Godmother of Texas antiques
Dealer created the first big show in Round Top and turned her passion into a way of life
Back in 1968, Emma Lee Turney was promoting her first antiques show in Round Top and sent a short press release to Life magazine, which published it in their next issue.
Readers took note, and some 6,000 or more people flocked to the Round Top Rifle Association Hall for a show that featured 26 dealers selling mostly American country antiques. Shoppers swarmed amid the swirling smell of barbecue cooking on pits outdoors. The big three of Texas matriarchs — Ima Hogg, Faith Bybee and Hazel Ledbetter — came to shop, and Turney knew she was onto something big.
Through several decades of organizing and promoting antiques shows — including her legendary shows in Round Top — Turney helped launch careers and stimulated the economy in several Texas counties.
She made lifelong friends and preserved a big slice of Texana and Americana: the hard work and craftsmanship of immigrants and others who built cabinets and furniture, created rugs and pottery and art.
Turney, who spent much of her life in the Houston area, died March 6. She was 92.
‘Where will we go next?’
Turney grew up in Tulsa, Okla., and after graduating high school moved to Houston because her sister lived here. Not long after World War II, she signed up for classes at what was then the Massey Business College. An accomplished ballroom dancer, Turney taught at Arthur Murray Dance Studio for a while and worked at a weightloss studio, recalls longtime friend Barbara Tungate.
She opened an antiques store with other dealers and found her niche. When they got a new container of antiques in, they would address invitations to interior designers and then sell out their goods in a day. Not only did she have a good eye for an
tiques, she also knew how to network.
“She worked like nothing I’ve ever seen. She had good friends and was a terrific cook and loved to entertain, but that mind of hers was always thinking, ‘Where will we go next?’ ” said Tungate, who met Turney in 1968. “When I met her, she did 16 shows a year, including a Thanksgiving show in the basement of the old Shamrock Hotel. People would shop at her show and then go have lunch.”
Turney, a no-nonsense woman who lived and worked by a strict set of rules, was driving in the Round Top area with Tungate and declared that it would be a good place to have an antiques show. Back in the 1960s, Bybee and Ledbetter were buying land and older homes in and around Round Top, and Hogg was long known as a meticulous consumer of American antiques, both for her Winedale project and for Bayou Bend, her home that became a renowned house museum and part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Ledbetter knew Turney from the antiques shows she had organized and promoted in Houston, Austin, Fredericksburg, Rosenburg, Galveston and elsewhere, and encouraged Turney to start something in Round Top.
Though her Original Round Top Antiques Fair began at the Rifle Hall, it operated at different sites until it landed at what is now commonly called the Big Red Barn in Carmine, the little town you pass through on your way to the even tinier Round Top. It’s often joked that Round Top’s population swells from 90 to 90,000 when it’s time for the spring and fall antiques shows, and much of its popularity and connection to antiques shopping is due to Turney’s shows.
Along the way Turney also wrote two books, “Antiques Business as a Lifestyle” in 1978, teaching others how to earn a living in the antiques world, and “Denim and Diamonds,” marking the 30th anniversary of her Round Top shows in 1998.
In 2005, Turney sold her business to Susan Franks, who soon added a Continental Tent to showcase European antiques as they increased in popularity. Turney’s interest, though, was always in American country, and that style of antiques remains the mainstay in Franks’ main building today.
“Emma was the most amazing show promoter that I have ever known,” Franks said. “She had her heart in it, like I do. It was her passion, as it is mine, and I think that’s why we connected. She was beloved by everybody and she did change people’s lives. She turned Round Top, Texas, into the largest antiques venue in the U.S.”
Turney’s focus was on the Original Round Top Antiques Fair, and many other antiques shows emerged in her wake, with big shows opening at Marburger Farm and, later, The Compound and Excess Fields in addition to shows and flea markets up and down Texas 237 from Brenham to La Grange.
Devoted friend
Folk artist Kiki Neumann remembers the day she met Turney as if it were yesterday.
It was 25 years ago, and Neumann and Turney had mailboxes next to each other at a Montrose post office. One day they were there at the same time, Neumann picking up a few letters and Turney opening her box to find a deluge of mail.
“I turned to her and said, ‘Are you some sort of big deal?’ And she said, ‘Yes I am,’ ” said Neumann, who makes birdhouses and art objects out of discarded wood and old license plates. “She told me that she does antique shows, and I told her that I’m an artist and maybe I should do them, too. I had no confidence, and she encouraged me to get out of my shell. Since then, I’ve done Round Top venues as a folk artist 36 times. She changed my life.”
Neumann, a paper industry rep-turned-artist who turns 68 this week, supplies her goods to Buc-ee’s convenience stores statewide.
She described Turney the way many describe strong, determined women: charming, tenacious, smart and outspoken. More than anything, her work life was a dogged pursuit of creating something from nothing.
“Emma was a one-of-a-kind person who put something together that changed four counties’ economics, and she had the tenacity to stay with it year in and year out,” Neumann said. “It takes a special character to do that. I see her as a she-ro in the business, a Texas legend.”
Antiques dealer Larry Bahn agreed. He was early in his antiques career when he managed to get a booth at one of Turney’s shows in Galveston in the 1970s.
“That put me on the map, and I did all of her shows thereafter,” said Bahn, whose The Country Gentleman shop operated for several years on Dunlavy. He now sells from two Heights antiques shops, A.G. Antiques and Heights Antiques on Yale.
“You know, with Emma, she was the godmother of antiques. She nurtured … a huge array of great dealers who have spread it on around,” said Bahn, 78. “When I meet someone new in the business, I’m eager to help them get started because that’s what people did for me.
“Emma will be missed. She was a humongous influence on the antiques industry and in Round Top in general. It is what it is today because of her,” he said.
Nancy Krause, 85, is likely the only antiques dealer from Turney’s first Round Top show who’s still living and working. She still operates Nancy’s Antiques in Brenham, selling American antiques.
“There were 26 of us back in 1968, and look what it has grown into,” Krause said. “We had exposure and it was wonderful. Then everybody started setting up all up and down (Texas 237). We were forbidden to go to see shops in Warrenton, so we put hats and sunglasses on and went anyway.
“The economic impact is staggering,” Krause added. “It’s not only the show, but hotels and gas stations and restaurants. People are finding real estate here now because they love the area, and Emma Lee is the one who started it all.”