REPORT FROM THE MIAMI BEACH ANTIQUE SHOW

I'm just back from The Original Miami Beach Antique Show, one of the largest and oldest in the country. There were many, many booths filled with expensive jewelry--diamonds, precious stones, Victorian, Edwardian, Mexican silver jewelry by Spratling, Los Costillo and Margot de Taxco, pieces by David-Andersen and Georg Jensen of Denmark, and jewelry by top modernist designers like Sam Kramer and Art Smith. Dealers told me the show was "on track" (not as bad as last year, not as good as 2007). The show is known for oversized pieces decorators need for huge houses. There was a sectional mirrored centerpiece with eight attached candelabra and 16 figures of angels, each about 8 inches high, that was longer than my dining room table. It was marked "sold." Also an 8-foot-high concrete fountain, vases over 4 feet high, monstrous double beds with carved headboards too high to fit in my house, and a lace tablecloth with 24 matching napkins (about $50,000). One dealer was selling $30-$50 leather baby shoes, and another was offering Victorian skirt lifters (an accessory to lift long skirts up stairs and over puddles) and boxes of sterling silver spoons marked $10-$15, your choice. I saw plenty of glass and china of all sizes, from a 1-inch cameo vase to a 5-foot Asian vase. No toys, no advertising, very little Arts and Crafts. I'll write more about my own great buy and what I learned that relates to the average buyer in our newsletter and here in the weeks to come.