Terry Talks About the Collection

When I think back over the last 20 years, what comes to my mind is all the fun and enjoyment that I had collecting. I went in the antique business with my father just to earn a living and try to develop a better father/son relationship. The picking was very good and my father was great at it. He had to learn the business from trial and error. As I watched him, I developed my own picking skills. It's always much easier to learn from others. It was on-the-job experience. Later I used the best of that knowledge and added my own ideas.

Back in the 80's, stuff was "hot" and prices were "high." Many days we had to return home early because the truck was full. There were always dealers waiting to see our recent picks. We were finding great stuff and could sell it as fast as we could pick it. At that point I made a conscious decision to start collecting the more unusual pieces, the "one of a kind" things. It was really hard to hold back these good things from my regular customers, because you knew you could sell it for a big profit immediately, keeping the customers happy and coming back. But this is when we developed a strategy to find a secret drop-off place to unload our best pieces before returning home. This is how my collection began - quite innocently I thought, just a neat piece here and another one there. Then, "Oh, I really like that," "That will look good here," and before I knew it, I was hooked on my new drug.

Joe and I worked together for 12 years and then we went our separate ways. After a while, I teamed up with my buddy George Langille. He had the same passion for picking as I did, and we understood that we could help each other. We made many trips together; some of the most memorable were being to "The Big Rock," Newfoundland. George and I would go to the small Islands and outports. I had driven an 18-wheeler over there, starting when I was 17, and regularly took the ferry from North Sydney. Later, my father and I had gone there canvassing. In some of these places we found very unusual pieces of country furnishings. In some cases we would make a two-day drive and find nothing but the warm welcome of the Newfoundland people. It was hard to get discouraged when the people were so thoughtful and helpful. We could sometimes only buy fishing nets and buoys, cod jigs and oars, but then a little gem would pop out - that one little wallbox or carved powderhorn that would make the whole trip worthwhile - a piece to keep. It was always about the hunt and earning a living. Even when times got hard, if a treasure came up, I felt compelled to put it in my collection, to keep it for what I thought would be the long haul.

It has been very exciting to explore Atlantic Canada from tip to tip, road to road, house to house or fish house, basement to attic. You just never knew what was around the next bend in the road or behind that closed door or maybe inside that old trunk.

I think one of my greatest enjoyments was when I would find an undiscovered folk artist. It was always great fun to ask them how much they might want for a piece of their work. In most cases, they were very flattered to think that I would actually want to buy it. Often these people had only ever given their pieces away, and it never occurred to them that someone else would want it. I loved to see the different expressions on their faces when you gave them money for something they had made. Each folk artist was different, but the bottom line was that I was always trying to encourage them to go ahead and carve or paint something else to express themselves. I saw them as real artists

As I offer this collection for sale, it will be like losing some old and great friends. However, I will still have all my memories of the many, many trips of the last 20 years. Each piece represents a period frozen in time. I hope the new owner of each piece will feel some of that excitement of discovery and receive the same comfort from ownership that I have - though we are really only custodians of these wonderful things while we are here in this time.