Karen MacCloud from Marbleton, Quebec brought her collection of matchbooks. Oddly enough, matchbooks which used to be everywhere and easily collected even by children, are no longer offered by most businesses because smoking is discouraged.
Vivian and Fred Webster made an appearance with just a few things for their huge collection. Fred has a long barn with three levels filled with an amazing collection of antique farm equipment at his farm in Coventry. Fred and Vivian are enthusiastic square dancers, and have volunteered to demonstrate some dances at our upcoming Kitchen Junket and Sliding Party on Sunday, March 1, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Hall House. Burt Porter will start playing the fiddle at 2 p.m. Neal Perry will be giving sleigh rides, and cross country ski trails will be packed around the museum grounds.
Ron Curtiss from Albany displayed his Edison Phonograph from around 1915, and is shown here setting up one of the recorded cylinders to play music. He is engaging the feed screw, which will push the stylus, which rides along grooves in the cylinder. The horn that projects the sound is attached to the stylus, and moves slowly as the stylus picks up the sound from the grooves in the cylinder.
The youngest exhibitors at the fair were the Morris sisters of Barton. Chrisana on the left brought her collection of clowns, and Margaux on the right brought her horses. Between them are other sisters Sabeth and Jalicia who came along to help.
Art Blair, who usually comes to the Collectors Fair and also many of our other events with his rope making tools, brought his collection of Native American arrowheads and tools this time. He collected them from around his family's farm north of Shelburne Pond when he was a boy in the 40's and 50's. The ancient flint tools included drills, scrapers for working wood and hides, a butcher knife, spear points,and a tool for opening up clams. He showed how the people used deer antlers to sharpen their tools. He believes that these tools are between 6,000 and 8,000 years old, left there by people who lived near the shore of modern Lake Champlain after the inland sea dried up after the last ice age 12,000 years ago. Art has pieces that show where they were resharpened to useful points again after an edge was taken off by use. His collection is an impressive indication of a sustainable culture and the quality of workmanship in the every day lives of ancient people.
Polly and Dexter Bennett of East Charleston brought two model Civil War cannons, just like the cannons used at Gettysburg.
Jay and Courtney Mead of North Troy set up and ran their model trains at the Collectors' Fair. They have Lionel trains they got in 1974, and the Commodore Vanderbilt Marx from the 1940's.
Laurel Sweetland had a model of an 1886 Benz Motor Wagon. She and her late husband Robert got it after they went to Germany years ago and saw the Benz Museum in Stutgardt, where there was a full size car.