the who's who of The Hamptons.
Here are some photos of my booth at the show

Most of these items are available on www.sinotique.1stdibs.com

A rare collection of Chinese carved signs

In the late 1990's while traveling in China collecting antiques for Sinotique, I noticed beautifully carved signs with Chinese characters on them tucked in dark corners of warehouses and shops. Being drawn to worn textures and peeling paint I couldn't resist digging through the dust to get to these neglected treasures that often told the stories of China's literati class and long forgotten businesses.
Pictured here are some from my collection. It's very difficult to find these signs in original condition today, and even harder to export them as laws have changed over time to forbid the removal of architectural details from China.

Sinotique features the exquisite handblown glass of Kanik Chung

Kanik Chung's tablescapes expand and contract, at times encompassing as many as two dozen pieces of his handblown glass forms. They are exquisite. I spoke to Kanik at length about his tablescapes and he told me that he envisions the pieces in relationship to each other. Negative and positive space play equally important roles in the total expression of his work. I believe the beauty and sensitivity of his work speaks for itself. Kanik's work is available through Sinotique.
Commissions accepted.
Kanik's tablescape shown is sold as a set of ten. Smaller groupings may be commissioned, min. three pcs. in a grouping.

lattice

I assembled these finely made lattice work windows and a child's standing crib from my collection to show the fine workmanship of the Chinese carpenter in the nineteenth century.
These are available at www.sinotique.1stdibs.com

more interesting forms

Here are a couple of interesting forms, they're mortars for grinding grain. Today its easy for us to forget that our ancestors, in this case ancestors from China and the Phillipines, couldn't just go to the store to buy flour or grain already ground, they often had to do it themselves using tools like these.
The pounding and grinding of grain day after day would disintegrate anything but the hardiest woods, such is the case with these two mortars, the darker one weighs about 90 lbs. and could use another 100 years of grinding easily.

a word about form... cont'd.

Fifteenth century Ming Dynasty scholars drew much of their inspiration from nature itself. The Taoist's celebration of natural form is reflected in everything from root sculptures to rock gardens to paintings. It was the scholar class that set the standard in this "celebration". Having an exemplary naturalistic root or rock in your household and more importantly your studio was de rigueur for the time.
In traditional Japanese households a single naturally formed tree trunk is often supporting a part of the roof or ceiling to bring a reminder of nature into the rigid and often structured array of finely matched timbers symetrically joined. The contrast between gnarled tree trunk and finely smoothed timbers is revered in both cultures.
Following are examples from my collection of very large vessels carved from exquisite tree trunks. The trunks are polished and the interiors are bored smooth and left cylindrical to add contrast and praticality as scroll containers for the scholar's studio. Smaller versions would be desk top objects for brush containers.
These are very heavy and about the size of a small waste paper basket.

These are some of my favorites. They are available at www.sinotique.1stdibs.com

a word about form

In the fifteen plus years of owning Sinotique I have come across some amazing shapes and forms in the every day objects I collected from my travels. In the next few posts I'll share with you some of my favorite items from my collection.

A good example of this are these sticks carved from a single piece of lightweight, yet amazingly strong wood. These are Chinese shoulder sticks for carrying large loads across a person's back. Some of them are actually worn nearly through where the rope had been rubbing for years. When I first saw these I couldn't help but run my hands over the smooth surface of the underside where the person's shoulders would polish the wood, and over the ends where the rope carrying the load would constantly rub against the notch, nearly making its way through.

It's hard to say how old these are, but from the looks of the wood, the patina, and the amount of wear I would guess they are at least 1900's to 1950's.

Although several of the sticks look similar to one another, if you examine them closely it is apparent that they are personalized to each individual's size and strength. The end details serve to keep the rope from slipping off, but the also reflect a style unique to an individual or a collective unconscious of a particular region or even village.

Where great things happen, my workshop

What's in the Sinotique Showroom anyway?

I'm often asked "what's in your showroom in Brooklyn?" I reply more often then not "all the things that can't fit in the store in Manhattan", only half joking that is. There are a great number of items that I can't physically move into my store and in those instances I show them off in the 2nd floor of 70 John St.
The showroom at 70 John is over 2000 sq. ft. with high ceilings and no columns, a rare space indeed even in once-industrial DUMBO.
Here's a sample of some of the items I love that are in my showroom at 70 John:
18th century stone carvings of LoHan figures from Chong Qing, China
solid cherrywood burl vessel handcarved from a solid tree trunk
an enormous handmade terra cotta vessel with rustic glaze from Northern Thailand.
These items are available at www.sinotique.1stdibs.com