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10/28/2015 08:30 AMIs it worthless or priceless? Valuable or disposable? A family treasure or a trash-can special?
The time to find out is Saturday, Nov. 7 at the 12th annual Antiques and Jewelry Appraisal sponsored by the Chester Historical Society. The event will take place from 8:30 a.m. to noon at the St. Joseph’s Parish Hall in Chester. All appraisals are verbal and cost $10 for one piece, $20 for two, and $25 for three, the maximum number of objects that one visitor can bring. The fees support the programs and the museum of the historical society.
Karen Hubbard is an Antiques Appraisal veteran, even though she has never brought in an object herself. Karen has worked at many of the events as a runner, first directing people who bring objects to seats and then to the proper appraiser. There is even an advantage in waiting one’s turn: a cup of coffee or tea and cookies provided free by the historical society.
There will be 11 appraisers, generalists with a wide range of expertise and specialists in fields that range from vintage and antique jewelry to coins, watches, glassware, fine arts, rare books, silver, and ceramics. But, Karen says, its not all about money.
“It’s not just about finding the value,” Karen says. “It’s also about finding out the story of the object. You have something hanging around and you want to know about it.’
Last year Karen particularly recalls one attendee who came in with a bronze sculpture by Mary Knollenberg, a onetime Chester resident who died in 1992.
“It was absolutely gorgeous,” Karen recalls.
Knollenberg’s work, once labeled “extraordinary” by The New York Times, has been exhibited at the both the Yale University Art Gallery and the Whitney Museum in New York City.
According to Karen, attendees come not just from local towns, but from places as much as an hour’s drive away, including Hartford and West Hartford. Last year, some 135 people came for appraisals, and since many bring more than one object, the appraisers made a total of 325 evaluations.
It is good that Karen enjoys the appraisal event, because in reality she has little choice about attending. Her husband Skip Hubbard has served as president of the Chester Historical Society for the past seven years. Karen and Skip met at Valley Regional High School, when the building also served as the middle school. They were in the 8th grade.
“That’s when we became an item,” she notes.
Karen lived in Chester; Skip came from Essex. The couple now has two grown children—Betsy, an educator in San Francisco, and Tom, a professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Betsy Hubbard comes back to Chester every summer and Karen says Tom loves to visit with family, but coming back is different from staying here—and at least 10 generations of Karen’s family have stayed here in Chester. She is a descended from the Watrous clan, among the earliest Colonial settlers in town. Her great-grandfather Carl Watrous was a local veterinarian, and her grandfather, Claude Watrous, was a state representative. Her mother Hazel Watrous Archambault died last year at the age of 96, and her father Harry Archambault, now in his late 90s, is still living. Karen fears that after more than 300 years, as children have moved elsewhere, there may be no next generation of the Watrous family in Chester.
As Karen looks back on how Chester has changed since she was a child, she remembers a town where everyone knew everyone else. One of the sounds that regulated they way life was lived was the whistle from the C.J. Bates factory.
“It blew at 7:30; it blew at noon,” she says. In those days, Chester was a far more economically self- sufficient place.
“You could do all your shopping here; there were meat markets, dry goods stores, a grocery store, an appliance store,” she says.
Karen, who lived in the center of town, walked or rode her bike everywhere.
Professionally, Karen has retired twice. After the first retirement from Chester Childcare Center, Karen thought she would spend her time volunteering. In fact, the volunteering turned into a second career, from which she has also now retired, as volunteer coordinator for Middlesex Hospice. Hospice work, she says, was not depressing despite the terminal condition of the patients she worked with.
“It was a privilege to help people at such a vulnerable time,” she says.
Some years ago, Karen and Skip took a long car trip through the United States, a “Blue Highways” trip Karen calls it after the 1980s bestseller by William Least Heat-Moon about a back roads car trip through the United States. For their 50th anniversary, members of their family decided that each one would sponsor Skip and Karen for one night at some of the places they had already visited like New Orleans and the Grand Canyon. So they will be off on an adventure again, but then they will be back to the place they never want to leave: Chester.
“It’s a great place to live,” Karen says.
Antiques & Jewelry Appraisals, sponsored by Chester Historical Society, on Saturday, Nov. 7 from 8:30 a.m. to noon at the St. Joseph’s Parish Center, 48 Middlesex Avenue (Route 154), Chester. Verbal appraisals are $10 for one item, $20 for two, or $25 for three. For more information, visit chesterhistoricalsociety.org or call 860-558-4701.