Please go to the web site for the Antique Dealers of America’s first online antiques show (adadealers.com), a three day round the clock event that lets you shop in your pajamas, guarantees authenticity, offers stuff exclusive to its venue, provides for buyer’s remorse, and eliminates the pre-show wheeling dealing that allows dealers to pick off each other’s stuff before you get to see it. To these and all the other inducements on the site we add four of our own:
1. The online show might just be the step into the 21st century that the venerable organization has needed.
2. The show’s web page is well designed, lively, and convincing, another auspicious sign.
3. You can buy but not with one click. Once you decide on an item you still have to contact the dealer and schmooze, an irreplaceable part of the charm of buying, selling, and collecting antiques and fine art.
4. It might just work, and if it does we are betting that by creating an energetic force field around antiques it will increase rather than diminish attendance at the shows that follow it this summer.
