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Fremont, California. Maurice Tarte, age sixty-seven , well known in the antique business for almost
forty years, passed away at home of natural causes on December 21, 2003. Maurice is survived by
five older siblings. Always researching, reading, and pouring over antique reference books, many
of his peers never knew that Maurice barely had an 8th grade education.
Maurice Tarte was born on a dairy farm in St. Albans, Vermont in 1936. He served with a tank
battalion in the army. In the 1960's, after twenty years working on the family dairy, Maurice followed
family west to settle in Santa Clara. In the early 1980's he relocated to Fremont. While barbering for
twenty years, he cultivated an interest in collecting antiques, a passion he got from his mother.
“He loved every aspect of antiques, really enjoyed it,” says brother Roger Tarte of Los Banos. “He
was always self-employed, always a confirmed bachelor. His sense of humor kept him going. He
just was doing what he liked to do . . . couldn’t ask for any better, just a super guy.”
Roy Del Cotto of Napa, California, met Maurice in 1968 in San Jose where Maurice had a 7,000
square foot warehouse/collective on Phelan Ave. One of ten to fifteen dealers in Maurice’s
collective, Roy started out refinishing furniture for him and they “hit it off.” During their third year,
Maurice took Roy on a buying trip to the Midwest . . . “660 miles in ten days, so many things went
wrong. Maurice had a one-ton flat bed with stake sides, uncovered, with a trailer. We were going
55 MPH when a guy pulls up, honking, trying to tell us that the trailer, loaded with antique furniture,
was missing. Two miles back we found the trailer, which had drifted off the road, parked itself
perfectly just like a vehicle, two feet from a ditch. A while later, we heard a noise from the hood . . .
then the radiator fan came through the hood.” They pulled over in a tiny town, then realized they
were stuck in the middle of train tracks and a train was coming. “Some guy pushes us across in
time.” Then Maurice and Roy picked up a load of glass and iron beds in Illinois. When they got to a
weigh station, the attendant said they had a choice of two violations: the trailer license plate was
outdated, but they were 2000 pounds overweight loaded with brass and iron. They were just fined
for the license plate violation.
On another trip Roy made with Maurice, they drove straight through from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m.
from California to Little America, Wyoming, only to discover that every motel room was taken. Roy
fondly remembers Maurice suggesting he sleeps in the cab while he, Maurice, would sleep in the
uncovered box car. “All was well until it started snowing, it was an interesting night.” Roy has vivid
memories from the late 1960's of an old gentleman coming into the shop and asking Maurice and
Roy to his house to purchase a brass and iron bed. When they lifted off the mattress and box
spring, they were horrified to find a pee chamber, never emptied!
In 1974, Roy remembers Maurice buying the contents of a once grand six-story hotel in the Mission
District in San Francisco for $5500. “In those days,” says Roy, “we only dealt in furniture. We
emptied a drawer and found two gold watches . . . in one drawer, but we just didn’t think about it,
only thought about furniture, just didn’t know any better. The stuff left there, I can’t imagine. We
were talking about it at the last show [we did together]. Today we’d pay ‘20 grand’ for the
contents.”
Roy recalls Maurice’s love for early syrup containers, Victorian to 1910, for nice silver, for early
American and Victorian furniture and furnishings, and for old cars. “He was a fanatic for antiques,
he had a real passion for it, concentrated all of his energies, 100% into it. He was good at it. He
loved the business.”
Clair Johnson of Ceres, California, a collector and dealer who first met Maurice at the weekly
Turlock Flea Market, remembers that for Maurice, “everything was on a handshake. [He was] very
honest, [with] good work ethics. The Flea Market is a community all of its own. A fixture at Turlock
for decades, Maurice would always greet people with, ‘Oh, I have something for you today’. I
wouldn’t be going out there if not for you [Maurice], and he’d say the same back. That was just part
of the day, ‘kibitzing’ with Maurice for an hour, sharing with him.” When Clair or others would
express interest in some little thing in his booth, he’d say, “oh, just take that.” Clair would say, “but
Maurice, you’ll never get rich that way’, and Maurice would respond, “. . . but I never intended to.”
and Maurice would respond, “. . . but I never intended to.” Clair Johnson remembers a table
Maurice purchased from the Governor’s mansion in the 1950's with an accompanying letter of
authenticity. It was twenty-three feet long and five-and-one-half feet wide. He and Maurice moved
it in pieces. After assembling it, the two of them struggled, but couldn’t get it upright. Once he
helped Maurice clear out a huge mansion in Hillsborough. He remembers an eighteen-foot long
granite table with ornate pedestals; a six-foot high by four-foot wide chandelier of Viennese glass,
a myriad of pieces in a box which had to be assembled. He was always seeking out rare and
unusual pieces. Once he got a Belter chair. An accompanying book pictured the exact piece, one
of five known to exist, and he had the sixth. Then there was the Horner mahogany dining set,
typically made in oak. Clair: “There was always one more thing he had to have.”
Sally and Bob Lix of the Eagle’s Landing, Brownsville, California, were in Redding in the late 1980's
for a bridge tournament. They had been thinking of getting into the antiques’ business and
decided to visit Twin Bridges’ show at Mt. Shasta Mall in Redding. Sally remembers walking into the
show, looking around, when a guy walked up and offered to help her. After hesitating, Sally said
she’d like to know about the business and the promoter. Maurice said “no problem, you’ll do fine,
then he walked me down to the Promoter. He was a gentleman, positive, I was kind of taken
aback. I expected every dealer to be taking advantage of people and he bent over backwards . . .
that was ten or twelve years ago and I’ll never forget that.” Over the years when there was a need
to send a sympathy card, Sally remembers that Maurice was “very empathetic to do it, very, wanting
to do something, giving his all to support [people].” Bob Lix, Sally’s husband, remembers Maurice
as “always willing to share knowledge, and Maurice had a lot of knowledge.”
Salim Buksh of Modesto, California remembers Maurice as “full of surprises, always had something
to say to you . . . if you were down he’d bring you up. He was the most knowledgeable person I
knew with every item, furniture, jewelry, cars. He was a hard-working man. [Maurice would say]
‘never lie to anyone, be honest, if you’re wrong, you say you’re wrong.’ That is the sort of man
Maurice was.”
Author’s note: Maurice Tarte took part in Twin Bridges Antique Productions first show in Capitola,
California in 1982. I remember he was sharing a booth with then-auctioneer Jim Daly. My late
husband, Don and I purchased an “unsigned” Loetz vase from him. When we got home, Don was
able to identify a mark on the bottom which had eluded Maurice. We enjoyed teasing him about that
for many years. Over the decades that followed, as our promotional business grew, Maurice
supported and took part in most of our ventures. He was a very private person, but always
sincerely interested in how all of us were doing
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