Miscellaneous Antiques

Urns, Statuary and Furniture Add Charm to Any Landscape

For leafy bowers or fields of flowers, antiques in your garden add interest and a comfy corner for quiet contemplation. From cherubs to chimney pots, fountains to finials, garden decor for any budget can include fine antiques, well made reproductions, and salvaged architectural elements. Here are a variety of decorative and useful antiques that will add flair and function to your landscape.

Gardens as Outdoor Rooms
Almost as long as there have been humans seeking shelter, there have been gardens. While he earliest were for sustenance, gardens became an extension of living spaces, especially during the heat of summer.

Spanish style wrought iron gates

Garden Gates & Entrance Ways
Like the front door of a house, a garden gate is the entry way to the world within and should give visitors a hint as to what they will find beyond it. Gates can be formal, like the ornate and imposing wrought iron Victorians from the late 19th century (which can cost anywhere from $3,000 -$12,000, depending on size, design and provenance), or more simple wooden gates usually from the early part of the 20th century. While reproductions of the elaborate wrought iron favored by the Victorians are pretty expensive, a good millwork shop can fabricate a new wooden gate from an old pattern for a more moderate sum. Old or new, ornate or simple, the style of the gate should match the style of the garden within.

Urns & Finials
Although similar in looks, urns and finials are different and originally served two distinctive purposes. Urns resemble giant loving cups are hollow and easily filled with plant material. Finials, originally used to top the gate posts of great houses, resemble urns, but have closed triangular or cone shaped tops. Both add interest to a garden niche and can be made of cast iron, stone, lead, composition stone, terracotta, or bronze. Urns have become popular garden ornaments, and well crafted reproductions are readily available.

Architectural Ornaments for the Garden
When old buildings are razed, architectural elements are salvaged by savvy dealers who resell the parts for use in homes and gardens. Useful and beautiful salvaged pieces include stone columns with or without plinths (bases) or capitols (tops), bits of frieze, gargoyles, troughs, and chimney pots. Chimney pots are plentiful and have a variety of uses. Usually made of terracotta, they can be filled with plant material, used as a base for a statue or urn, or massed to create a wall, border, or back drop. These pots originally sat atop a chimney, and some have decorative patterns, especially those from the Victorian era.

Child's wheelbarrow in original red paint, early 20th century

Old Garden Tools and Implements
Nothing says garden more than. . . . garden equipment! An old wheel or water barrow filled with flowers is an eye catching display, as is a garden roller artfully arranged against a backdrop of greenery. Vintage, well-used tools such as spades, scythes, edgers, hoes, rakes and even hand trowels often have interesting wooden handles as well as a pleasing patina. Imported European implements are pricier and harder to find, but their American counterparts are plentiful and inexpensive, with vintage wood handled trowels, for example bringing between $10- $20.

Reference: Garden Antiques How to Source & Identify by Rupert Der Werf & Jackie Rees Miller’s 2003

-Article by p4A contributing editor Susan Cramer

A giant in the field of American Antiques has passed from the scene.  Albert Sack is dead at the age of 94.  In a field characterized by its fragmentation, Albert Sack was a unifier, a scholar, a much-loved mentor, an incomparable leader and a legendary dealer whose hand guided many of the best collections, public and private, in the field of American decorative art.  To say that he will be missed is inadequate; Albert Sack is irreplaceable.  With his departure the curtain has closed on a seminal era in the appreciation and collection of American antiques.

Kent D. Anderson
General Manager
www.prices4antiques.com

www.albertsack.com

1873 American School oil painting, Ohio River at Parkersburg

Prices4Antiques is sponsoring the inaugural Midwest Antiques Forum Weekend to be held in Lancaster, Ohio May 13-15, 2011 at the Decorative Arts Center of Ohio.

The Forum will bring together museum curators, scholars, collectors, and members of the antiques trade to share research on the early decorative arts of the American Midwest.

Topics include Midwestern Germanic furniture, Ohio coverlets, Anna Pottery of Illinois and early Wisconsin decorative arts.

For more information and registration visit: http://www.midwestantiquesforum.com

Louis XVI style domed dog's bed/pet house

In a finer, better world, I’d be a cat, at least one of my cats.  It’s bitterly cold outside with little eddies of snow drifting around the doors, but what are they doing?  Sprawling in front of the stove, soaking up all the heat, looking annoyed whenever I dare to disrupt them in order to crowd in for a moment and warm my hands, after I’ve been outside, hauling in more pellets to feed the object of their addiction.  It’s a pretty cushy life!

Some people’s pets have always lived the good life, based on the things we see come up at auction.  Even in the 19th century, people were pampering their pets, and it’s a good thing my cats don’t know that because, since they’re cats, they already like to convey the impression that they live a life of terrible deprivation.  Perhaps I need to be on the lookout for something luxurious for them, like the little pink velvet house (pictured above), even elevated to prevent it from resting on a cold, drafty floor.  (Although on other days, I think I might just buy a large Victorian birdcage and stuff them all in there so I can get some work done!)  And I’m sure they’d think no dog would be entitled to a dog bed as fancy as this one.  They would, however, leave collars to the dogs, probably even an elaborate alligator skin one.  Sometimes, when I’m laboring away to earn a paycheck so I can keep a roof over their heads and food in their fuzzy, stove-warmed tummies, I do think it might be nice to invest in one of these rare objects.  For instance, an ammonia pistol, traditionally meant to be carried by cyclists to deter dogs, and a little water would certainly liven things up around here!

-Hollie Davis, Senior Editor, p4A.co

To search the Prices4Antiques antiques reference database for valuation information on hundreds of thousands of antiques and fine art visit our homepage www.prices4antiques.com.