Parking Fee Rebate at March 11-12 Dolly Johnson Antique & Art Show

Antiquers love bargains. Here's a bargain at the March 11-12 Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show at Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth: Parking Fee Rebate

For those, like my mother, who can't abide $3-$5 for parking, come anyway! Our dealers will sweeten your deal with a Parking Fee Rebate with your purchase of $50 or more. Mother will still probably park for free at the UNT Medical School on Camp Bowie and walk (and get the rebate). But it will make her happy.

The goal of an antique and art show is to make you happy. To inspire you, give you visual beauty and a form of inner re-creation and rest. This is why we like antiques to begin with. They make us happy. Come to the show, park for $3 or $5. Buy a treat, get your rebate and go home happy.

Park your Wheels at the Show--or find them! Wooden Industrial Molds, Georgia Morel Antiques

PS the $3 lot is on Harley St, just south of the Cowgirl Museum and Cattle Barns. Say hi to my mother.

Real American Pickers

Had a text from Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show dealers Becky Chapman and Mary Jane Schooley that they are shopping for the show in a freezing Pennsylvania. See here the lamb's tongue rug they found today, in such a modern black and white.



Cheeky Mare Antiques



TrueLuck Design -Andrew Church


Others roaming the world include Tammy Strop of The Cheeky Mare Antiques, who just packed up a container in England of 17th, 18th and 19th century finds. The Dolly Johnson Show will get the first pick. 

Mary Brady of English Rose Linens is also due home from shopping in England for textiles, lighting and whatever else she can get to Texas. Erik Yang just returned from buying a collection of mid-century modern and retro jewelry in New York. Janet Waldrop of Skip 2 My Lou is somewhere in Paris, likely on her knees, digging through boxes at flea markets while Andrew Church is packing a tight load of all the art and industrial antiques that have come from a season of searching in California.

These folks are out there, living a bit on the edge, in pursuit of antiques and art.

I’m pleased by how many Americans have seen and enjoyed the History Channel’s show, “American Pickers” about two men who travel America, buying and selling antiques from their Sprinter van (they copied me). 

 A few months ago in Kansas City, I bought a huge industrial metal shelf that needed the bottom straightened out. After it resisted my efforts, I drove this monster over to our local high school and found the Ag-Shop where kids learn to use tools and work on repairs like the one the piece needed. “Sure,” said the teacher, “leave it here and I’ll let the kids hammer it straight.”

So about six young guys climb into my Sprinter and heave the thing out. Off it goes to school. As I’m closing up the van, a couple of them come back and look at me and at the Sprinter----“Are you a picker? Like those guys on TV?” 

Well, yes, many of us in the antiques business work as pickers, finding things that are available in one place and taking them to another place where they are harder to find and highly desired. My husband calls it a trucking business.

Now that they had a real live picker, the boys wanted to know more. “What are those?” one boy asked about a pair of polyester vintage pants with the Eiffel Tower printed on them that were hanging on the wall inside the van. I had bought them in, of all places, Oklahoma City. “You like those?” I asked. “If you fix my shelf, I’ll give you the pants.”  OK, you got a deal! they all shouted.  

Two of the quieter boys hung around and one me asked me, “Do you ever run in to alternators?” Well, as a matter of fact I had seen a fine alternator at a yard sale the weekend before, priced at $30. I didn’t tell them that it was my father’s well-cared-for alternator, but they gave me their phone number and I promised to call if I could acquire the alternator for $25. “Why do you need an alternator?” I asked. They stood up very straight and said, “We’re going to build a windmill.”

When I returned the next week with the $25 alternator, they paid for it all in quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies. The group shoved the much-improved industrial shelf back into the Sprinter and I presented them with the Eiffel Tower pants. In what other line of work could this possibly happen?

So, 75 dealer-pickers are out there somewhere right now searching for the best that they can bring to you at the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, which will soon be here. They may even find some Cowboys and Indians. Take a peek and tell a friend.

Fit for a Cowboy!



American dresser and folk art from Paul Ashby



Estate Jewelry with David & Sheila Stallings

 




Indian figure from Tenny & Al Roche

 

Now that's an Indian! from J.Compton Gallery



Empty Bowls, Full Hearts

Yesterday I joined 2,000 other supporters of the Tarrant Area Food Bank in their annual "Empty Bowls" fundraiser in the West Texas Room at  the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth.

In just three weeks the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show will host a Benefit Booth for the TAFB in the very next room.  Got stuff? You can help by donating antiques, art, jewelry and vintage collectibles. To donate, contact us through the website at http://www.dollyjohnsonantiqueandartshow.com/

See here the 2,000 people lined up in the lobby to pick out their hand-made empty bowls, each donated by a local artist. Instead of a fancy fundraising luncheon, the empty bowls are beautiful creations, plus you get to taste samples of food from the booths of many eateries.

People selected their bowls with care, Here is mine, hand painted by a member of the Fort Worth Porcelain Art Club. Whoever you are, thank you!

Sponsored by Tom Thumb, the event involved many local businesses who gave food samples and silent auction donations.

For the silent auction, the Dolly Johnson Show donated a large folk art wooden bowl from Pennsylvania that had been completely surfaced with tile circles in the 1950s. Leave it to me to go to the mother-lode of Americana and come back with something from the 1950s. (Of course when shopping the flea markets of France, I brought home bakelite and plastic Cowboys and Indians.)

But back to "Empty Bowls"--- last year this event raised over $200,000 to help the Tarrant Area Food Bank provide food to 300 community food banks in 13 Texas counties. Day in, day out, their mission is filling empty bowls. They do it by engaging the local community as supporters and as volunteers.

The Dolly Johnson Show selected the TAFB for our 2011 Benefit Booth because of the involvement of James Thompson who volunteers there regularly to load food onto trucks. James is the husband of Dolly Johnson Show Associate Director, Cissy Thompson. Thank you, James.

By the way, James was the one-man music committee for the upcoming March 11-12 Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, until Cissy and daughter Claudia took it away from him to lower the decibel level. Still, most of his selection survived and you can expect some great tunes between the live sets of Clear Fork Jazz and Paul Cox/Texas Acoustic.

So contact us if you have items to donate for the Tarrant Area Food Bank Benefit Booth at the March 11 -12 Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, which will soon be here.

Get involved or learn more about the Tarrant Area Food Bank at http://www.tafb.org/

Hello, Dolly! Three Weeks Till Showtime March 11-12

Hello, Dolly! Coming to Fort Worth March 11-12
Save the Date and Tell a Friend


Hello from the world headquarters of the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show. Three weeks from today, we’ll blast up the volume on Louis Armstrong’s “Hello, Dolly” and fling wide the doors of the Will Rogers Memorial Center. Inside you’ll find 75 of the hardest-working, most creative and visionary antiques and art dealers that we could jam into one exhibit hall. If you are sick of winter, you will love this.

Yesterday I ran into dealer Cathy Harmon who was visiting Fort Worth early. I found her buying a chandelier from our friends at Butler’s Antiques on Eighth Avenue.

See the photo here of Cathy’s booth last year, as well as antiques that she will be bringing.

Like the other 74 dealers in the show, Cathy has “a good eye”---or as Larry McMurtry’s Cadillac Jack put it, she has the ability to see beauty in the dimmest of lights.

 So put it on your calendar now:

Friday March 11, 9 am - 7pm with a Happy Hour Party from 4-7 pm and again on Saturday March 12, 9 am - 5pm.

Come for the beauty, come for the stuff. Come for spring, which will soon be here.

Dolly Johnson XLVIII Congratulates Super Bowl XLV- And Now for Something Entirely Different!

Forget about the football and the big chill, what about those Black Eyed Peas? Wasn’t the Super Bowl half-time wonderful? And now that it’s all come and gone, what’s next for the Arlington-Fort Worth-Dallas Metro-Plex?



Save Fri. March 11 & Sat. March 12 for the 48th Annual Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show at the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth’s Cultural District. We couldn’t get the Black Eyed Peas, but we have signed 75 top exhibitors from California to the Carolinas. We even have a dealer coming from Wisconsin, where they are rightfully jumping up and down on their cheeseheads.


And the Dolly Johnson Antique And Art Show will have live music, including Clear Fork Jazz and Paul Cox/Texas Acoustic. They may not be the Black Eyed Peas, but Paul has played pool with Willie Nelson. That’s got to count for something.

So farewell, Super Bowl.Just in case you didn't get a seat at Cowboy Stadium, take a look at some of the seats at the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, which will soon be here.



Take a Seat!



 

 

Best Seats in the House!




See the show's new photo gallery at http://www.dollyjohnsonantiqueandartshow.com/