Glen Ridge Antiques Show a success, say organizers

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GLEN RIDGE, NJ — The 72nd Glen Ridge Antiques Show had a successful two-day run at the Glen Ridge Congregational Church on Friday, Feb. 2, and Saturday, Feb. 3, according to show manager Dorothy Waldt.

“Attendance was up, I want to say, 15 percent,” she said earlier this week. “And the dealers did very well.”
Waldt said Debbie Turi, the dealer manager for the second consecutive year, made dealer selections that were top-notch. Waldt also attributed better marketing for the increase in attendance.

Turi said there was an energy on the floor that she had not felt before at the show.
“Across the board, things were sold,” she said earlier this week.

Dave Cowell, who began exhibiting at the Glen Ridge show in 1984 — as a fill-in for someone who had cancelled — provided another perspective on the antiques business. Cowell sells mostly furniture, silverware, lamps, dinnerware and ceramics, items one would find in a well-appointed home.

“The market is very different when people don’t entertain in their homes,” he said. “People use to sit on furniture; now they recline on it.”
More foam is used to shape furniture he said, because it will form to a body pressing into it.

“A house use to be a refuge,” Cowell said. “Now the major room is the rec room, for activity that use to happen in the basement.”
The scale of houses is also changing and the antiques business is being affected by this.

“In the past, houses had a lot of space in smaller rooms,” he said. “Now the rooms are bigger, like the houses, so the furniture is bigger.”
But he said a change is beginning to happen, with people wanting more character in their furniture. Of a nearby desk lamp, he said it is called “task lighting,” meaning a person can pick up the lamp and place it where they need it.

“Today, who needs lamps in a house?” he said. “You can build them right into the ceiling. We use lamps because we’re use to them, not because we need them.”

Certainly a highlight of the show occurred the afternoon it opened, when Kevin Daviet, of Cedar Grove, purchased a ring and unexpectedly proposed marriage to Deborah Montanez, of Hackensack. She did not want him to get down on one knee.
“For the grand gesture, she’s never like that,” he said.

“He wanted to be traditional, but I get embarrassed,” she said.
The ring, they were told, was at least 80 years old.