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Press Kit
BARBARA ISRAEL BIO
"What would entice a person to pursue a career in garden ornament? In my case it was
one magnificent estate: Blairsden, in Peapack, N.J. A few times as a child, I secretly
circumnavigated the locked entrance gates and scaled the clifflike hills surrounding the
house to peek through the trees at Blairsden's formal garden."
—Barbara Israel, Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste
Barbara Frelinghuysen Israel founded Barbara Israel Garden Antiques in 1985, after a
serendipitous purchase of a large collection of estate statuary led her down the garden
antiques path. More than 20 years and hundreds of exquisite objects later, Barbara is
renowned as the authority on the subject.
After her years of experience in the garden antiques market, Barbara recognized that
there were limited options for a broad audience to own antique garden ornaments. Thus,
in 2006, Barbara Israel created Garden Traditions, a company that features composition
stone reproductions modeled after her collection of antique fountains, statuary and
furniture.
Barbara has served as a consultant to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on their collection
of nineteenth-century cast iron, and has sold pieces to the Winterthur Museum, the
Smithsonian Institution, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as to many important
private collectors. As an active board member of Historic Hudson Valley, Barbara is
helping to preserve landmark properties and their antique garden ornaments.
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She has appeared on Good Morning America, Sunday Morning Today, Martha Stewart
Living, A&E's The Incurable Collector, and Antiques Roadshow FYI. Her lecture circuit
has covered the country with more than 50 talks given at prestigious venues such as The
Huntington Library Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, the Boston Athenaeum, The
Ellis Antiques Show, The American Decorative Arts Forum of Northern California, The
Fine Arts Society of Peoria, The Alexandria Association, The Folger Library, The
Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, and The New Orleans Botanic Gardens.
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques exhibits at three antiques shows yearly. The prestigious
Winter Antiques Show, held in New York in late January, is considered the premier
antiques show in the nation; Barbara is currently the sole garden ornament dealer in the
show. The New York Botanical Garden Antique Garden Furniture Show, held in late
April, is the oldest and most selective of garden antiques shows in the country. Lastly,
she exhibits at a new venue, the Newport Antiques Show, held mid-August in Newport,
Rhode Island.
Barbara's book, Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste, was
published by Harry N. Abrams in 1999 and is still considered the most complete
reference of its kind. Replete with more than 100 color photographs of ornament in
historic gardens of regional and national significance and an exhaustive catalogue of
patterns organized by ornament type, it chronicles the history of American garden
ornament from 1740 to 1940.
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