The Economist gives a quick catalogue of the wares in the show:

A year ago the show changed its definition of antique, from objects more than 100 years old to those made before 1960. Fortunately this allowed for the appearance this year of an eye-catching, whimsical chandelier from 1920 (pictured above), brought by Frank & Barbara Pollack, Americana dealers from Illinois. The piece consists of three wrought-iron arms, each cut into a silhouette of an elk, with hanging green-glass lights that look like gigantic acorns with “hats” of cast iron. It was love at first site for one visitor, who snapped it up for a five-figure sum soon after the opening.

For all its fame as an American show, this year’s event is a cosmopolitan mix. London dealers include Daniel Katz, whose collection of Renaissance and 18th-century sculptures features a (quite literally) in-your-face gilded and painted stucco plaque of Beethoven’s head ($150,000, featured in slideshow below); and Nicholas Grindley, a private dealer in London and Beijing, who brought Chinese furniture, laquerware and works of art. Mr Grindley says that 30 years ago he bought in the East and sold in the West. Now the situation has reversed: he is buying back from his Western clients and selling in the East. He is making his Winter Show debut in the hopes of attracting new, young Western collectors.

Hans P. Kraus, junior, a photography dealer based in New York, is exhibiting the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, a pioneering English photographer, with prices that range from $10,000 to $400,000 (depending on an image’s rarity). His stall is further enriched by objects from the archive of Lacock Abbey, the former home of Fox Talbot.

ArtInfo adds:

Alice Duncan, director of the Gerald Peters Gallery, created the most stunning booth in the show, containing only American sculpture and highlighted by the fair’s most talked about piece — a monumental pink Tennessee marble urn designed by Paul Howard Manship in 1914. Measuring nine feet high with its plinth, the urn is encircled by a frieze of American Indian imagery — the hunting of deer, a tribal battle scene, and a buffalo hunt. The asking price is $6 million, and Duncan says that several institutions — and a couple of architects — had expressed serious interest. Another Manship work, his 1914 The Four Elements, four parcel-gilt bronze relief panels of Earth, Air, Fire and Water, made for the American Telephone and Telegraph Building at 185 Broadway, was also attracting attention, as was a charming group of 19 bronze “British Champion Animals” of various sizes by Herbert Haseltine (1925), priced at $700,000. Asked how it felt to be the de facto best in show, Duncan said that she was especially gratified by the accolades she received from other exhibitors.

Brook Mason adds on Artnet these sightings, including John Thain coming out in the open for the first time in a year:

One is Jim Elkind, who heads up Lost City Arts and specializes in Harry Bertoia sculptures long favored by Eero Saarinen and now practically a craze. On view is Bertoia’s 84-inch-tall Dandelion from 1960, which is a whopping $250,000, and Elkind already has interest. “His ‘Dandelions’ bring the highest prices, as he did very few of them and they’re so delicate,” says Elkind.

In a nanosecond last night, Elkind sold a craggy Paul Evans 1965 forged steel cabinet for $75,000. Also snared then were 1929 plaster of Paris maquettes of eagles for the exterior of the Empire State Building for $60,000. His buyers? “The multiple-home kind,” replies Elkin. “I’m in the black now and the show is the right fit for me,” he says. […]

For sheer style and top-notch painting, best stand award has to go to Hirschl & Adler. The firm is sporting a suitably patriotic painting, a Rembrandt Peale 1821 portrait of our first founder, George, as well as a Benjamin West rendering of Cupid, just in time for Valentine’s Day and American Impressionist landscapes.

Paintings were moving swiftly and Adelson Galleries whisked off a mega-Mary Cassatt oil, Little Girl in a Large Red Hat, ca. 1902. Not so far away, Gerald Peters Gallery sold the Gaston Lachaise 1922 bronze Three Peacocks.

Encouraging words come too from Old Print Shop, Inc. dealer Harry Newman, who says, “So far are sales are four and half times what they were the entire last year.” He sold an American 18th-century almanac, a Henry Walton 1840s lithograph and a Frank Benson etching.

In With the Old (Economist)

Winter Antiques Show Warms Up (ArtInfo)

As Good As It Gets (Artnet)