The Mercantile and Free Parking for Carpools of 3!

The Mercantile on Fort Worth's Camp Bowie Blvd. is the Parking Sponsor for the March 1,2,3, 2019 Fort Worth Show of Antiques and Art. 

How? Come in a carpool of 3 ticket buyers. Pay to park. Receive a cash parking refund at the Mercantile Booth at the show entrance after you buy your tickets.  Look for the big red M. Pretty sweet! Pretty easy!

Why? "We love being involved in the antiques community and we take pride in being part of the Fort Worth Show," says Mercantile General Manager Tim Beckett, right. "And we love buying and selling antiques and art at the Mercantile. Come see us."

All parking fee refunds at the Fort Worth Show will come with another gift for you --- a discount coupon for your next Mercantile visit. They are open 7 days a week on the Weatherford Traffic Circle, at 7200 Camp Bowie Blvd. 

What's at The Mercantile? Founded by the late Fort Worth businessman Holt Hickman, The Mercantile offers 40,000 square feet with 204 dealer booths of antiques, fashion, decor, art, gifts, books and a tearoom, open 361 days a year.

 At the Fort Worth Show you can meet 2 Mercantile dealers, Merryl Carson and Tracy Morse with Our Fort Finds, featuring mid-century and vintage home decor, furniture and original art. Tip: they find the best stuff!  

Need gifts? The Mercantile offers lots of gift ideas, both new and old, a book nook, furniture, lighting, art, jewelry, rugs and styles from rustic to glam.

Mercantile Spring Special Events:

April 5,6,7 Mall-Wide Sale! Discounts Everywhere! 
Tip: Preview Party/Early Sale on Thursday April 4, 4-6 pm 
Complimentary sips and bites, plus first dibs on the sale!

Sat. April 20 Pet Adoption event with the Humane Society of North Texas. There will be 10- 15 pets available, both dogs and cats. 

Coming up in May: Mothers' Day High Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Room. Date TBA. 

Several dealers at The Mercantile are artists, such as cowgirl artist TK Riddle. I knew when I walked in to TK's booth that it was hers-- not just because of her paintings of cowgirls like Mitzi Riley, but because of the vintage dishes and art with delicate images of birds. TK loves birds almost as much as she loves cowgirls.  

Some of my favorite booths include Tom Duke's collection of Staffordshire dogs and Susan Davis, with Victorian to early 20th C. smalls, jewelry and furniture.













The Mercantile also offers regular classes in DIY projects--crafting, home decor, seasonal projects. 

 

Over the last few years, I've bought some good things at The Mercantile. Here's the jacket that I will be wearing at the Fort Worth Show. Arty and great texture and fit --or at least I think so!  

The 6 fashion stores at The Mercantile are fabulous. The staff are there every day to help you, they have dressing rooms and regular discounts/sales. And each of the 6 carries a different look and different lines of clothing and accessories. Look for these clothing stores inside The Mercantile: FLAX, Hip Chic, Cashmere Bouquet, Swice and Chimps. Good range of styles, sizes and prices. The newest clothing boutiques at the Mercantile are Nomadic with casual men's clothing, polos, jeans, belts and men's grooming products.... plus Casey & Co. which offers mid-price clothing for younger professional women.        

And here are a pair of huge wrought iron panels that I bought at The Mercantile and displayed, right, in my booth at the Marburger Farm Antique Show. Sold!

By the way, The Mercantile has a great staff, willing to help you load the big buys like these. The mall is clean, well-lit and full, full, full of finds.  

Of course there are keepers too, such as this c. 1950 folk art inlaid wood table that I found folded against a wall in a Mercantile booth. "Anything," said Cadillac Jack, "can be anywhere." (Right now it's in my living room!) 

The Mercantile offers a mix of different styles and eras. English, American, estate sale finds, Victorian, Contemporary, and more. 

And that's not to mention the award-winning Rose Garden Tearoom. Try the Chicken Salad and Peach Tea! 

Thank you to The Mercantile, Parking Sponsor for the
March 1,2,3, 2019 Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art.

The Mercantile 
7200 Camp Bowie Blvd. Fort Worth, TX
Open Mon - Sat 10-6   Sun 12-6
817-377-0910

www.The-Mercantile.com

Rose Garden Tearoom Open
Mon-Sat 11:30-3:30  Sun 12-3:30

www.facebook.com/themercantilefortworth   

Watch The Mercantile on Facebook for special events such as weekly classes and the Spring mall-wide sale, April 5,6,7. The Mercantile is also available for private parties, fashion shows and other community or business gatherings. For more information, contact Tim@the-mercantile.com

What's the Benefit Booth? The One with all the Bargains!

Benefit Booth 2019: The American Association of University Women -Tarrant County Branch

What’s the “Benefit Booth” at the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art? It’s a booth in the show awarded each year to a local non-profit group to raise awareness and funds to support their mission. It’s also known as the booth with all the bargains!

This year the Fort Worth Show welcomes an historic organization as our Benefit Booth: The American Association of University Women – Tarrant County Branch. Starting in 1881, almost four decades before women could vote in America, the AAUW promoted gender equity for women and girls through research, education and advocacy. My mother-in-law was a member of AAUW. In her quiet steady way, she stood for equality for women and girls, with all three of her daughters graduating from college.  

“For our booth at the Fort Worth Show,” says Orlew Lauger, Booth Co-Chair, “We are asking ourselves: What’s in the attic and what do our kids not want?” There will be estate furniture, including a Continental antique drop-front desk, as well as lighting, jewelry, designer clothing and handbags, art, collectibles, silver and an entire store’s worth of wood and glass display cases, all for sale at good prices. Dealers from the Fort Worth Show will also bring antiques and art to contribute. The public is welcome to contribute as well. The AAUW Tarrant County Branch is a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization, so all donations are tax-deductible. To donate, contact Joyce Raessler at jrcompanyjoyce@gmail.com

The Benefit Booth will play along with the show’s theme: Antiques & Art with Blue. Look for a collection of jewelry and vintage textiles in blue, perhaps “something borrowed something blue.”

What is the American Association of University Women—Tarrant County Branch?

The AAUW Tarrant County Branch was founded in 1971 with the primary mission of providing scholarships for young women at Tarrant County Community College. Three full-tuition scholarships are awarded each year. “We look for STEM candidates and students for whom these scholarships will make a huge difference,” says the Benefit Booth Co-Chair Joyce Raessler. “There are many women going back to school. We have been able to provide tuition recently for a mother of four children who is making 4.0 grades. She is terrific and it’s wonderful for us to be able to encourage her education.”

Other AAUW Tarrant Branch programs include the “Sister to Sister Summit” held each fall at Tarrant Community College Northeast Campus for girls in the Fort Worth School District. It’s a day when college students meet with middle school students for an introduction to the college experience and other activities to build self-esteem at the particular age when self-esteem in girls is documented to often falter.  Each year the Summit has a theme, the most recent being “Dream Your Dreams.” The girls made paper quilts, each displaying their dream, such as, “I am going to be an attorney and help families”….and “I am going to do my best to use my talents.”   

The AAUW Tarrant Branch also provides support for “Girls, Inc.” and the annual March against Violence. Advocacy work covers many aspects of women’s concerns, from supporting research to working against sex-trafficking.

The Tarrant County Branch sponsors interest groups for its members. Some of these groups include Community Service, book clubs, Movie Night, Lunch Bunch and Public Policy. “It’s important to support each other as friends,” says Joyce. “It takes a village to make things happen.” Monthly meetings include a guest speaker on subjects related to the arts, health and community and activism.

The AAUW Tarrant County Branch has grown to support a student group at Tarleton State University. The current AAUW Tarrant Branch President, Erica Robinson, is a Tarleton University instructor. Altogether, there are 84 members in the Tarrant County Branch of AAUW. Membership is open to all women who have graduated from an accredited college or university, as well as student affiliates enrolled in a four year institution. To join the American Association of University Women Tarrant County Branch, visit their booth at the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art March 1,2,3, which will soon be here!   

You might find a bargain! 

Everything But The House Comes to the Fort Worth Show!

What happens when a savvy woman decides to put an estate sale online and her friend has the high tech skills to do it? 

BAM! The nation-wide online auction Everything But The House is born! 

On March 1,2,3 the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art  welcomes Everything But The House as our Re-entry Wristband Sponsor. Wear that EBTH wristband and return free to the show each day.

 PLUS…. The Dallas EBTH office will conduct an auction of estate goods in their booth at the Fort Worth Show. You can view and bid in person or online, and pick up at the end of the show, or later at the Dallas office or have items shipped or delivered. Stop by the Everything But The House booth and learn all about how to buy and sell online with EBTH. How cool is that?

Now with offices in Dallas, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Boston, Columbus and Chicago, EBTH sells thousands of unique finds in over 400 sales each month through their national online auctions at www.EBTH.com. They assist individuals, families and businesses in selling quickly and empower individuals, collectors, designers, dealers and others in buying nation-wide, 24-7.  It’s a top consignment platform: over 1.5 million people are registered EBTH buyers world-wide.

 

The Fort Worth Show recently visited EBTH at their primo location in the Dallas Design & Antiques District at 166 Howell Street. General Manager Natalie Childers-Hacker let us peek into every corner of 18,000 square feet of storage, with every type of antique and fine object being photographed, researched, catalogued, sold, packed and shipped. It was the week before Christmas, so many local auction winners also came to pick up their buys for giving, from mid-century lamps to vintage toys. 

Natalie told us that the Dallas EBTH conducts about 33 auctions per month and assisted nearly 400 families in downsizing and selling goods in 2018. This ranges from selling a particular collection to helping a business liquidate to handling all aspects of an estate sale. EBTH charges sellers a fee, based on the selling value of each item.

Before an item leaves a home, it gets a unique coded tag for that client and then is moved to the auction headquarters. EBTH also can coordinate charity donations for less-valuable items and house clean-out, the whole deal.

“We use technology, but we are an old-fashioned auction house,” says Natalie. “The highest bidder wins.” What’s hot right now? “Jewelry, fashion, sterling, high-end glass, art and good furniture,” she replies. “Lots of people want to buy ‘green’ and vintage. You could buy a new $100 rug at a store and wear it out in one year. Or you might buy a $10,000 quality rug on EBTH for $2,000 and enjoy it for the rest of your life. Our buyers want both quality and good deals.”  

  

 

What else can we learn about EBTH? “We’re a mid-range auction,” says Natalie. “We’re not Ebay and we’re not Heritage Auctions. Most of our items sell from $100 to $5,000.” Any spectacular exceptions? “Well, we once sold an airplane for $110,000 and broke an artist’s record for $160,000. But every item starts at $1 and we’re mostly in the mid-range. However, on a sale in Los Angeles, EBTH staff did once find a sapphire in a box of junk jewelry that sold for $40,000.”

Note to self: if that family had held their own estate sale, how much would they have gotten for that box of “junk” jewelry?   

 

Tour the website at www.EBTH.com to view, sign up and shop 20 auction categories and special grouped collections such as: Italian goods… Antiques…Watches… Mid-Century Modern… Musical Instruments…Automotive…Collectibles…Art… and many more. 

 

You can also explore having your items or estate sale with EBTH at www.EBTH.com or by calling the Dallas office at 682-404-2713. You can have a free on-site consultation or you can bring items to the Dallas Office. Be sure to check that your items qualify --- and that you are absolutely ready to sell them. 

Because the next time you hear from EBTH, it will be with a check!

What is unique about Everything But The House in DFW? “I love my team,” says Natalie. “We started with four and now we are 32 in Dallas, with really good people who care about making sure that items find a good new place. I want to see the DFW auctions grow, especially as DFW continues to grow.” Any prospects for an EBTH hub in Fort Worth? “You’re reading my mind!”

 

 

The Fort Worth Show is delighted to partner with EBTH, the trusted marketplace for authenticated pre-owned goods, where you can bid on everything from antiques to artwork to signed memorabilia and much more. Sign up for buying and selling with Everything But The House at the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art on March 1,2,3. Or, if you just can’t wait, learn more at www.EBTH.com

 

Happy New Year! The Fort Worth Show Goes BLUE!

Happy New Year! 
What do these recent covers have in common? Blue!

 

 

The Color Blue will be the theme of the 56^th Annual Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art on March 1,2,3, 2019. All kinds of blues – textiles, furniture, jewelry, lighting, art, fashion and more. French blue, turquoise, Lapis, gray-blue Americana, industrial blue, neon blue, maybe even some vintage Blue Fox.

Blue has many lives. It's the Blue Bird of happiness and, as Willie puts it: “Blue skies smilin' at me, nothing but blue skies do I see.” It’s also a color of sadness and the Blues, as well as the color of leadership, such as the blue suits of JFK and the blue and buff uniform designed by George Washington. It is the color of our home. As astronaut Neil Armstrong put it: “It suddenly dawned on me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was earth.”   

 Here’s a bit about me and blue. 

I’m a red girl, but I married into blue. A teenage Tom Harter went with his mother to the Weatherford Trade Days and came home with a huge 1920s Maxfield Parrish print, “Stars,” with the famous “Parrish Blue” sky --- or as our son once called it: “You mean the naked blond on the rock?” 

“Stars,” still naked, still hangs in our home.

More blues….

A year ago I came home from a hospital visit, opening my eyes to the first sight at home: a blue Bauer bowl that the same Tom Harter brought to me with my breakfast. There, right in front of me, was a Robin Egg’s blue that restored my hope. Made in California in the 1920s, that blue bowl has served our family for 25 years. 

When I was first buying antiques, I fell in love with the Blue Willow pattern. I bought plates in Maine, bowls at Brimfield, cups and saucers in Texas from the tiny store where my friend Kathy Flories started her business. A favorite New York haunt was the restaurant Blue Willow, with, you guessed it, Blue Willow dishes on the tables as well as the walls and ceiling. 

We also have the much finer 1950s blue Spode china that my parents received as wedding gifts. We use that on Thanksgiving, but the humble 1920s Blue Willow dishes we use every day. The original story of the Blue Willow pattern is a Romeo-Juliet type tragedy. Today the birds symbolizing the two lovers take flight in our kitchen and bring us joy. 

In the 1980s in New York, Yves Klein blue was everywhere – the Blue Dog art, the Blue Man Group and in my wardrobe. From Encore, the resale shop on Madison Ave. with consignments from Jackie O, I bought a neon blue Japanese dress that I may try to squeeze into for the Fort Worth Show on March 1,2,3, 2019. With it I wore blue earrings made from re-purposed slide frames, a gift from my in-laws. It’s possible that I wore this combo to the Palladium –now that dates me!

Blue as a color will saturate the Fort Worth Show on March 1,2,3 with examples in almost every booth. That’s because blue is so beloved and has been rendered in so many objects and forms. Over half of the people in the world say that blue is their favorite color, both men and women. 

In the ancient world, blue was a latecomer and very expensive to produce. But when indigo dyes first became available in the 1500s, blue was suddenly beloved by everyone, worn by both the nobility in a castle and the workman on the street. We think of the 1600s, 1700s and 1800s as centuries full of brown – actually they were full of blue, the favored color for clothing in all social classes, such as pants, shirts, coats. That’s one of the reasons Levi Strauss had a hit on his hands with the invention of blue jeans in 1873. We all love blue. 

In a year that has seen so much contention on the surface, the color blue is one of the things that unites us at a deep level: an unconscious, immediate affinity --- a deep love for the blue sky, baby  blue, the color of harmony.

Here are more blues from our home… 

1937 Oil by Nell Moseley

Blue Bottle Tree
Memorial to a Friend

Read more in the blog below about all the Blues coming to the Fort Worth Show of Antiques and Art March 1,2,3, 2019, which will soon be here! 
Happy New Year.

Mid-Century Modern Oil

  

Primitive Americana

True Blue!

“True Blue! Antiques & Art with Blue” 
at the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art

(Plus Every Other Color Too!) 
 56^th Year  March 1, 2, 3, 2019

Blue your favorite color? You and about half of the world! No color has more fans or more complexity than the color blue.  On March 1, 2, 3, 2019, 150 exhibitors from across the nation will bring their best blues to the 56^th year of the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art, with the show theme, “True Blue – Antiques & Art with Blue.” Of course they’ll bring their reds and blacks and whites and every other color too. But expect to shop over 150 examples of vintage and antique blue, as well as the use of blues in select contemporary art. Look for baby blues, vintage denim and indigo, sapphires, lapis, Blenko glass blue, blue and white porcelain and transfer ware, Swedish blues and American primitives in early gray-blue.  There will even be some (vintage) Tiffany blue and vinyl records, featuring early Texas Blues.  

In the middle of the Fort Worth Cultural District, the Will Rogers Memorial Center will host the Fort Worth Show with a rich mix of styles, including American, French, Industrial, Garden, Mid-Century Modern, Fashion, and Jewelry, as well as Art, both antique and contemporary. “Very few shows attempt the range of styles and prices that the Fort Worth Show offers,” says Show Director Jan Orr-Harter. “Each exhibitor presents the best display, at the best price, of the best pieces in their specialty, whether it’s fine French furniture or flea market style.”  

Visitors to the show will learn that blue, as a color, is full of contradictions, such as “blue blood” and “blue collar.” At once evoking creative energy and sadness, the blues came late to the human world of decorative arts, with true blue being one of the last colors that ancient peoples mastered. 

Some blues recede, like deep blues on an oriental rug. Other blues jump right out, like the sky in an antique Maxfield Parrish print or the 1960s electric blue developed by artist Yves Klein. Almost all blues contain some mix of other colors, such as the greenish turquoise in the Native American jewelry or the pinkish/white “Haint” blue paint used in the southern states. You’ll find all of these at the Fort Worth Show, as well the photography of New York exhibitor Gordon Watkinson, left, printed in blue tones.

The Benefit Booth at the 2019 show will support college scholarships for young women through the Tarrant County Branch of the American Association of University Women. Since 1881, the AAUW has promoted education and action on behalf of girls and women in the United States. Their Fort Worth Show booth will offer vintage fashion, “something borrowed, something blue,” art, antiques, jewelry and more.      

So dust off those Blue Suede Shoes! See you at the Fort Worth Show!