The antiques shop was in a lovely brownstone on one of those venerable old streets much like the venerable old place that it had become. Its front hallway was narrow, partially blocked by an oversized mahogany cabinet with glass doors and shelves filled with crystal and cut glass.
To the left, a long room stuffed with furniture, glassware, pottery, pictures and lamps was roped off, and on a tall white cabinet were “Not for Sale” signs. The auction house staff had already set up most of the “for sale” stuff on tables, under tables and against a fence in the small back yard.
Much of it was the same types of items I had noticed when I walked through a cluttered middle room of the shop, where a table was covered with cups, saucers, plates and bowls, and counters along two walls held porcelain figurines.
When the auctioneer announced this sale a few weeks ago, I did not recognized the name of the shop, Harry A. Eberhardt & Son. I usually buy vintage and antique items at auction and rarely at retail shops. When I arrived at this auction, I found that Eberhardt was both an antiques shop and repair shop. According to its website, it sold such items as imported Japanese cloisonne, jade, glass, paintings, porcelain, lamps, cut glass, crystal, cups, saucers and antiques.
The company and the building itself were steeped in history. On its website, Eberhardt billed itself as the oldest continuously owned antiques shop specializing in porcelain, glass and Orientalia in the country, and the oldest antiques repair shop. It was housed in a 9,000-square-foot building described as an Italianate brownstone mansion built in 1856. The building is located in an area of Philadelphia that nested some of the city’s most elite from the 1890s to around the 1940s.
The Eberhardt shop got its name in 1888 when Harry A. Eberhardt took it over from a Mr. Brown, according to the company website and a sheet I came across at the sale. Eberhardt had been first a longtime employee and then partner in the company, which was originally opened around 1869 by someone other than Brown.
In 1893, the company won medals and ribbons at the World’s Fair in Chicago and a year later at the California Midwinter Fair, according to the info sheet.
“Harry A. Eberhardt & Son is a company with traditions deeply rooted in another time and era, keeping alive what in our society are becoming lost arts and crafts,” according to the sheet. “In a temporary and throwaway world we are striving to save those things of beauty, elegance and value to our customers.”
This was a worthy pledge from a company whose time had passed. Many of the items on tables inside the shop and outside don’t sell well anymore. The market for most antiques has dwindled.
A few weeks before this sale, the auctioneer had cited the shop’s closing as a way to console a woman who was distraught over the paltry amount of money her antique dolls were being sold for. He noted that many antique items were no longer bringing in the big bucks they once did.
Eberhardt’s customers who once set their tables with fine English and American china and Waterford crystal and sparkling glass have died. Their children and grandchildren don’t know what to do with the stuff, or have neither the desire nor inclination to be formal. Much of it ends up at auction, where auctioneers almost have to give it away.
After more than 125 years, the shop closed its doors and disposed of its contents. The auction was held over two days in December, with the items outside and on the first floor sold on the first day, and furniture on the second floor on the second day.
That first day, I bought a lovely carved wooden frame with a leaf motif, an African American mourning ring and a carved wooden bongo player (which was part of a lot that included a nude head hunter holding a head aloft, which I found rather strange).
Here are some of the items for sale (and not for sale).
