Americana Week in New York City is busy with shows, auctions, special museum exhibits and gallery openings. I went on a three-day tour set up by the Decorative Arts Trust, a national organization for decorators, dealers and collectors who want to learn more about antiques (join at DecorativeArtsTrust.org). I skipped the auctions and concentrated on two shows and the new Duncan Phyfe exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Day One, Friday: The Winter Antiques Show at the Armory on 67th Street. This was a show that I knew would let me see and even handle museum-quality antiques. And I could learn a lot from the dealers, too. We had early-admission tickets and met our guide at 11 a.m. At one time, formal antiques shows allowed only antiques made before the dawn of the machine age, 1840. Now pieces have to be at least 100 years old. So the show included Adirondack furniture, carousel horses, garden furniture, autographs, game boards, daguerreotypes, needlework, chandeliers and wallpaper, plus the expected Chinese Export porcelain, Delft, Sevres, African artifacts, 17th- and 18th-century furniture, paintings, sculpture, silver, glass, jewelry, Tiffany, clocks and even tools and toys. Everything was high-quality and high-priced.

The Old Print Shop had three copies of the famous Boston Massacre print titled “The Bloody Massacre Perpetrated in King Street Boston on March 5th, 1770.” I remembered it from history class. It’s a print by Paul Revere showing British soldiers shooting and killing colonists who objected to new taxes. The famous print was priced $8,900.

Eight wooden shovels were hanging on a long rack made by a Shaker community. I wanted to buy one shovel, but the dealer was selling the rack with all the shovels for $16,500. There was a metal figural of an old-fashioned car that was once part of a weather vane. Asking price: $65,000. Also for sale was a large early 19th-century tilt-top table with a top covered in decoupage added years later. I liked it but left it. The price was $9,500.

One booth had shelves filled with very early Dutch Delft cows about 8 inches long decorated with colorful spots, flowers and saddles. I liked a $17,000 example. But my favorite was the booth filled with old wallpaper. There were wall-size scenics, including some by Zuber, the famous French wallpaper maker. Mounted and hung, they went for $25,000 and up. I especially liked “Canada,” an 1855 woodblock paper, 6 feet 7 inches high and 8 feet 7 inches long. It pictured an icy lake with birds, ships and icebergs.

But for those of us with a small house and a budget to match, there were 28-by-18-inch mounted rectangles of 1930s French wallpaper. Each cost about $2,000. They were displayed in groups. Great decorating idea that’s sure to be copied.

I didn’t get to the two Pier shows, the Ceramics Fair or many gallery openings. But I did get to the Metropolitan Museum to see the Duncan Phyfe exhibit. Many things are called “Phyfe” today because he was a very popular 19th-century New York cabinetmaker. Few of his original pieces are labeled. Good copies of his Empire style are still being made. In fact, my first reaction to the group of Duncan Phyfe tables in the center of the room was to remember all the copies I have seen.

The exhibition shows tops and bottoms of chairs and tables and points out the old and new clues to age and maker. Too bad a few of the pieces were given a too-shiny finish and no signage indicated how much restoration had been done. Everything looked brand new, not a nick or a rubbed gold spot. But it’s an important study and a clever exhibit that will be a guide in the future.

to be continued…