Presenting the things that you thought you'd never see again and bringing back the things you didn't know existed. My husband's family have been shopkeepers since 1903. The Family Business, located in North Essex, originally started as a "Leather and Grindery" merchant, and then went on to "Fancy Goods" (whatever they are!) They traded on the same site and the same building, which is itself over 4
00 years old, until the end of the 80’s, when sadly the shop closed. Since then the Family have retained the property and have become custodians of the Grade 2 Listed building and now rent small units to local shops. When lockdown hit, we decided it was time to assess our lives and most importantly all the stuff we had accumulated over the years. So we started to go through the property, in particular what I refer to as "The Cellar of Doom" and face the 117 years of stuff that had been stashed away in the cellar, waiting for someone else to deal with it! And so, we started, and we were amazed. We turned up some wonderous items. What to do with it all? We found boxes of stock from the 1940's and 1950's, buttons, leather goods, weird and wonderful curios and forgotten stock from our own Shop and Festival Trading stall from the 1990's that was buried at the bottom of the cellar (it is a big and frightening cellar – hence the cellar of Doom!) Add to this my husband’s own bumper collection of vintage Toys and Games (his aim was to buy everything that his parents deemed too frivolous and wasn’t allowed to have as a child) we discovered we just had too much stuff! And so our new journey began, we decided to turn to the Vintage Etsy crowd. We are just starting out and listing some of our finds, we are also upcycling and Retro Repackaging some of our more curious curios to create wonderful retro inspired unique vintage gifts. We will be adding new items to our Eclectic Emporium on a regular basis - we really have only just begun so keep checking back on our page to see what we are up to, and check out our Etsy store. We are finding some exciting things! Pip and Kitty.
