About Barbara Israel Garden Antiques
Since 1985, Barbara Israel Garden Antiques has been a leading source for period garden ornament from Europe, America, and Asia. The extraordinary collection is on display in the formal gardens of Barbara’s nineteenth-century farmhouse in Katonah, NY– the perfect setting for an array of fountains, statues, sundials, urns and gate pier finials, furniture, fencing and wellheads dating from the fifteenth through the early twentieth centuries.
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques works closely with landscape architects, designers, and private clients to find the ideal object for each individual garden. While the primary focus is on classical ornament, we endeavor to satisfy our clients’ request—from the most traditional to the more unexpected. With this intent, our inventory also features other significant ornamental trends including rustic furniture, Art Moderne/Art Deco pieces, nineteenth-century revival style objects and eclectic items from the monumental focal piece to the perfect small flourish.
We participate in three major antiques shows each year: The Winter Show in New York City in January, The Philadelphia Antiques & Art Show in late April, and The Delaware Antiques Show in early November.
About Barbara
Barbara Frelinghuysen Israel always had an affinity for gardens, having spent hours as a child in the gardens of her grandmothers. Garden ornament made an impression early on, too, and to this day Barbara possesses a pair of foo dogs long ago salvaged from the far reaches of her parents’ rural New Jersey property. So, in a way, it shouldn’t have been a surprise that in 1985, Barbara made a spontaneous decision to purchase a large collection of estate statuary. This fortuitous acquisition sparked an enthusiasm for antique garden ornament that would launch her career and ultimately change the course of her life. More than three decades and hundreds of exquisite objects later, Barbara is recognized as an authority on the subject and her book, Antique Garden Ornament: Two Centuries of American Taste (Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999), is the definitive work in the field.
Barbara has served as a consultant to both The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution for their collections of nineteenth-century cast iron, and has sold pieces to the Winterthur Museum, the Smithsonian, Mt. Vernon, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, as well as to many important private collectors. Barbara works toward preserving landmark properties and their antique garden ornaments, and is particularly devoted to the restoration efforts of the Untermyer Gardens Conservancy.
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques has been featured in The New York Times, House & Garden, The Robb Report, The Baltimore Sun, and Martha Stewart Living, among others, and has appeared on Good Morning America, Sunday Morning Today, A&E’s The Incurable Collector, and Antiques Roadshow FYI.
A Final Note
April 27th, 2022
We proudly share the news that Barbara has been named one of four recipients of the Bard Graduate Center’s 25th Annual Iris Foundation Awards. On April 27th, she was honored with the award for Outstanding Dealer.
The Iris Foundation Awards were created in 1997 by Susan Weber, director and founder of the Bard Graduate Center and Iris Horowitz Professor of History of the Decorative Arts, to acknowledge important contributions in decorative arts, design history, and material culture made by scholars, patrons and other professionals.
This distinction is especially meaningful because of Barbara’s deep dedication to scholarship and her active participation in the preservation of historic American properties and their exterior objects, in addition to her 35 years of stewardship as a dealer of garden ornament.