SAVE THE DATE! The SAPFM Mid-Year Conference is scheduled for Friday, 28 June 2024 through Sunday, 30 June with side trips to be held on Monday, 1 July.

Southeastern Pennsylvania has a rich culture of period furniture and other decorative arts, primarily from the Germanic peoples who settled the fertile lands that reminded them of home.  They incorporated their own old world furniture traditions and craftsmanship with influences from their British neighbors. Al Breed

  • Chuck BenderFriday night we’ll have the Cartouche Banquet at The Farmhouse at People’s Light in Malvern PA. We will honor our 2024 Cartouche Winner Marion Smith.
  • We’ll start at Ursinus Saturday morning. Our presenters will be Al Breed, Chuck Bender and Jeremy Trichler. We’ll use the same rotation system as in the past so you’ll have a close up look at the presentations.
  • On Saturday night were back at The Farmhouse at Peoples Light for our SAPFM Conference Banquet. Lis Minardi, author and Executive Director of Historic Trappe will be our guest speaker.
  • Sunday morning we’ll be back at Ursinus where Dave Heller will be our presenter. In the afternoon we’ll have two presenters. Bess Naylor from Olde Mill Cabinet Shop and Matt Bickford, plane maker.

Our Friday and Monday optional tours will highlight some of the very best that is either in private collections, first rate antique shops, and important public collections that are often overlooked:Jeremy T

  • Dave HellerWe will visit at least two private collections. One is the home of our keynote speaker, Lisa Minardi, which features a significant collection of early Pennsylvania furniture and decorative arts set within a meticulously restored period house that also includes significant built-in furniture from when it was constructed in 1757. https://www.themagazineantiques.com/article/living-with-antiques-a-labor-of-love/   We will explore more early Pennsylvania furniture in the adjacent shop of Philip Bradley Antiques. Nearby, we will visit a peerless private collection of pre-1750 Pennsylvania furniture. 
  • Historic Rock Ford will provide private tours of its relatively new gallery of more than 230 objects of Lancaster County decorative arts from c1765 – 1810 https://www.historicrockford.org/.  We will tour Historic Trappe's Center for Pennsylvania German Studies and historic houses, with extensive furniture displays featuring carved, inlaid, and painted decoration as well as pre-1800 Philadelphia furniture, organized by Executive Director, Lisa Minardi https://historictrappe.org/.  And we will visit the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center https://www.schwenkfelder.org/ that chronicles the settlement in the Perkiomen area of six families of Protestants fleeing religious persecution in Silesia in the 1730s – longtime curator Candace Perry has displayed numerous blanket chests in the center of the open gallery specifically so woodworkers can study the construction from all sides.

We have made arrangements for hotels in Collegeville. Both the Residence Inn and the Courtyard by Marriott. Both are about 3 miles from Ursinus College.

Stay tuned to this website for further details as they become available!