East Coast Antiques premieres Friday on Rhode Island PBS

Is the antique craze getting old?

Joe Kernan
Posted 1/8/15

When Antiques Roadshow premiered on PBS almost 20 years ago, even its most ardent fans had no idea how popular the show would become. When it became apparent that there was a large and enthusiastic …

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East Coast Antiques premieres Friday on Rhode Island PBS

Is the antique craze getting old?

Posted

When Antiques Roadshow premiered on PBS almost 20 years ago, even its most ardent fans had no idea how popular the show would become. When it became apparent that there was a large and enthusiastic audience for the show, the inevitable knock-off shows appeared and it seems that every cable network had at least one show dedicated to appraising old objects and furniture submitted by viewers.

But the networks realized that the appetite for shows about antiques was not quite as massive as they supposed and most of those (pardon the oxymoron) new antique shows fell by the side of the original Roadshow. It turned out the appeal to the mass audience was in the “rags to riches” stories and the hope, realistic or not, that they could find a priceless artifact themselves. When it became apparent that treasures in the attic were still few and far between, the interest fell off.

But PBS was right about one thing: There was enough genuine interest to sustain an audience for public television, but in the world of pay-as-you-go network television, shows like Storage Wars and Pawn Stars are sustained by an interest in the characters of the people on the shows, an interest that survives the obvious staging and manufactured drama they indulge in.

As popular as those shows are, most genuine antique lovers want to hew close to the storylines of the original Antiques Roadshow, with its deft combination of the educational with the surprise of discovery.

Now comes East Coast Antiques, a new 30-minute antiques reality series based in the Ocean State that premieres on Rhode Island PBS on Friday at 8:30 p.m. that hopes to capture that same formula of education and adventure.

“The series is part reality television and part destination show, with host and series creator Mike Rossi acting as the guide on a behind-the-scenes tour through the twists and turns of the antiques world,” according to a press release. “As a licensed auctioneer, antiques store manager and antiquities collector himself, Rossi brings a unique insider perspective to the new series. A television veteran with 25 years of broadcast experience, he is also the creator and director of the popular antiques television show Antiques Alley, which completed its run on Rhode Island PBS last fall.”

The first season of East Coast Antiques will follow the cast as they travel up and down the east coast visiting antiques stores and auctions, flea markets and festivals - even home attics - in search of the people and items that continue to make collecting antiques “one of the hottest pastimes today.” Rossi says viewers will learn how to go about finding just the right item, “the art of negotiating the best price and, most importantly, knowing when to walk away.”

Rossi concedes that the world of antiques “where all hell breaks loose” and he and his cast intend to condense or “dramatize” segments of the show but in a self-conscious and non-deceptive way, a sort of meta-fiction reality show.

The anchor, or pivotal setting for East Coast Antiques, is a fictional store called Antiques Alley (the real-life Stillwater Antiques in Greenville). What is the show's premise?

“It's an antiques show within an antiques show,” said Rossi. “I'm the manager of Antiques Alley with three intrepid employees. They find themselves in situations and often have to fend for themselves because I'm busy on the road filming an antiques show for television,” he said. His wide grin predicts the situations will be fun and funny.

The real hope of Rossi is that the educational aspects of the show will still come through without the air of pedantry that expert testimony can generate. That is always a tall order for a filmmaker and no one, even Rossi so far, has ever been able to get away from the inevitable “talking heads” shots that focus on the face of the expert to create and air of authority. Unfortunately, authority is not always compelling television, and truly articulate experts do not crowd the world of antiques.

In his press release, Rossi said he believes the informative and entertaining segments at Antiques Alley “serve as appetizers for the main course: the great stories told by antiques insiders from their shops and locations along the east coast. Rossi’s real life expertise and his membership in the world of antiques dealing earn him access to prominent personalities and experts who furnish thought-provoking and insightful interviews not available to the average TV producer.”

The objects examined are seen through the dealer’s eyes, not the collector’s, so viewers quickly learn what’s hot, what’s not, and why. Rossi hopes a fun and conversational format reveals the culture of the antiques world from the people who’ve spent their lives in it, analyzing trends and navigating the waters between the art and science of acquiring antiques.

Talking with the cast at the set of the show in Smithfield revealed a disparate group of affable experts and one inexperienced, but enthusiast fashion marketing major from Warwick. In addition to Rossi, the show stars toy specialist Travis Landry (featured on the Travel Network’s Toy Hunter), antiques dealer Steve Mariorenzi, and Jolie Stewart, the aforementioned businesswoman and model.

“She’s on the show because of this,” said Rossi, as he pointed to his own face. “It’s to offset this.”

Rossi himself is a multi-award winning photographer, director and producer. He is the creator of both Antiques Alley and East Coast Antiques. Rossi has extensive television experience and handpicked the cast and crew of East Coast Antiques. In recent years Rossi has spent his time organizing charity productions to help non-profit organizations. In his free time, he creates art photography with glass master artist Josh Simpson.

Travis Landry is a well-known toy expert from Uxbridge, Massachusetts. He began his television career at the age of 16, first as a series regular and then as co-host, for Toy Hunter, which ran for three seasons on the Travel Channel. Travis is a popular guest at fan conventions like Rhode Island Comic Con and similar events in other cities. He said people have a lot to learn about what makes toys collectible.

“I am amazed at people who go out and buy large numbers of toys and put them away in their original boxes in the hope that they will be collector’s items,” Landry said. “They don’t realize that thousands of other people are doing the same thing and they will never be rare and collectable.”

He says toys become collectible because people played with them and they became popular because of that. He says people should collect what they like.

“The real winners are the people who collected Star Wars items before anyone knew how big the franchise would become,” he said. “You can’t make something a collectable. They do that on their own.”

Jolie Stewart is the only professional actor on the show. The Warwick resident is a relative newcomer to acting who has worked as a print and runway model for three years. East Coast Antiques is her first featured role.

Steve Mariorenzi is an antiques and collectibles dealer and collector. He is well versed in the ins and outs of the antiques world and a master at purchasing at auction. He brings a sort of “street cred” to his role.

Brien Jennings is off camera but no less important to the show. Jennings is both an award-winning educator and filmmaker. For the past 12 years he has been the school library media specialist at Narragansett Elementary School in Narragansett. He has worked in film and television production for nearly 20 years on projects ranging from photojournalism, to directing a concert film for the Dropkick Murphys. He produced several of his own short documentaries and has worked as a photographer for Antiques Alley, and for the Hurricane Katrina documentary, Survival, Strength, Starting Over.

One of the missions of the program is to educate people about how many fraudulent antiques there are out there, said Rossi.

“It easy to trick someone who doesn’t know antiques,” said Rossi. “There are so many people who are swindled by people who know how to make things look authentic. I feel so bad for them. It’s like money thrown out the window.”

Rossi said the frauds make things difficult for honest dealers. Once a customer has been fooled, they rarely want to take a chance again.

“You have to find people who really love the things they sell and want you to learn about them,” he said. “You can still make a lot of money without screwing people.”

East Coast Antiques will air on Rhode Island PBS on Fridays at 8:30 p.m., following the British edition of Antiques Roadshow at 8 p.m.

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