McCarty Antiques: stunning

beauty just off the beaten path

by PAT STOKES

Although geographically somewhat off the beaten path (at 7733 Winston Rd.), McCarty Antiques is very much in the mainstream of shops on the Avenue in terms of style and status.

The impressive collection of paintings and furniture is housed in a smallish (4,000 sq. ft.), handsomely renovated building from which for many years the Marcolina brothers operated their tile business. To find it, you merely take a diagonal path across Winston Road from Filippi Bros. Iron Works. The shop sits perkily on a manicured lawn, next to its own parking lot.

Owner Mark grew up in Medford Lakes, N.J., where his father owned a contracting business. His mother had an artistic and decorative bent, and Mark early learned to appreciate art in many forms. He took art history electives in college. There he met a girl named Susan whom he married when he was 23. Together they started an art gallery in New Jersey, with Susan handling all the bookwork and publicity, while he did the buying and selling — a happy and successful arrangement still in place today. They have a daughter, Sara, a sophomore at New York University, who keeps in close touch with her Germantown Friends School pals by e-mail.

In 1986 Mark and Susan opened their first Philadelphia gallery on the corner of Emlen Street and Lincoln Drive in Mt. Airy, where the display window still shows off some beautiful art. Then, in 1996, they bought the present building, keeping the other as a storage area.

As you walk into the Chestnut Hill gallery, you are surrounded by the soft glowing colors of 18th and 19th century English and American oil paintings, including some portraiture, but largely landscape and still life, their excellence immediately evident.

As Mark shows me around the room, I sense his strong interest in the works, and his knowledge about them and their painters. He stops at a painting of the Maine coast, “a favorite subject of Philadelphians,” by a well-known Philadelphia painter Carl Philip Weber, 1849-1921. It’s in its original period gilt frame. Price, $18,000. Nearby, Bucks County painter Walter Baum is represented in a fine, ever-popular traditional winter scene; $6,500.

All the paintings are assembled in the first room, making it a true gallery on its own. As we move along to the second room, filled with traditional furniture, strains of “Waltz for Debbie,” with Bill Evans at the piano, waft in from the office. Lovely. Where were we? Oh yes, English and American 18th and 19th century furniture, “nothing from the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s,” says Mark.

As with the paintings, distinctive one-of-a-kind items show careful selecting. On every wall are large pieces: dressers, chests, tables, sideboards. Also there are accessories, some of which he refers to as “continental,” Baroque, Italian, French, etc.; lamps, candlesticks, boxes and wonderful silver tableware; place settings, plates, bowls, decorative items.

On the floor are a few original old Oriental rugs. My favorite: an 80-year-old Persian Pashan in glowing reds. Before leaving the room, I made some more visual notes. Oh look! Is that a dress? Yes, a dress, drenched in rhinestones, incongruously hanging on a hanger on the wall. Obviously a Paris design, maybe from the ’50s. White crepe, entirely encrusted with the glittering stones.

Tour over. We talk. Mark tells me he buys from private homes when people are breaking up their collections. He keeps prices at a level “where sticker shock doesn’t knock you unconscious.” Sometimes longtime customers will resell a piece to him. He finds it rewarding that the person has enjoyed it for many years and realizes that the value is still there, probably even greater.

In the office nearby, Susan juggles the minutiae of management with skill and good humor, while the paintings, furniture and Mark himself complement one another in their elegant surroundings. The works in this collection are of very high caliber, so that a visit to the gallery is like discovering a small, precious secret not far from the heart of the Hill. McCarty Gallery is open on Saturdays and by appointment. For information, 215-247-5220. See you on the Avenue.