One of the best annual Midwestern antiques shows is held on Memorial Day at Hawken School outside of Cleveland. I go every year and have noticed how it, like all shows, has changed.

The first shows were outdoors; now the show is indoors and air-conditioned. The old outdoor shows featured white painted furniture and garden accessories like iron Fiske fountains and Victorian grape-leaf-pattern iron benches. You could also find plenty of silver, Victorian glass, sets of dishes, blue and white china, Staffordshire figurines, art pottery, Christmas plates, Hummel figurines, folk art, precious jewelry, sporting equipment like wooden-handle golf clubs, spatterware, mocha ware, stoneware crocks, pontiled bottles, mechanical banks, vintage guns, oriental rugs, Windsor chairs, and Mission and Victorian furniture. Framed pictures and prints were best-sellers.

A few of the longtime dealers are still at the show, but it is much smaller and the merchandise has changed.

This year there was industrial furniture, like sand-blasted gym lockers with dull brushed-metal finish, and ormolu-mounted French revival furniture that looked early 18th-century but came from the middle of the 19th. I saw no art pottery, even though Rookwood, Weller and Roseville were made in Ohio. One dealer had a large selection of mocha ware and it was selling (see photo).

Almost all the jewelry was costume. You would have thought all the gold jewelry and silver teaspoons had been melted last year, when gold and silver prices were so high. But large silver soup ladles were in at least four booths, each priced at about $500. No Christmas plates, no painted furniture, little spatter. No oriental rugs and no full sets of dishes, but one dealer was selling sets of 12 service plates for about $200 a set.

There were few toys, no doorstops and little old glass or even Depression glass. But we talked to the dealers, and all were happy with their sales. They know what sells at this kind of show—useful, unusual vintage pieces. I photographed some things of interest at the opening so you can see what we saw.