Millerton’s Montage Is Charming and Affordable

Walk into Jennings & Rohn Montage on Millerton’s Main Street and the first thing you see is a classical figure, a woman bearing a pitcher of water and a demure countenance. She is draped and sculpted and perhaps a bit aged in the tradition of classical Greek art. The tag dangling from her wrist says $595.

Take a step to the right and there’s an enormous, lean, bent, Giacometti-tinged figure, his armature daubed with chunks of cement: Price, $1,650.  But lest you get the wrong idea here, a stunning little duck made of lead would set you back $12. 

Clearly,  this art and antiques store seeks a wide audience.

Owner Dana Jennings-Rohn is a fourth generation antiques dealer and her mate, Fritz Rohn, is her partner in this 4 year old enterprise along with their daughter  Chloë Rohn who is entering the fifth generation  of the  family business.

It’s a tricky undertaking, dealing in antiques. “Some furnishings will never have integrity,” Dana tells me. 

They can be dated from the 16th  century on, but unless they are beautifully made and beautifully designed they will never have value. As my mother used to say, ‘a house dress will never be chic no matter how old it is.’ 

“It’s all about design and good craftsmanship.”

It’s also about working with customers, Chloë says. She chats them up to get an idea of their ideas and attitudes. Sometimes she sees her job as stretching a customer’s notion of what they are seeking. Say a weekender comes in looking for a square table. Chloë  likes to offer other possibilities.  Especially if there is no square table in stock.

Here’s what draws people to stores like this: “People love to collect,” Fritz tells me. “Then a dealer needs a quick grasp of value, a sense of aesthetics and the ability to figure out people’s taste. You have to have it in you.” 

But all the charm and insight in the world does not keep an antiques, art and furnishings store running without  interesting and varied antiques, art and furnishings. And that is what Jennings-Rohn and Rohn are after. Perched  above one aisle is a large gold-bright sphinx with the upper body of an 18th-century woman rising above the animal’s paws. In another room,  a 1965 spread of Marimekko fabric in raspberry and orange, $450,  draws eyes, especially from those who wore Marimekko  designs in the 1960s.

A bronze torso of a naked male is set before an ornate design: $795; and a charming black iron antelope sells for $125.

Then there are odder pieces like a small clock face surrounded  by rectangles of pink, bronze and silver, an example, Dana says of the brutalist movement when buildings and other physical arts displayed their raw materials openly.  A sunburst of roughly welded nails flecked with gold is another example, she says. And  a floor lamp fashioned from an aluminum surveyor’s stand seems inspired by the same  notion: the raw beauty of it.

So, over time, Millerton’s Montage, Hunter Bee, Old Mill of Irondale, and Millerton Antiques Center next door are drawing weekenders and locals from one store to the next. Dealers like to call this a mecca, attracting all kinds of people looking for art, furnishings, antiques and such beauties as a stuffed bear at Millerton Antiques Center and some flowing pottery , a copper wine cooler and a gilded sphinx next door.  

Jennings and Rohn Montage at 25 Main Street in Millerton, NY,  is open every day but Tuesday. For information, go to www.montageantiques .com, or call 860-485-3887.