The Adirondack Museum's Rustic Furniture Fair September 2008

The Annual Fair will includes works by rustic furniture makers selected by jury. Quality of workmanship, uniqueness of design, and use of natural materials in their natural form will all be considered by the 5-person panel made up of professionals representing the fields of architecture, design and antiques. The makers chosen, many from the Adirondack Park of upstate New York, offer a wide variety of furniture and accessories. Roots, twigs, bark and burl are just a few of the natural materials that take on new life with a new purpose. Approximately 2,500 visitors buy, browse or watch many of the makers demonstrate their individual techniques. Contemporary rustic is the focus of the day, but historic rustic furniture from the museum’s impressive collection is also on display. Old-time masters of the rustic tradition often whiled away the winter hours making furnishings for Great Camps or perhaps merely for “personal indulgence,” as Craig Gilborn suggests in his book, "Adirondack Furniture and the Rustic Tradition." Many pieces dating from the 1800s are on permanent exhibit at the Adirondack Museum. The Rustic Fair is held on the grounds of the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. All museum exhibits will be open during the Rustic Fair and admission is charged.

The perennial woodland chic of home decor in the rough returns to the Adirondack Museum, in Blue Mountain Lake, September 10-11, 2008 in the annual Rustic Furniture Fair. The event bridges old and new examples of this North Woods style, featuring dozens of contemporary builders as well as stunning examples in the museum's permanent collection.

New this year is a designer show home, filled with antique and contemporary furnishings gathered from Europe and North America by interior decorator Barbara Collum, of Old Forge and Fayetteville, New York. In Moodie Cottage, an early 1900s summer camp on Merwin Hill above the main museum campus, she will install scores of pieces from ornate chandeliers and antler-framed mirrors to small tabletop items like vases, bookends and twig mosaic boxes. Two bedrooms, a living room, dining room, library and upstairs hall in the handsome home will display the pieces. But this is not your typical historical society exhibit—everything here, from the bookshelves to the headboards, is for sale.

Collum's career designing interior spaces began with the 1980 Winter Olympics, in Lake Placid. She was asked to decorate VIP housing by the local Olympic committee, but given a limited budget for the task. "I told them I don't do motel rooms," Collum says. "Instead I found Oriental rugs, good American antiques and paintings for these places, and when the Olympics were over I had both the experience and inventory to launch my work."

Known for finding rare items at auctions in London or barns in the Mohawk Valley, Collum has brought the Adirondack mystique into numerous homes during the past two decades. She is also one of a handful of expert jurors scrutinizing rustic fair participants, and helping select the best new work from Montana, California, North Carolina and the Northeast for the museum show, which is now regarded as the best hunting grounds for rustic collectors. On Friday, September 10, a special preview allows a limited number of visitors to see builders and their work throughout the museum campus. The next day, the general public—sometimes more than twenty-five-hundred people—arrives to look, buy and learn more about this traditional craft. Beyond the fanciful twisted-vine chairs or iron-and-stick tables or bark-clad frames and painted cabinets, there's old-time music, food and a fine view. All twenty-plus museum buildings will be open.

ADIRONDACK LIFE magazine is sponsor of the rustic fair, with a booth on the porch of the main building both days. For more information about the show, call the Adirondack Museum at (518) 352-7311, extension 130 or visit http://www.adkmuseum.org.

  Adirondack Museum