NEW YORK — Friday’s rainy gray skies added to the old-world mood at the International Fine Art & Antiques Dealers fair, October 19-25. It’s always had a heavy British feel — silver tea caddies, equestrian paintings, big mahogany desks, Thomas Chippendale furniture — but dealers sprinkled a crop of eclectic curiosities throughout the 65 booths this year, broadening the appeal beyond the usual connoisseurs.
To be sure, it’s still easy enough to stumble over the gilded foot of a Louis XIV chair or George II settee. But there’s no shortage of unique finds, like an 18th-century Russian rifle sized for a young boy at Peter Finer, a brass telescope built for J.P. Morgan’s yacht at Hyland Granby Antiques, and cravat pins shaped like cigar-smoking pirate skulls at A La Vieille Russie.
And the fair appears to be gaining traction with buyers outside its typical market. Several traditional antique and artifact dealers noticed an increase in attendance among contemporary art collectors. Take Chicago’s Douglas Dawson, a gallery that deals ethnographic arts, especially African ceramics. “Most of our collectors are contemporary art collectors,” says co-director Wally Bowling. “Everyone’s seen Picasso’s or Matisse’s studio with African arts in it. It’s quite common today to see someone have a great modern painting, fabulous deco furniture, and a great artifact.”
Dawson gallery, which also exhibits at fairs like Art Miami and Expo Chicago, had a pre-Columbian checkered textile from Peru — “a bit like Sean Scully,” Bowling noted — and a number of earthen figures and ceramics on view.
The sentiment was similar at Daniel Crouch Rare Books, which specializes in 15th- to 19th-century maps and atlases. “The market for decorative prints is disastrous right now because people’s homes are more minimalist,” said owner Daniel Crouch. “But cartography seems to be doing okay.”
He pointed to a map of the western hemisphere by missionary to China Ferdinand Verbiest. Crouch had the ornate Eastern print, originally done in 1674, framed in sleek, modern etched metal.
But not everyone is changing with the tide. England’s Thomas Coulborn & Sons, which had a dozen Chippendale chairs and two Regency-era urns among its offerings, is participating in IFAAD for only its second year. When asked if he felt like he was responding to developments in the market, director Jonathan Coulborn said, “We mostly work with existing clients — we sell antiques.”