16 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — June 2, 2017

NEW BEDFORD, MASS. — The Nautical Antiques Show, back at the New Bedford Whaling Museum for its eighth annual appearance on Friday, May 12, is the tail wagging the dog, or the dorsal fin propelling the orca, if you will. The one day, in-and-out affair precedes the Scrimshaw Weekend, the colloquium for col-lectors and scholars approaching its 30th year.

Richard Donnelly of Richard’s Antiques & Art, Barrington, R.I., and Sanford Moss of Sandy’s Tools in Westport, Mass., organize the show. They recruit the fair’s roughly 20 dealers, many of them leading specialists in their field; liaise with museum staff; and help install the simple, tabletop presentation in the museum’s third-floor Harbor View Gallery, a

glass-sheathed aerie overlooking the city’s lively, much storied port.

The swap meet officially begins with early buying at 11 am. Gen-eral admission gets underway at noon for five hours of intensive selling. Scrimshaw and other sail-or-made items predominate, but marine-themed fine and folk art, ship models, instruments, tools, lighting, logbooks, journals and other ephemera are plentiful.

“I heard good reports overall. Most dealers made money, buyers were happy and there were few wrinkles,” Moss told us.

“Business is always competitive, but there is great esprit de corps among dealers here,” said Don-nelly.

What with the show’s nominal cost to dealers, profits for some vendors are handsome. One of this year’s winners was White’s Nautical Antiques of North Yar-mouth, Maine. Dave White told us, “This is one of the two or three best shows I do all year. I sold across the board, from an iceboat model to a half-hull. It’s just an extremely knowledgeable crowd.”

Hyland Granby Antiques reportedly sold a superb inlaid scrimshaw box by Spencer Pratt, a Bristol, R.I., maker working in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Elsewhere in these pages, we showcase the fair’s most spectac-ular offering: a journal written and illustrated by the whaleman John F. Martin at Richard’s Antiques & Art.

Two prominent experts were unable to make it this year. Paul Decoste took ill at Brimfield and withdrew from the show at the last moment. Decoste is on the mend and expects to be in fit shape for the 60th New Hamp-shire Antiques Show in August. Nantucket, Mass., dealers Jack and Ciara Fritsch handled their own stand as well as one for their colleague Nina Hellman, detained

It’s Anchors Away In New Bedford AsThe Nautical Antiques Show Returns

Dave White with a prisoner-of-war model of a French frigate, circa 1790–1815. White’s Nautical Antiques, North Yarmouth, Maine.

Shell-decorated box, circa 1880. David A. Weston, Thyme Cottage, Cranbreak, UK .

Gordon Stanley, a marine arts dealer who divides his time between Maine and Texas, with a teacup and saucer from his collec-tion of sailors’ macramé.

A scrimshawed cane fash-ioned as a fist enclosing a snake at Chuck Deluca Mar-itime Antiques, York, Maine.

Greg Gibson of Ten Pound Island Books, Gloucester, Mass., offered the shaving kit of sailor Samuel Pettengill, accompanied, poignantly, by two letters and a manu-script documenting his death and the sub-sequent auction at sea of his effects to raise money for his heirs.

Dealers Andy Jacobson, left, and Chuck Deluca with carved canes and a sailcloth panel painted with the lightship Pollock Rip off Harwich Port, Mass.

One highlight of Nina Hellman’s display was this tooth scrimshawed with “The Essex and British Frigates in the Bay of Valparai-so,” accompanied by its print source. A col-league watched the stand of the Nantucket dealer, who was detained on island. Hyannis Port, Mass., dealer Alan Granby

holds the scrimshawed “Map Tooth,” engraved with a chart depicting New Bed-ford harbor and environs. The piece is pub-lished in Flayderman’s Scrimshaw and Scrimshanders. The ambrotype is by New Bedford, Mass., photographer Charles Ebenezer Hawes. It depicts seaman George W. Dodge holding an ebony octant, circa 1856.

A pen, ink and graphite rendition of “Ship Panther in The Ice, Melville Cove Bay” by William Bradford, 1873. Captain’s Quarters Antiques, Amherst, Mass.

A collection of Inuit carved bone items at Sandy’s Tools, Westport, Mass.

Review and Photos byAntiques and The Arts Weekly

Laura Beach, Editor

on island as she and her husband, Bob, settle into new quarters and resolve the disposition of Bob’s outstanding whaling collection. In a note to show patrons, Hellman wrote that, while it would be the couple’s preference to keep the collection intact, “We are working with several museums that will be the beneficiaries of some of the objects.” The Hellmans intend to preserve a record of the collection online for scholarly purposes.

Following the show’s close, enthusiasts stayed for a keynote presentation by authority Stuart M. Frank on the John F. Kennedy scrimshaw collection. Other nota-ble presentations included Judith N. Lund’s discussion of American offshore whaling voyages and a review of scrimshaw in Tasmania by Hobart, Australia, collector Colin S. Thomas.

As in past years, Andrew Jacob-

son reviewed scrimshaw sales over the past year, analyzing con-firmed sales prices by dealer John Rinaldi and at Eldred’s and Raphael Osona, who have been auctioning the Mittler and Mem-ishian collections. Given the vol-ume of material for sale, the mar-ket is remarkably resilient, Jacobson said. As the Hamilton, Mass., dealer and appraiser put it, “Since last May, good to great material has come to market without let up. There has been almost too much to absorb. Once again, selectivity has been the rule. This has produced seeming-ly high prices balanced by bar-gains. There have been some fine opportunities for the alert con-sumer.”

With the Mittler collection, he said, “the highs countered the lows, resulting in a positive to break-even event” relative to the

collector’s initial investment. Eldred’s third and final install-ment of the Mittler collection is scheduled for July 20.

Jacobson published his findings in Scrimshaw Observer, the newsletter of the Antique Scrim-shaw Collectors Association. For

more on joining this group dedi-cated to education and legislative advocacy, visit www.antique-scrimshawcollectors.org.

For more on the Nautical Antiques Show and Scrimshaw Weekend, www.newbedfordwhal-ingmuseum.org.

June 2, 2017 — Antiques and The Arts Weekly — 17

Justin Cobb with Inuit sewing bags of embroidered seal bladder, circa 1860–80. Captain’s Quarters Antiques, Amherst, Mass.

A circa 1840 scrimshaw tooth engraved with a whaling scene set in the Pacific tropics at Paul Madden Antiques, Sandwich, Mass.

“This is a really great har-poon of about 1855 from the ship Nathaniel P. Tallmadge of Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, New York,” said Yar-mouthport, Mass., dealer Ryan Cooper.

Carved and painted French figurehead, circa 1890, wearing the tricolore. Nantucket Antiques Depot, Nan-tucket, Mass.

“It’s beautiful and document-ed to the brig Piratenim, a Brazilian slaver taken as a prize in 1850 by the HMS Sharpshooter. The figure and associated events are record-ed in a January 1943 article in The Mariner’s Mirror, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research,” Massa-chusetts dealer Alan Granby explained of this carved and painted figurehead.

Local antiquarian books and paper dealer David Nelson offered relics of old New Bedford. The painting is by Julia Russell Smith Wood (1890–1958), who lived on Cottage Street.

A collector, left, checks out scrimshaw offered by Florida dealer Lou Hammond. The show sets up in the museum’s Harbor View Gallery overlooking New Bedford’s wharves and the Acushnet River.

This watercolor view of New Bedford’s Purchase Street in 1820 is possibly by William Allen Wall (1801–1885). The New Bedford Whaling Museum owns a similar view. Brad Finch, Spyglass Antiques, Brewster, Mass.

Dealers Parke Madden, Brad Finch and Mark Jacobson shared a stand.

Two Eighteenth Century carved and painted Dutch archi-tectural elements from inland seas vessels. The figure at right depicts Mercury. Ryan Cooper, Yarmouthport, Mass.

Nantucket dealers Ciara and Jack Fritsch hold Nineteenth Century whalebone swifts.