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Local Antique Shops House
a Window to the Past
This Story Appeared in the May 28, 1998 TV Times
By DAVID MAULL, TV Times
An antique store is much like a time warp.
One step through the door, and you are transported to another generation. Perhaps one in which bell bottoms are in fashion or Art Deco furniture is the craze.
On this journey, you will see items that have stood the test of time and can still be considered stylish decades after their creation.
But you will also come across some that are so deliciously hideous that they are at once laughed at and admired. These are usually enough to make one question the mental state of the poor soul who designed them.
They also inject some fun into antiquing.
Whether it's an old dentist's chair, a woman's hat from the 1920s or an odd Victorian lamp, there are plenty of off-beat items capable of making one laugh out loud.
"Ugly sells," joked local antique dealer Dave Mayer.
Mayer, owner of the Millsboro Bazaar, specializes in antique clothes and jewelry.
He currently has more than 1,000 pairs of 1970s bell-bottom pants in stock, most of which have never been worn and still have the original price tags. Their striped and checkered designs have color schemes that hurt the eyes.
"I got a big charge out of finding those bell bottoms," Mayer said. "I ship them all over the country."
Mayer's line of women's clothing features one of the largest hat selections on the East Coast, with those from the 1950s and 60s being especially popular. Most of the clothing hails from the same time period.
Mayer has a chuckle upon producing a black and gold Oscar de la Renta dress from the 1960s.
"This is 'Hello Dolly' meets the 'Sound of Music'," he joked.
Downstairs, Mayer has large display cases full of jewelry, which he proudly admits is not real.
"It's all fake. Not a bit of it's real," he said, noting most of the costume jewelry is glass and plastic. "I look for cheap. I have a little bit of everything."
Two of his favorites are a pin that resembles an orange feather duster and a pair of mink earings that look like small fur balls.
"You think - 'What went through the people's minds when they designed them?'," Mayer said.
But odd antiques aren't limited to clothing.
Beaman's Old and Gnu Antiques on Route 1 in Lewes has a rare doctor's cabinet from the 1870s. The piece has 10 small drawers and two cabinets that once held medicine and tools. It also bears a few scars from the doctor's work.
"I've never seen another one like it," store owner Peter Beaman said.
On a shelf at the front of the store is a gold Victorian-style lamp, which has two female figurines at the base. The figures are shown harvesting wheat and above them are twisting holly vines with light bulbs on the ends.
"It's unusual to have two figures," said Beaman, who dates the lamp to between 1890 and 1910.
Most of Beaman's inventory is pre-1930s and he takes special satisfaction in acquiring unusual items.
"You just stumble into it," he said. "That's the fun and the challenge."
For a man who attends auctions two or three times a week, rainy days provide little enjoyment.
"It's not fun sitting in a shop on a day like this," he said during a recent afternoon downpour.
Across Route 1 at Garage Sale Antiques, one will find a huge three-door armoire priced at about $3,600. Dated to about 1910, the armoire sits among slews of antique tables, chairs and writing desks.
Garage Sale's three buildings also contain items such as an old pinball machine and dentist's chair.
Sidetracked Antiques on Railroad Avenue in Selbyville also carries some unusual furniture.
The store recently received a wooden 1940s Art Deco sideboard.
"Art Deco was 30s and 40s primarily," owner Georgeann Nilles said. "I just like it."
The sideboard has cabinets at each end with dangling door knobs and in the middle are drawers with curved fronts.
Sidetracked also has an old ice cream maker with a manual crank, a pair of China brass candlesticks with oriental dragons and an office door from the Bunting's Nurseries building that once stood on Dukes Street in Selbyville.
"I have a reputation for being the funky kind of shop," Nilles said.
No item, no matter how odd, is ruled out in Nilles' search for merchandise.
"People buy anything," she said.
Iron Age Antiques in Ocean View has carved out a special niche with the iron work of blacksmith Keith Toms.
In the basement of the building, Toms performs his craft with gas and coal forges, anvils and hammers.
"I've spent a lot of time down here. They throw me food now and then," he joked.
On display upstairs are a number of Toms' works, including fireplace tools and a pair of serpent-shaped candlesticks mounted on the wall.
Toms makes the items by heating rods of steel to between 1,800 and 2,000 degrees in the forge before banging them into shape with hammers.
"It becomes fairly plastic," Toms said of the heated steel. "It's kind of like clay. Anything you do in clay you can pretty much do in steel."
Toms uses varying sizes of hammers to shape the steel. He makes a leaf pattern simply by banging a circular steel rod flat on an anvil.
"The hammers are basically your fingers," he said.
Toms' work is also on display at the Globe Theater in Berlin, Md. and his custom work includes a table with vines and leaves twisting out from the legs.
He doesn't claim to know all about his craft, however.
"It takes so long to learn the ropes," he said. "There's a lifetime of learning in blacksmith to be done. It's fascinating, it really is."
Kind of like a trip through the antique time warp.
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