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Administrative Please click on any button below for more information:
The Rathbun Gallery has been in business since 1987. Growing up with parents who collected antiques, my first purchase, a Country Sheraton drop leaf table, was probably in 1968. The Gallery owners, Richard and Nancy Schneider, started in 1987 with a full time gallery in Providence, RI. We closed the Gallery to focus on antique shows and we have now added Website activity. You may Email, phone or write us. Please do so if you have questions, need additional information, have other collecting needs, desire other services or just wish to chat.  You may order by Email, phone call or letter. An order by a customer is in fact a Contract to pay for and take possession of an object. When ordering please provide your full name, address, telephone number, the inventory number of the object, title of the object and its price, so there is not any misunderstanding, and your Email address so that your order can be confirmed. Please specify how you plan to pay: eg, cash, money order, check or Paypal. Applicable sales taxes must be paid by residents of VT, MA, CT, RI, NY & PA as The Rathbun Gallery is licensed to do business in these states. Bonafide dealers and/or decorators must provide a resale certificate number and if unknown to us, a copy of their resale tax certificate. It is the responsibility of the purchaser to pay for boxing and or crating charges, insurance and shipping or postal charges. If you would like the Gallery to hand deliver an object, it is the purchasers responsibility to reimburse the Gallery for gas, tolls and overnight accommodations, if necessary. Of course, the purchaser may arrange to pick up the object from the Gallery free of charge or make arrangements to meet someplace, thus reducing delivery charges. Our paintings are usually double boxed and shipped UPS. Very small paintings can be successfully shipped also by the US Postal Priority Mail Service. Smalls can usually be shipped via UPS. Furniture is the variable. If the purchaser lives within a reasonable distance to the Gallery, the least expensive method is hand delivery, otherwise a crating and shipping entity will be used. In any event, the Gallery will attempt to secure good cost estimates for the method chosen by the purchaser. All purchases will be delivered/shipped after payment has cleared. The Rathbun Gallery guarantees that which it offers for sale. Now what does this mean? We don’t sell in price ranges where one needs to retain legal representation or appraisal experts. The Gallery’s word and the purchaser’s word should be all that is necessary. Our experience has shown that we tend to be conservative in our descriptions. For example, if we state a piece is circa 1850-1875 we are saying it was not made after this period, but was made during or before this period. We don’t carelessly use the term original paint as very few pieces have retained their original paint. We much rather use the terms, old painted surface. We also try to note any repairs or changes that we discovered were made to the object after its period of origin. If we state a piece is all original, it is our guaranteed position. All works of art: eg, oil paintings, works on paper and primitive/naïve paintings as well as all textiles are sold upon purchaser approval. That is, if the object is not that which the Gallery described and/or is not otherwise acceptable to the purchaser, it may be returned. Towards this end, the purchaser must contact the Gallery by Email or phone within two (2) days (48 hours) after its receipt that the object is going to be returned and that it be shipped, mailed or delivered within the next seven days and received by the Gallery in the same condition as when it was sold, and that it be fully insured while in transit all at the purchasers expense. Upon receipt by The Rathbun Gallery, according to the conditions above, the amount paid by the purchaser for the work of art or textile, excluding delivery/shipping associated charges will be returned by the Gallery. The time schedule is tight because the Gallery is not in the business of renting antiques. We once sold a 3" x 5" painting to a customer who called back about a month later and asked to return it because, "…there was just no place in the house where it fit". The Rathbun Gallery’s objective is to offer good examples of an antique, accessory or painting at fair and affordable prices. Since we are selling directly from our website we don’t have the overhead costs associated with an open gallery or with bringing such objects to an antique show. For those uninformed, such overhead costs include insurance, booth rent, electricity, walls, paper, fascia board, porters, gas, tolls, hotels, parking and meals. We still have overhead associated with being an antique dealer, but the overhead is much lower. Our prices are already reduced from what you might see at an antique show or gallery for another object in its class. More than half of the Gallery sales have historically been to other dealers. Bonafide antique dealers and decorators with a business card and resale tax certificate are encouraged to contact the Gallery for further discussion. |
