➠ Please also visit Four Winds Craft Guild on the web here. Sylvia Antiques has been buying and selling antiques on Nantucket since 1927. Sylvia Antiques is open year-round at 15 Main Street – in the heart of town – and we also have a 4000 square foot showroom (open seasonally or by appointment in the off season) at 6 Ray’s Court – just a stone’s throw from Upper Main Street. We post a select portion of our inventory to this site. Items are sorted by category under the “browse” menu at the top of the page. Links to the most recent items posted are also automatically updated here. Our complete inventory can be seen by visiting our two Nantucket locations. To inquire about any item on this site or ask for something you don’t see here, or if you have a quality antique or work of art you would like to sell or consign, please contact us. Please enjoy browsing through our inventory of rare and unique art and antiques:Arts, Crafts & AntiquesThroughout the region, you will find specialty stores, craft shops, antique dealers and art galleries catering to a wide variety of interests.
These are the places to look for the unusual, the perfectly sublime and the darn good bargain. The entire Kingdom is studded with shops and cottage industries run by artisans, second-hand dealers, farmers and craftspeople who take pride in making things the old-fashioned way. If you're fortunate (or you check the local papers) you may also happen onto a local auction, church bazaar or seasonal yard sale. Vermonters have a high regard for quality and authenticity, but they have an even higher regard for good value and their own communities. These less formal shopping venues are popular places for bargain hunting, socializing and passing a pleasant afternoon. FILTER BY: -All Arts, Crafts & Antiques- TOWN: -All Towns-East BurkeLunenburgSaint JohnsburySt. Welcome to The Other Side Antiques July 5, 1985 - January 15, 2017 Sunday, January 15, 2017. This building had lots of character and apparently had housed lots of characters. We have been told that at one time it was a brothel, and in the 1950s, the front porch was closed in and a distinctly designed terrazzo floor was laid to make room for the waiting area of a newly converted doctor's office.
We can remember in our lifetime this building was home to McMother's Celestial Junk Shop, Helen Chavez Catering, and finally, The Other Side Antiques. Yes, it was fun traveling to the UK, scouring the English and Scottish countryside every four to six weeks for just the right pieces to fit into a 40-foot container. Thank you, Lloyd Wiggins, for all your help along the way. After about twenty years we stopped importing and started buying locally, and years later we started taking in consignments - some from our initial customers who were now at a point in their lives to retire and downsize. We always got a kick out of meeting our Internet customers when their travels brought them to Tampa and they would stop by the shop to say hello. We want to thank Bill Sharpe, who guided Mary Ann in the beginning of our Internet venture, and Sherri and Sabbas Sanders of Industrial Webworks, who later helped in the development and also hosted our site for many years.
Categories Antique Stained Glass Art Deco, Arts & Crafts and Geometric Antique Stained Glass Gallery Doors & Larger Glass Items Antique Stained Glass Gallery Eclectic Items, Shields, and Coats of Arms Antique Stained Glass Gallery Hearts & Flowers Antique Stained Glass Gallery Multiple Pieces Antique Stained Glass Gallery Transoms & Sidelights Furniture Bed & Bath Area Den & Office Area Dining & Kitchen Area Living Area Home & Garden Accessories Mirrors & Lighting Plant & Smoking Stands Artwork Books Collectibles, Coca-Cola & More Additional Info About Restoring and Refinishing Antique Furniture Creative Ideas for Antique Stained Glass Creative Ideas for Retrofitting Antique Furniture Testimonials Press Your cart Wish listThe Arts & Crafts market, like any collectible market, has buyers at low, middle, and upper price ranges. At the peak of interest during the second half of the 1990s, every price range of Arts & Crafts material was repeatedly climbing to new highs, thanks to both the exceptional wealth being created during this period and the popularity of the style among baby-boomers who were in their peak earning and collecting years.
Moving forward to 2016, the state of the Arts & Crafts market has changed substantially. At the top of the high-end, we now see museums building early 20th century collections and competing aggressively against wealthy collectors for the best and most iconic items produced during this period. Many of these items are setting records on a regular basis. At the middle and upper middle end of the market, the story is quite different, with prices dropping as much as 70% from peak levels. Finally, at the more modest end of the market, we see prices about the same or a little lower than they were fifteen years ago. Let’s take a look at some recent auction sales to see how they compare against earlier prices. Charles Rohlfs is an iconic figure in the Arts & Crafts world, having run a small furniture workshop in Buffalo, making Arts & Crafts furniture that comes across as a unique blend of Gothic and Art Nouveau styles. Fiercely unique and highly sculptural, his furniture and accessories were produced in small quantities.
His best pieces tend to be very curvy with dreamlike carving, cut-outs, and copper accents. One of his most desirable designs is a rotating desk, (estimated 1999 value $75,000). This desk sold for $255,750 (lot 77, October 18th, 2014) after fierce competition between several museums and top collectors, against a pre-sale estimate of $45,000-65,000. Charles and Henry Greene, best known for their incredible California bungalows, hold a special place in the Arts & Crafts movement as top architects who also designed the interior furnishings for their homes. Because they did not design furnishings for retail sale (only for the individual homes they were commissioned to build) their furniture and accessories are quite rare, and every item has provenance to a specific home. The Blacker House in Pasadena is one of their most famous commissions, a table lamp (estimated 1999 value $100,000) from that home which was auctioned for $502,000 (Lot 554, October 17, 2015) against a pre-sale estimate of $40,000-60,000.
Frederick Hurten Rhead is considered one of the most important potters of the Arts & Crafts period. Originally from England, he worked at many potteries, including Weller, Roseville, University City, Arequipa, Rhead Pottery, and was even the creator of Fiesta Ware pottery in the 1930’s. A four-tile Peacock panel designed and executed by Rhead at University City, MO, circa 1910, that achieved a price of $637,500 (Lot 542, Oct. 27, 2012) against a pre-sale estimate of $35,000-45,000 (estimated 1999 value, $40,000). The three items detailed above, along with other unique and best-of-class pieces from the Arts & Crafts period have recently brought record prices, often well into six-figures and selling for many times their pre-sale estimates. Much like other areas of collecting, with greater and greater wealth accumulating among a limited number of collectors (many of whom are now either building their own museums or planning to donate their collections to established ‚museums), and with more and more academic research being done on the premier artisans, the demand for the limited number of “best of” examples is growing
, along with the budgets to buy these pieces at record-breaking prices. The same can not be said for the broad middle and upper-middle swath of the market. The aging of long-time collectors, combined with a shrinking middle class, has put a squeeze on the prices of most of the items selling in the $4,000 to $40,000 range fifteen years ago. Gustav Stickley is credited as popularizing Arts & Crafts philosophy and design in America. From 1901 to 1917 he published The Craftsman Magazine and likely produced upwards of a quarter-million pieces of furniture at his factory in Syracuse, NY. Forgotten and out of style for decades after World War I, the Princeton Arts & Crafts Exhibition in 1972 marked the academic rediscovery of Gustav Stickley and the American Arts & Crafts Movement, and Stickley’s quarter-sawn oak furniture slowly climbed to mainstream popularity, peaking in popularity and value around 2000 on the 100th anniversary of his first Arts & Crafts designs. Museum exhibitions, use in movies and TV shows, and articles in architectural and home magazines, combined with an influx of famous collectors and marketing by major metropolitan galleries, all increased Stickley’s popularity among collectors.
Combined with a booming economy and the peak earning years of baby boomers, surviving objects from the Arts & Crafts Movement, led by Stickley’s Craftsman Furniture, saw enormous price appreciation. By 2000, as the economy weakened, the Arts & Crafts market peaked and major galleries began to shift into Mid-Century Modern Design, which they viewed as a new, different, and exciting market for the up and coming generation of younger collectors. With a large supply of quality Mid-Century material entering the market as the original owners of these pieces began downsizing, conditions were right for the galleries, museums, and design magazines to promote this as a new trend in collecting. While great for the values of Mid-Century items, the effect of this shift was to reduce demand for good Arts & Crafts pieces that were too expensive to compete against reproductions, yet not rare enough to be sought out by museums and the wealthiest collectors. With these demographic and economic changes, prices for middle and upper middle quality items started to decrease.
A fairly rare triple-door mitered-mullion Gustav Stickley bookcase (estimated 1999 value $40,000) that recently sold for $10,625 (Lot 688, October 17, 2015) and a relatively common double-door Gustav Stickley bookcase (estimated 1999 value $10,000) that sold for $3,250 (Lot 79, June 5, 2015). While disheartening for collectors who bought at the end of the 1990’s, the lower prices for this furniture has opened up the market to collectors of more modest means. Morris chairs have not fared much better than bookcases. A drop-arm Gustav Stickley Morris Chair (estimated 1999 value $14,000) that sold for $5,313 (Lot 686, October 17, 2015). To round out this discussion on current pricing, let’s look at a couple of more moderately valued L&JG Stickley pieces. A chafing dish stand sold for $1,750 (Lot 599, October 17, 2015) and a sideboard sold for $3,500 (Lot 699, October 17, 2015). These prices are about the same as they were in 1999. Although desirable and moderately hard to find items, their prices never went higher than what today’s collectors can still afford, and their prices have held relatively steady.
In many ways, the Arts & Crafts market has mimicked the changes that have taken place in our economy. The wealthiest buyers have far more money to spend than they did in 2000, and are therefore able to compete more aggressively on the best of the best pieces. At the same time the middle class has lost a lot of buying power, driving most of the market into pieces under $4,000 and resulting in price decreases for most pieces that had brought $10,000 to $40,000 at the market peak. With the economic and demographic shifts that started in 2000 and escalated after 2008, most Arts & Crafts objects can now be purchased at or near prices that existed twenty-five years ago. For buyers, that is nothing but good news, although the reverse is true for sellers. For myself, I have never advocated buying antiques or collectibles as an investment, as their value will ride up or down depending on constantly changing preferences in collecting and the economy. I see antiques as something to buy because you are attracted to them, whether for their beauty, design, quality, or history.