Fort Worth, TX 2.19.12 – With Fort Worth’s Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show turning 49 years old at the March 9-10, 2012 event, a mid-life makeover is in progress. Seventy-five top exhibitors from California to Florida to Idaho will arrive at the Will Rogers Memorial Center packing antiques and art of every style and era, propelling the make-over one year closer to the 50th anniversary show in 2013. Few cities in the world host an antique show nearly 50 years old, especially one in the process of renewal.
It’s been more than a facelift.
Originally a small, prestigious Americana show, the Dolly Johnson Show is emerging in mid-life as the only antique show in Fort Worth, the largest in North Texas and the oldest in the American West. Americana still flourishes at the show, but now so do French, English, Western, Garden, Industrial and Mid-Century Modern antiques, art and jewelry. There’s plenty of prestige and it’s balanced by a fun vintage vibe. At the same time, Fort Worth-Dallas has grown to be the 4th largest metro area in the United States.
Visitors to the March 9-10 show will discover that the recession has made the show more resilient. “The recession could have been a crisis for us,” says Show Director Jan Orr-Harter, “but instead it has been an opportunity for the whole antiques industry to shine. From ‘Pawn Stars’ to Tori Spelling shopping for antiques on reality TV, there is a new fascination with the material culture of the past. Today people want to ‘buy green,’ they want real value for their money and they want things for their homes that bring comfort and joy.”
While many veteran dealers took the recession as the moment to retire from shows, the era has also welcomed new faces into the industry and brought out the creativity of the hardest-working antiques dealers. Leslie Pritchard of the celebrated Dallas store Again & Again will exhibit at the show for the first time and will offer a “Booth Talk” on the “before” and “after” process of bringing a forgotten antique back to life.
“A new consciousness of eco-design and green living is gaining momentum,” says Pritchard. Her mantra, “Buy Old, Make New, Love Again” describes the 2012 Special Exhibit at the show, “Re-Imagined, Re-Made—100 Antiques Re-Purposed.” Starting at the show front door, winding through the aisles to Pritchard’s booth and through each booth, shoppers will discover a trail of re-purposed tailor shop tags, numbered one through one hundred. Each tag will highlight an antique or vintage item that has been re-made in some way or simply given a brand new purpose.
Another fruit of the recession has been entire new categories of antiques. Objects once overlooked are getting a second look. Several exhibitors at the March 9-10 show will offer Industrial antiques, a happy if hefty trend of the times. Exhibitor John Petty works with large scale industrial factory equipment and cast iron, re-making it as useful furniture and lighting. “Nowadays, you buy something and it breaks and you throw it away. But it’s important to re-cycle things. We can take unused industrial items and re-purpose them into something that is almost art.” Scrappy? Yes. Short-lived? Not a chance. One Industrial antique wakes up a whole house.
An additional trend is that many exhibitors will mix different styles in their booths. “There isn’t one design style right now,” says Show Associate Director Cissy Thompson. “People feel free to like what they like and to mix different styles together. They mix high end with humble, modern with primitive and rich with rusty. It’s a great time to decorate a home with antiques. Prices are good.”
Also exhibiting for the first time, Steve Wiman, proprietor of Austin’s Uncommon Objects, will haul much of the famed South Congress Avenue store to Cowtown. For 20 years, Uncommon Objects has been a vibrant and affordable port-of-entry into antique and vintage living for a generation of American young people. Recession or not, Wiman’s advice to buyers of all ages remains the same: “Find beauty where you can and make the most of it.” At the show he will offer a “Booth Talk” on the role on antiques in creative living.
Creativity has been the fruit of earlier eras of anxiety. Shoppers at the Dolly Johnson Show will see coin silver that early Americans melted down to make silverware, rugs hooked from scraps in the years after the Civil War and the wooden cigar box “tramp art” made in the Great Depression. Exhibitor and jeweler Janet Waldrop of Skip 2 My Lou upholds that tradition. In a new era of resourcefulness, she re-purposes pieces of cast-off bits, cameos and baubles into stunning works of art jewelry, likely to be appreciated by future generations, as well as by the lucky buyer in 2012.
“Re-purposing is new, but it’s also old,” says Jean Doty, long-time Dolly Johnson Show exhibitor of Americana. “In early times, people used what they had and, if something broke and could not be fixed, they re-made it into something else.” Another aspect of re-purposing is finding a new function for an object. Doty stores her jewelry in a doll dresser. Made in New Hampshire c. 1780-90, the miniature dresser drawers have been lined by Doty with silver cloth to protect the jewelry. “These are things that we love to look at and live with and use,” says Doty of the re-purposed doll dresser-jewelry box made for a child when George Washington was president.
Whether you enjoy antiques from the 1760s or the 1960s, whether a chair covered in army tent canvas or an estate diamond engagement ring, you’ll find all of these and more at the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, only two days per year, only in Fort Worth. So bring your kids, your date or just come to renew your own spirit.
The 49th Annual Dolly Johnson Antique & Art Show runs Friday March 9, 9:00 am – 7:00 pm. A Happy Hour Party from 4-7 pm features Coburn’s BBQ, a cash bar and music by Clear Fork Jazz. Hours on Saturday March 10 are 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. There is no Sunday show. Admission is $7, good both days and free for children 15 and under. A Benefit Booth, styled by Fort Worth interior designer Allen Jancik and jam-packed with donated vintage bargains, will support the Tarrant Area Food Bank.
For a discount coupon, directions to the Will Rogers Memorial Center at 3400 Burnett-Tandy and good news about the Parking Rebate Plan, see www.dollyjohnsonAntiqueandArtShow.com or call 817-291-3952. For updates, follow the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show on Facebook, Twitter@djAntiqueShow or the show blog at www.dollyjohnsonAntiqueandArtShow.blogspot.com
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Submitted by Jan Orr-Harter
Email: JanOH4@aol.com
