Intermediate League of Butler Hosts 74th Annual Antiques Show and Sale

Pick up a piece of decorated stoneware or run a hand along a slab of 19th-century furniture, and you're holding something that traveled a long way to reach a hotel ballroom in Butler Township. That journey was the quiet premise of the Intermediate League of Butler's 74th annual antiques show and sale, held March 20 through 22 at Tesla's Ramada by Wyndham on Pittsburgh Road, where 37 dealers spread their collections across the floor and invited the public to look, handle, and remember.

The range on offer was genuinely wide. Antiques dating to the early 1800s shared space with Art Deco-era works, vintage clothing, model trains, rare coins and pins, old-time advertising signs, and Lalique crystals. Ken Jenereski, a Butler native who has been selling antiques for roughly 50 years, brought old-time advertising signs, gas and oil signs, and decorated stoneware. "We've got a little array of everything, and that's what makes the business good, because it's a variety of all kinds," he said.

Jay Ritter, a Pittsburgh-based seller whose own shop houses 30 dealers, laid out model trains, Lalique crystals, furniture, knickknacks, clothing, and art deco-era works. His inventory alone traced a span of more than a century. "My shop has 30 different dealers in it, and we deal things from primitives, in the 1800s, all the way up to the '60s and '70s with vintage items," Ritter said. He has participated in the Intermediate League show for 20 years, drawn as much by the conversations as by the sales. "It's nice to listen to the customers, because they always tell us stories of they may have had a similar item, or their mother or grandmother had it. There's always nice connections."

That human dimension was part of what organizer Toni Fennick described as the show's essential character. "A lot of the stuff you'll find here is very old, it's very unique," she said. Many of the 37 participating dealers run their own shops and brought curated selections rather than surplus stock, lending the show the feel of a convergence of specialists rather than a general sale.

For a show in its 74th year, that consistency of purpose is its own kind of provenance.