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November 12 & 13, 2011
Saturday, 10 am to 5 pm Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm
Preview Party -- Friday, Nov. 11th
Radnor Valley Country Club
555 Sproul Road (Route 320), Villanova, PA 19085
Now in its sixth year, The Main Line Antiques Show is
the only antiques show held in the heart of the Main Line
Exhibitors
30 distinguished East Coast dealers offer a stunning array of fine antiques available for purchase – from porcelains and pewter, furniture and artworks, to jewelry and silver, miniatures, textiles and beautiful decorative pieces.
Opening Night Party
One of the Main Line’s smartest social events will take place on Friday, November 11th when The Main Line Antiques Show hosts the Opening Night Party at the Radnor Valley Country Club in Villanova. This Main Line mansion, designed about 1907, is one of the outstanding works of the Philadelphia architectural firm of Cope and Stewardson. Opening Night Party Sponsors and Honorary Chairs of The Main Line Antiques Show are Mrs. J. Maxwell Moran and Mrs. S. Matthews V. Hamilton, Jr.
Lecture Program
In 2011 MLAS will spotlight the era of the great Main Line estates with a number of lectures on this topic presented by local architectural historians Jeff Groff and Jim Garrison.
More English Than England
Saturday Nov. 12th at 1:00 pm
by Jeff Groff, local historian and Director of Public Programs at Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library
A British visitor to the Main Line in the 1930s commented on how the area seemed even more English than England itself. This talk will look at some of the great houses, gardens and estates. It will focus on the period from 1870 to 1940 using many photographs from that time. It will also look at country life and sports in the area and how they were modeled on the British. By 1900 cricket clubs, hunt clubs, lawn tennis, and golf clubs dominated the area.
Even today as you look around you will see all the allusions to England, Wales and Scotland. Town names like Bryn Mawr or Bala Cynwyd. High gothic churches and Elizabethan college campuses such as Bryn Mawr. Turreted castles in the Scottish baronial style still survive, as do many Tudor mansions in stone or half-timbering. Even if a wealthy estate builder preferred French or Italian or Colonial American for their architecture the patterns of living and entertaining, and often the associated gentlemen's farms, all echo British precedent.
Some of the houses and families that will be the subjects of the talk may be quite familiar; others are really just a memory of a past era.
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