Elaine on a recent trip for both play
and work near her house in Maine.

Elaine Dillof has a passion for fine old things. Her special interest is in Arts and Crafts design, to many people synonymous with “Stickley.” The Stickley name is associated particularly with Gustav Stickley, who started with his brothers at the very beginning of the twentieth century to handcraft simple wooden chairs. Elaine and her husband Bob, a retired lawyer, are among the top dozen collectors of authentic Gustav Stickley furniture. Elaine's interests extend, however, to fine antiques and old artifacts in general.

As a seller as well as a collector, Elaine bemoans the fact that many of her customers care only about the appearance of an object and not about its age. She also has an eye, however, for newer handcrafted works. She looks for pieces that are “fresh” and often finds this quality in contemporary folk art and in works by children. Her birthday present this year, she says, was a large metal painted moose head, which is to be mounted in stone in the extraordinary house that she and her husband have in Central Maine.

The Maine house was a cover story in the Summer 2005 issue of American Bungalow, a magazine for Arts and Crafts design enthusiasts. The title of the article, “A Little Slice of Paradise,” is a quote from what Elaine had said to the writer of the article, David Cathers, about her feeling about the house. The picture shown on the cover of that issue of American Bungalow, which is signed "Peggy Reid," elicited much admiring comment by the magazine's readers, but Elaine has not been able to find any additional information about the artist. The Dillofs’ principal residence, in Westchester County, New York, was also a cover story in American Bungalow (“A Crafted House,” by David Cathers, Summer 2001).

Elaine isn’t saying what birthday it was that she celebrated with the purchase of the moose head metal sculpture. She does say that she is older than her buying partners and other associates that she goes on buying expeditions with, but that she keeps pace with them. For many years, she has had a shop for antiques and handcrafted items in Greenwich, Connecticut, and recently added a place in an antiques and artisans’ mall in Stamford, Connecticut.

When their children were young, Elaine and her husband began spending their summers in Maine in rented houses, until they decided to buy a second home there. They settled on a farmhouse that had been built around 1840. For a number of years, up to the 1950’s, it had been a country inn called “Sundial Manor and Cottages.” One of the inn’s cottages remains on the property, and visiting friends often stay there.

For awhile, the Dillofs kept the Sundial Inn sign on the front lawn of the house, with a “No Vacancy” sign attached. Too often, however, passing motorists ignored the “No Vacancy Sign” and made inquiries, and the sign had to be brought inside, where it would also be better preserved. The sign now graces what was the inn’s Tea Room.

The sign painted by artist Klir Beck
in what was the inn's "Tea Room."

While her husband was meeting with bankers and brokers at the closing on the house, Elaine dashed out to a local auction, and bought a two-door Stickley bookcase that is still in the room that the Dillofs call the winter living room. The front door of the house (like the front doors of many houses in the area, little used by family and friends) opens into the winter living room. The Dillofs decided, however, not to try to fill the house entirely with Arts and Crafts design furniture. They already had a considerable Arts and Crafts design collection in their house in Westchester County, and aimed instead to furnish the Maine house so as to give it the feeling of a lodge in the old Maine of the 30's and 40's.

The front door opens into a large comfortable
room that the Dillofs call the winter living room.

Elaine did, in fact, on one of her many buying expeditions, find the old wooden telephone switchboard from an earlier incarnation of a venerable Maine lodge. That lodge has recently been restored and reopened as the Loon Lodge Inn, in Rangeley Lakes, Maine. The switchboard is also in the winter living room, and Elaine says that when her children were young they never tired of playing with it.

The winter living room; the Stickley bookcase
is against the wall near the door to the kitchen.

Two doors from the winter living room open into an octagonal room (strictly speaking, half of an octagon), an addition to the old farmhouse that was originally the inn’s dining room. The addition was designed and constructed by a celebrated Maine artist named Klir (pronounced “Clare”) Beck, who was a friend of the owner’s, and the Dillofs have furnished this room almost entirely with Stickley and other handcrafted items. The Dillofs call this room the Beck Room.

Rear of the Beck Room, the octagonal addition
designed and constructed by artist Klir Beck.

Klir Beck lived from 1892 to 1966, and was a painter, sculptor, designer and architect. He took on many projects for the inn’s owner, and it was he who painted the “Sundial Inn and Cottages” sign. It is in the Beck Room that the painting shown on the cover of American Bungalow hangs, between the doors to the winter living room.

Painting by "Peggy Reid" in the Dillofs' Beck
Room shown on cover of American Bungalow.

Elaine’s house in Maine cannot properly be described as a summer vacation home, because she spends a great deal of her time in the summer driving to many parts of the state to find treasures to bring home to her customers in Greenwich and Stamford. In recent years, she has also gathered together odds and ends in her inventory for an annual church sale near her Maine house, raising as much as $1500 for the benefit of the church.

She also welcomes an unending stream of family and friends throughout the summer. For Elaine, the soul of the house is hospitality. The Dillofs have four grown children and two granddaughters, and they visit in the summer with their families or friends, along with other relatives and their friends. Visiting friends of the Dillofs themselves often stay in the small cottage on the property, but Elaine prepares meals for one and all. For the writer of the American Bungalow article about their Maine place, Elaine’s husband estimated that Elaine cooks about 1000 meals in a two-month period in the summer, in a modern and recently renovated kitchen.

The dining room, where visitors enjoy
convivial repasts during the summer.

Elaine and Bob are vegetarians who eat a healthy diet and look it, and Elaine is an imaginative cook who can whip up a treat for guests at the last minute. Her most popular offering to guests, however, is lobster, which she buys steamed and prepared for eating at one of her favorite fresh seafood stores. She serves it in the dining room when there are half a dozen people, or more, for dinner. Some guests, Elaine says, want lobster for dinner every day for a week.

Elaine preparing to put her guests' favorite
dinner on the table, lobsters, bought cooked.

A less formal, more intimate setting for drinks and dinner is provided by a room off the dining room that the Dillofs call the Shed, because it was converted from an old log shed. After greeting a few guests, “Let’s go into the Shed” is Elaine’s refrain, where she serves drinks that she has often created and dishes that she has often created as well.

Guests may make themselves comfortable in the Shed on what the American Bungalow writer describes as “a stylish, 1940’s Moderne wicker couch, painted and reupholstered by Elaine.” Next to it on the right is an old triangular-shaped whittled wooden ladder once used to climb trees in an apple orchard. On the left are shelves with displays that are apt to change over time. For a long time, colorful covered containers in the form of fruits and vegetables were displayed on these shelves, but most of them have been replaced recently by a set of colorful painted plates.

The Shed displays Elaine's great gift
for finding wonderful old artifacts.

A changing display of objects co-exists in general with long-cherished items in the Dillofs' house. Elaine never rests from discovering new items to replace some of the old ones, which can go into her shops. Elaine recalled that her husband asked her once if it was really necessary to keep replacing some things with new ones, in particular, a lampshade that was a favorite of his. A problem had developed with the shade, Elaine explained, and her reply was, and is today, "When I stop doing such things, I'll be accepting the grave."

The Shed is for more intimate dining,
with a beautiful view of lawn and lake.

As Elaine was packing up and preparing to return home from Maine this past September, she combined a two-day almost-vacation trip to Rangeley, Maine, with one more buying foray. During the summer she had focused on nineteenth century English white ironstone pitchers, the kind you see pictured in bowls on stands in nineteenth century bedrooms and in elegant bed-and-breakfasts. She had amassed a dazzling array of a dozen of them, and in Rangeley she spied a large white pitcher through the window of an antique shop on Main Street. As instructed by a sign on the front door, she put in a call on her cell phone to the proprietor, and he arrived before too long.

Elaine gave the pitcher a close inspection. She examines objects carefully for their authenticity and condition, and she is especially on guard against the many imitations and reproductions that she finds, frequently made in China. The pitcher she had seen through the window did not pass muster, but she did buy the bottom half of an old English white ironstone serving dish. The cover had been broken when it was shipped to the store. This was the first time, Elaine said, that she had ever purchased an item with a missing part, but the bottom half of the piece made by itself a particularly lovely – and authentically old – serving dish.

Elaine examines closely the pitcher
she saw through the shop window.

The proprietor of the shop helpfully directed Elaine to two other antique businesses, one “up the road” and one in Eustis, Maine. “Up the road” was a barn in which the inventory was relatively sparse, but Elaine managed to find something. She seems to, most of the time, and always for at least a little bit less than the asking price. She bought a mounted head of a white-tailed deer, the sort of item you might see in a lodge or cabin in the woods. Then it was on to Eustis, a drive of over 25 miles from Rangeley, where Elaine was pleased to find a pair of large white “ginger jar” shaped lamps.

For many years, Elaine drove an old van on her buying trips in Maine, sometimes at night, and after she had made a stop she was never sure if the van would start again. Elaine has been described as “tenacious” in her pursuit of items to collect or sell, but “intrepid” is more apt. Currently she uses a newer van. She also used to go to auctions but no longer does so, because she does not like to compete with other dealers. She collaborates with other dealers on various projects but does not compete with them.

Wide reading about valuable art and objects is the secret, she says, to experiencing the thrill of finding unexpected treasures, such as the piece of pottery that she bought in a thrift store on Second Avenue in New York City for $27 and that she sold for $3000. She had recognized it as the work of a husband-and-wife team, Otto and Gertrud Natzler, who produced ceramic pieces widely thought to be the most admired of the twentieth century.

Elaine’s first interest was in literature, which was her eventual major in college. She was born, as Elaine Snyder, in the East New York section of Brooklyn, where her parents owned a candy store, and went to Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. She has remained in touch with her friends from the lunch table at Thomas Jefferson, and they have been frequent guests in Maine.

Elaine went to Queens College for two years and then to Brooklyn College for two years (both colleges are units of the City University of New York), where she majored in English literature. She got a Master of Arts degree in English, specializing in American literature, from the University of Connecticut, and then returned home to live with her parents and get a job. When she did get a job, she notes, she paid her parents half her salary.

Her first job was as a secretary with New World Writing, a series of literary anthologies published by New World Library, but the job didn’t last because Elaine couldn’t take dictation. Next was a job as a switchboard operator for two employers, but she didn’t know how to operate a switchboard. Her employers liked her enough, however, to get her instruction. On her vacation she went with a friend to Nantucket, and it was there that she met Bob. They were married a year later, in 1957.

It was after she and Bob were married, Elaine says, that she became interested in “things.” They needed to furnish their apartment in Brooklyn Heights, in New York City, and Elaine went to a local auction and to second-hand stores. She has been passionately interested in “things” ever since. A literary bent, however, has stood her in good stead recently.

Elaine has written a children’s story that has been accepted by a prestigious publishing house and has completed two more. The story that has been accepted for publication is about her grandmother’s emigration to America. Her grandmother emigrated from Russia, but Elaine hopes that the story will reverberate for all immigrant children, and their families.

“The older you get the more you should do,” Elaine says, and lately she has been doing a lot more.

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