At Best & Company, we work with New York’s most talented designers and architects to create custom interiors that will stand the test of time. In this way, our elite contracting and specialty millwork teams are following in the footsteps of a long line of craftspeople, workshops, design studios, and gallerists—from Duncan Phyfe (active 1784-1847) to Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848–1933) to Wendell Castle (b. 1932) and countless anonymous artisans and art dealers—whose work transcends the fickle moods of fashion.

 

That’s why we follow the action that takes place during Antiques Week, New York’s version of a Winter Carnival. It starts this week, with the Important Americana sales at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. Here’s the place to set your sights on everything from Paul Revere spoons and Prohibition-era cocktail shakers (on the block at Christie’s on January 23) to a Duncan Phyfe linen press or a 1940s cowboy-motif hooked rug from the private collection of silver-screen star Dustin Hoffman (at Sotheby’s sale of Important Americana, January 24 and 25; see the rug, above). What lots will fetch the most attention at Sotheby’s closely watched sale of Ralph O. Esmerian’s incomparable collection of American folk art, on January 25? Or Christie’s sale of “Favorites from the Estate of Kristina Barbara Johnson,” an offering of 78 lots that run the gamut from Outsider Art to the 1944 Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses painting, “Old Covered Bridge, Woodstock,” which somehow, as it ages, seems more modern than nostalgic?

 

We’re talking serious shopping, of course—but there are bargains and fun to be had, as well, with theatrical auctions and parties aplenty, where the talk is sure to revolve around design—past, present, and future.

 

The main event kicks off with cocktails and hors d’oeurves on Thursday, January 23, from 5 to 9 p.m, with the always glamorous Opening Night Preview of the venerable Winter Antiques Show (you can learn all about the show, here), at the historic Park Avenue Armory, between 66^th and 67^th Streets. Now in its 60^th year, the Winter Antiques Show sets the bar for all the satellite antiques and design events that revolve around it, with a globally gathered, mind-expanding mix of fine art, antiquities, and decorative arts from ancient times through the 1960s, offered by 73 of the world’s top dealers and vetted by a team of 160 eagle-eyed experts in every field. From Friday, January 24 through Sunday, February 2, the show is open daily to everyone who's interested in seeing the best of the best.