Collection of Gertrude Dittmar, Colts Neck, New Jersey
In 1943, from the army camp where he was stationed, my father wrote to my grandparents asking them to store for him an 18th century table and corner cupboard he’d just purchased for the home he would make with my mother after the war. Once in that home, these two pieces were gradually joined by others, until the farmhouse my parents share for over half a century — and some of the outbuildings around it as well — were overflowing with folk art and antiques.
Collecting antiques and folk art was my parents’ passion — a lively passion whose focus shifted over time. Some of the more formal pieces they’d collected early on got stored elsewhere, as painted furniture, fraktur and theorems, redware, chalkware and carvings began filling the rooms of the house. The look of the collection changed. But the collecting never stopped.
Many of the objects my parents left behind have warmed the homes of my brother and me, but some of them have gone back out into the world, as others will continue to do. My mother said that when she dusted the objects she thought of all the hands that had made them and cared for them. She wanted the objects to go on, ever finding their way to appreciative eyes and hands.
-Gertrude Dittmar
Information courtesy of Pook & Pook, Inc., October 2013.