How I Find Vintage, and What I Leave Behind

How things actually get chosen

Every single piece in the shop was picked up, turned over, and chosen by hand. Nothing arrives on a pallet. There's no supplier, no restock button. If you see a brass candlestick in the shop, it's because I stood in someone's dining room, picked it up, and decided it was worth bringing home.

That is the difference between a shop and a pile of old things. Most of the job is saying no.

Where the finds come from

Mostly Connecticut estates and private homes. My sister Paula and I hunt estate sales across Fairfield County and beyond. Spring and fall are the busy seasons, when whole houses open up for a weekend and fifty years of someone's good taste has to find new homes. We're usually there in the first hour. The brass and the art don't wait.

And when the sale is worth it, we go where it is. We do Massachusetts regularly. We have driven through the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania with a minivan and a U-Haul for the right house. That is more than most people would do. You also do not find the good things sitting at home.

Some finds cost nothing at all. People put remarkable things out on their lawns. Solid wood, real brass, perfectly good things. We've made some questionable U-turns for a free pile. Worth it every time.

My mom scouts too, in her own way. She'll be at a thrift shop somewhere and send me a blurry, crooked photo asking "do you want this?" and I have to decipher what I'm actually looking at. She's not the best with the phone, but does have a decent eye.

And some of it comes from much further. We have family in Portugal, and I buy every time we visit. Hand-painted pottery, brass, linens. It comes home in our suitcases. You won't find those pieces in another shop around here, because they didn't come from around here.

The filter: what makes the cut

After enough years of this, the test happens in about five seconds. Here's what it checks:

What we pass on

Particle board. Plastic. Reproductions pretending to be old. Trend pieces that will feel dated by spring. And plenty of perfectly nice things that just are not right for the shop. Someone else will love them, and that is fine.

Passing is most of the job. On a good sale day we leave ninety percent of what we touch.

The part nobody sees

Everyone wants a shop that looks effortless. What that actually takes is years of knowing what you are looking at, and a lot of mornings with nothing to show for it.

It also takes antihistamines. I am allergic to dust, which is a ridiculous problem to have in this job, so I never head out to a sale without taking something first.

You can go to Goodwill every day and maybe on day six find one thing worth carrying to the register. Some estate sales are a complete bust. You got up early on a Saturday, grabbed the coffee and the sandwich, drove out, waited in line, and walked out empty-handed. That day cost money, and there's nothing to show for it. But you keep going. That's the job.

After the find

Estate finds come home dusty and dirty, sometimes with decades of it on them. Everything gets cleaned or restored before it goes anywhere near the shop. Leather and suede get cleaned and buffed. If the glass on an art piece is broken, it gets replaced. That all takes real time, and I do not skip it. Being allergic to dust turns out to be useful here. Nobody has a stronger personal incentive to get every last bit of it off a thing than I do.

Then the research. Maker's marks, hallmarks, stamps. An etched deer on the base of an Italian glass pitcher tells you it's Cerve; a backstamp on a teapot tells you where and roughly when. I chase down the era, the design style, the maker. I measure everything, photograph it honestly, and write the condition exactly as it is. If there's shelf wear, the listing says shelf wear.

Then it goes up on loomvintage.com, and from September 1st onto the shelves at 1139 Post Road in downtown Fairfield. New pieces go up every week. Because each one is one of a kind, when it is gone there is no second one behind it.

Getting it to you

Most of what I ship is glass, ceramic or brass, so everything gets wrapped carefully. It has to arrive safe and sound. That means piles and piles of boxes and filling. Everything is a different size and weight, so you never know what kind of box the next order needs.

New boxes and packing material cost a lot, and it would be strange to sell secondhand things and throw away perfectly good packaging. If a box is the right size and in good condition, I am using it. Last Christmas I got desperate enough to ask on Facebook whether anyone had packaging they were about to toss. Bridgeport and Fairfield showed up for me, and I spent a week doing porch pickups. Your order might arrive in a reused box. That is on purpose, and it keeps the prices down.

Same thinking on shipping. I choose the cheapest safe way to get something to you, because it is shocking what it costs to send a package from Connecticut to California. And when it matters, I rush. Last Thanksgiving someone in North Carolina had to have our vintage Staffordshire china set, in the original box. Packing it took at least two hours, which was my workout for the week. Worth it, to know those plates were on a family's table for my favorite holiday.

Why buy this way

Vintage is local sustainable shopping without trying to be. Nothing new gets manufactured, nothing gets shipped across an ocean in a container, and a well-made thing gets another fifty years instead of a landfill. And the piece on your shelf came from somewhere real.

And practically: a solid brass bowl or a hand-thrown ceramic pitcher from the 1960s costs less than the new version at a big-box store and will outlive it several times over. Old things were built better. That is not nostalgia, it is just true. Pick both up and you will feel it.