No doubt the city's businesses will take full advantage of the razzamataz and the Manhattan Art & Antiques Center at 1050 Second Avenue at 56th Street has already primed its 100 or so galleries to mount special selling displays to tap into the election fever.
There are certainly plenty of patriotic and political pieces to choose from, especially in the popular realm of American folk art where politics has etched its pattern on many quilts and other items. Bronzes, documents and commemorative medals are other fruitful areas.
Laura Fisher, a specialist in Americana has an impressive selection of quilts featuring The White House, various Presidents, Stars and Stripes and elephants (the symbol of the Republican Party) while the Manhattan Rare Book Company offers Acts of the British Parliaments 1763-1783, which contains the injustices from which the Declaration of Independence emanated.
Louis DiLauro Rare Coins has one of the first US silver dollars minted and a George Washington Centennial medal of 1883, and Paul Bosco has assembled a whole collection of presidential commemoratives.
Intertrus have in stock an original banquet menu from the Centennial of the Inauguration of Washington at the Metropolitan Opera House and a menu from the banquet given by the citizens of New Orleans in 1901 honouring President William McKinley.
Indeed, there is such an array of politically inspired antiques even a Democrat could be tempted.
