Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1980 | Volume 31, Issue 2
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February/March 1980 | Volume 31, Issue 2
In recent years Pine Street has become the center of Philadelphia’s antiques market, and the shopkeepers there would give a great deal to be able to visit a store that must have been the object of considerable ridicule to their turn-ofthe-century forerunners. It stood at 1237 Pine, but we have no record of what the owner called it, or even of his name. Yet, as this photograph attests, he was something of a pioneer. Most of his stock anticipates by a good half century the recent boom in folk art.
We asked Harris Diamant, owner of New York City’s Diamant Gallery, and a leading dealer in American folk art, to appraise the items in the picture. “I’m astonished by this photograph,” he said. “The serious collecting of this material didn’t begin until twenty years ago. While the only object which would be regarded as truly exceptional in today’s market is the Turk (number 9), it is nonetheless extraordinary that this visionary would have assembled in 1910—contemporary with most of the objects—an inventory that far surpasses anything that can be found on today’s Pine Street.” His estimates: