This is the second post of my Field Showcase Series in which I attempt to help you decide where when and how to shop the Show. Last week we were earlybirds in The Fields. Now it’s time to get started for real, and since we have to start somewhere we’ll start where my minivan seems to take me more often than not. Blue Hills.
We should try to arrive around 9:30am. Morning is golden time! There’s a damp chill in the air that will be long hot gone by noon. We’re dewy golden too; showered and bright-eyed (thanks to our travel mug of Folgers Half Caf and that cream cheese kolache) and ready to see every single thing there is to see!
Welcome to pretty Blue Hills Field. There’s so much to like about this spot. It’s beautifully designed and tidy and a nice manageable size. It’s the perfect place meet up with a shopping buddy. And the parking’s free. There’s a nice clean potty paddock with plywood stalls back there. And look how many Crush List crushes are here! The Fall 2015 Show should be especially exciting at Blue Hills because some of the long time regulars have moved on to other fields so it’ll be fresh and full of new things to discover.
Quick aside while we’re on that subject: Hey, you old time hugely famous and popular and super loved fields. You know who you are. Here’s an idea of mine that may cause dealer riots, or a shoppers revolt, or at the very least a whole tornado of angst and drama but I’m going to suggest it anyway.
Move everyone around!
Yes, move ’em around! Put all your dealers’ names in a box and draw them out randomly and assign everyone a new spot. Yes, really. The pot could stand a little stirring. A little zest. A little creative zhuzh. Don’t worry, we’ll figure out where our favorites are and along the way we’ll give a new look to those booths we’ve learned to skip past/look over/pass by. Isn’t this an industry based on a love for redecorating? Redecorate!
OK, here we are. Back to what makes Blue Hills the center of my Show and why it might should be the center or at least the start of yours.
Looking for lighting? It’s one of the things Blue Hills does best. There are booths with industrial blown glass fixtures or custom pulley lights or one of a kind perfect-for-your-sunroom lamps or delicately reworked iron fixtures or a whole ceiling’s worth of vintage chandeliers. Buy your lighting at Blue Hills.
Are you at the Show because you’re right now at this minute furnishing with a purpose and need to find well-priced up to date pieces of both the old and new variety? Blue Hills is your place. There’s a booth just for painted furniture. A real good rug spot. Pascal’s super chic Four Hands style furniture. The maps and paper ephemera place. The booth with endless options for country chic duvets and pillows. That whole run of dealers along the back of the original field with country armoires and cabinets and dining tables. Adele’s fine art. The deckhouse full of Asian bits. All the good Euro in the new part. The dealer at the very end with fun classics like old wooden sleds…
You get the idea. This is high end merch that you want in your home, all pleasantly pulled together by professional real deal dealers. And while it may not sound right first thing in the morning, the Methodist Men’s chopped BBQ beef sandwich with chips and an iced tea is the iconic Antiques Show meal!
The Fall Show is coming and this is where you go first.
Hi y’all. As the show approaches, a bunch of folks have started asking me how to ‘do Round Top right.’ For those of you who’ve missed it, there’s a tab up at the top of The Crush List screen that says “About The Antiques Show” and that’ll take you to a page of what I consider to be very useful general advice and info and back roads tricks. But I think can do more to help you decide where to go and when. Each of my next several posts will highlight one of my favorite venues. I’ll pull together a bunch of representative images and tell you a little about why and when I like to shop each one. Hope it helps.
First up: The Fields
I keep telling everyone the Show starts September 18, but that’s a lie. A bunch of us will be out there early the week before that, around the 13-14th, to check out The Fields, which I consider to include North Gate, Bar W and even (I know, I know you’ll disagree) the Renck Hall area. My very first The Crush List post was on North Gate Field. I said it then and it’s still true: it all starts in The Fields. If you’re looking for multiples, for imports, for metal letters, or biergarten tables or carnival signs or bread boards or silverware or matching marble sinks or farm furniture or holiday decorations or thousands of BARGAINS, this is your place.
I think The Fields are best enjoyed during the early bird days. You can always come back later in the show when everything is completely set up and the frozen lemonade booth is going and the free parking is a treat. But try go early when the dealers are selling to other dealers and things are just beginning to come together like a chick just pecking its way out of the egg. You’ll have to use the porta potties. And you’ll need to pack some Kind Bars and almonds and apples and waters because food vendors are not really out yet. It’ll be hot and a little lonely, but enjoy. You’re shopping the Show like a local.
Regular readers know how hard I’ve crushed on one of the Antique Show’s most illustrious fields, EX-CESS and many of its individual vendors. And if you’ve ever visited Round Top with me you know how irresistible I find Lizzie Lou, that wondrous shop of wonders next door to Royers Cafe in downtown Round Top.
Hurray hurray then that last spring both EX-CESS and Lizzie had babies or cloned themselves or replicated or expanded or however you want to think about it. More to love!
EX-CESS TWO sprang up across the highway from EX-CESS SENIOR just before the 2015 Spring show. Not every booth was filled (it’s quite a lot of real estate), but the swanky new covered pads featured several enthusiastic new vendors, a few relocated favorites and what seemed to be a bunch of secondary/satellite/staging spaces for some of the Show’s bigger vendors from elsewhere. Overall it was great digging.
Lizzie Lou Two or Two or II or Junior set up shop at the new EX-CESS in an all-star front line space. You don’t need words from me to appreciate Mary Lou’s incredible fantasyland. Just scrolllllllll.
That turquoise jacket and sombrero made me think about housepaint colors in Mexico. They’re so much more alive and vivid, not at all like the Barbie-doll-skin colors we seem to want to paint our stucco. Here’s how The Gringos Guide to Using Mexican Paint: Part 3 explains it:
Paints made in Mexico have higher pigment concentrations to combat the climatic conditions. And being so close to the equator, with much stronger sun rays than northern latitudes, the country’s thick, rich paints look fantastic in intense sunlight. Look at a color strip. Say that you absolutely love the second from the top; it would be perfect in Canada but would look weak and dirty here in the tropical light.
No offense Canada.
FYI (for those who may not be as hip as you undoubtably are): West Broadway is its own street and cuts through all the chic parts of lower Manhattan; Soho, TriBeCa, Washington Square, Greenwich Village, etc. It is “not to be confused with Broadway.“
If you’re looking to Round Top for sublime and sophisticated, this is what you’ll see.
I’ve talked before about the weary show blindness that can develop after looking at days and days and fields and fields and booths and booths and tables and tables and walls and walls of heart-stirring treasures and insignificant junk. When I get to that state, I just let myself wander around in an out-of-focus-kind-of-way while I wait for the Magic Eye 3-D poster phenomenon to take over. I hope you remember Magic Eye. It’s that optical illusion fad from about twenty years ago where if you diverge your focus on a random field of colorful dots in just the right way the image of a pouncing panther or a pirate ship will leap right out at you.
At the blurry end of the most recent Marburger Preview Day, it was Great Estate Goods that jumped out and into focus for me. It’s Amelia Tarbet’s cool, dark corner booth, and it’s filled with carefully chosen and carefully placed objects. Frankly, the space really deserves a photography shoot with a proper camera and a nice annotated catalogue. But until then, here’s my The Crush List Style look at Amelia Tarbet’s curatorial sorcery from wide shot to extreme close up.
Dogs are all over the Antique Show. Dealer dogs, shoppers’ dogs, the occasional box of puppies for sale, and of course, there’s the dog art. Want to take a short walk together, accompanied by some haiku poetry I’ve found?
My human is home! / I am so ecstatic I / Have made a puddle
How do I love thee? / The ways are numberless as / My hairs on the rug
I sound the alarm! / Mail carrier come to kill us all / Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!
I am your best friend / Now, always, and especially / When you are eating
I love my master; / Thus I perfume myself with / This long rotten mouse
If you’ve been shopping at Blue Hills during the last few shows, and I certainly hope you have, you’ve surely seen Adele’s atelier-styled booth. It’s a dynamic space for sure, with rushing B&W horse photos shown alongside soft abstracts and colorful columns.
Dd you know that the American Cutting Horse Association is just right down the road from Round Top in Brenham, TX? Cutting is one of those sports I think of as pretty obscure but turns out to be quite competitive and popular. Apparently tens of millions of dollars are won every year by folks who know how to cut for shape and stay off the back fence.
Roller pigeoning is another good example of a hidden sport. It’s the one where you compete for points based on how many times your pigeon rolls over while in flight. It makes me feel better that you’ve never heard of it either. I only know of it because our old neighbor bred bunches of rollers in an elaborate backyard aviary and traveled all over the country to participate in tumbler tournaments. (I hope you clicked on this last link because that video of those Birmingham Rollers in action with The Verve’s Bittersweet Symphony as background music is extremely soothing and would make a sweet little screen saver). Anyway, he’d let his pigeons out for morning practice sessions over a highway near our neighborhood. While they were out it wasn’t unusual for him to lose one or two to hawks, which seemed sad to me but not so much to him. All part of the sport, he’d say.
The good news? You've discovered The Crush List. The not so good? I haven't been actively posting here for a few years now, which means the never terribly reliable details about my crushes are even more unreliable. Antique vendors have switched venues, shops in town have moved or passed on, donkeys may or may not be in the same front yards... In spite of the risks of massive misdirection I've left the site up in hopes that it still achieves its goal - to inspire you to visit Round Top for the Antiques Show or any time you have the time.
With that said, I leave you to explore this random list of my very favorite things about my very favorite place. I’ve tried to capture the area’s special pieces and parts. Some are big deal, some are small gestures, some are legendary and some are just tiny pip and squeak.
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