Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/380056
26 nshoremag.com October 2014 photographs by fawn deviney some people fi ate on the stock market, and some people can talk for hours about the Red Sox. William Ralph obsesses over antiques. A conversation with him wraps history with craftsman- ship and the personal stories behind each item that has passed through his hands. "I'm sure nobody thinks about antiques as much as I do," says Ralph, who owns William Ralph Fine Antiques in Rowley and has spent 35 years in the antiques business. "There are hundreds of stories about the things I have." And just as many stories about the things he no longer has, such as a painting of Thomas Chew, a purser in the United States Navy, that now hangs in a place of honor at the USS Constitution Museum. Ralph acquired the painting in 2001 and developed a fondness for it, hanging it in his home rather than displaying it for sale. objet d'art Antique Fix Rowley antiques dealer William Ralph champions the real value of attic heirlooms. By Jeanne O'Brien Coffey "It really just seemed to fit in my house," he says. Over the years, Ralph did con- siderable research about the purser, who is credited with recording—during the War of 1812—Captain James Lawrence's immortal words, "Don't give up the ship," before he died of a cannon wound aboard the ill-fated Chesapeake. Serendipitously, after keeping the painting on the wall in his own home for more than a decade, he decided it would be a good fit for the Endicott house at Glen Magna Farms in Danvers when he was invited to decorate the Peabody parlor for the property's Holiday Show House benefit "The room needed great things on the wall," Ralph says. "I thought people would be particularly interested in this painting, as it was of a real person, and the battle [where the Chesapeake was captured] was fought near Salem and Marblehead Harbors." It caught the interest of one person especially—a representative of the USS Constitution Museum. The museum has an extensive collection of artifacts from Time Honored Ralph carries collectibles both famed and found. Collectibles ne