STYLE : STYLEMAKERS : The Theme Team

Bill Caskey and Elizabeth Lees of Topanga Canyon are avid antique collectors, but they seldom have time to shop anymore. They’re too busy producing five major art and antique shows and 19 one-day exhibitions that have revolutionized the business on the West Coast and attracted discriminating museum curators as well as fledgling collectors.

“Twenty years ago, antique shows were very general. Everything was lumped together,” Caskey says. “In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the market became oversaturated, promoters became less selective and the exhibitions all started to look alike.” That’s when husband and wife, both former dealers, set out to change things, locally and in San Francisco.

In 1986, after revitalizing the Pasadena Antique Market (now called The Pickwick show, held every fourth Sunday in Burbank), Caskey and Lees divided shows into themes such as American art, cowboy and Indian memorabilia, silver and jewelry, and last year, Pacific Rim art and artifacts. Their most popular event, on modernism, is held on Memorial Day in Santa Monica and offers everything from fin-de-siecle prints to Art Deco pottery.

This year, their Los Angeles Folk and Tribal Art Show, running Friday through Sunday at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, brings together 105 dealers in American folk art and American Indian, African, Indonesian, pre-Columbian and Asian antiques. Prices range from $20 for an early 20th-Century African trading necklace to $100,000-plus for, say, an 1865 Navajo chief’s blanket.

Times are tough, but good buys are still possible. On a rare spree, Caskey and Lees recently bought a 19th-Century Tibetan medicine chest for $2,100, only $100 more than the dealer paid. The secret to bargain-hunting, Caskey says, is to arrive early and know what you’re looking for.