Circa: Deuxième Partie

*This is Part Two of my blogs about my former antique shop, Circa, in Santa Barbara, California. If you have not read part one, click HERE.… You need the back story…

Shopping for merchandise for our antique store, Circa, was very very difficult… mainly because I loved it all so much I didn’t want to sell it. My mother and I had a pact, like I mentioned in a previous blog, we would only buy that which we loved. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.

We sourced our merchandise from all over the world… France, Spain, Italy, New York, Morocco, Atlanta, Los Angeles… You name it, we were there. With absolute pride, every piece (almost) went into our shop.

My mother had to tell me that I had too many NFS (not for sale) tags on too many things. But how could I sell that 18^th-century statue of the woman in that dress! How could I sell that? How could I sell that plaster frieze? How could I sell that painting of the man with the easel ( I didn’t, I’m looking at it right now in my living room in Paris.). It was torture watching some of my favorites leave the shop. I have a little secret… Sometimes I was very naughty. Sometimes, if someone asked me the price of my very favorite piece I would either tell them that it wasn’t for sale or that it was $5 million dollars. That ought to deter them.

 

One of my favorite things to do at our shop was to find a great piece that needed a little help. For example, I found a beautiful Napoleon III chaise in Paris that needed a little love. My mother and I decided that we would give it a lot of love. First things first, we marched our little selves to one of my favorite fabric shops, Silk Trading Company. (I only go to Diamond Fabric and Foam for the free bread.) Silk Trading Company has some of the best fabrics, the best textures, the best prints and the best colors and you can have a cut that day… You don’t have to order it. I don’t have that kind of patience, I am an Aries. Silk Trading Company knows what upholstery silk should feel like and look like and it is not super expensive… Only kind of expensive. Their velvets are the creamiest and Silk Trading Company knows what a pop of blue should look like and how the warmth of beige should look. We chose three different fabrics for the chaise… A print, a silk and a velvet… All in a warm golden beige. And for the grand finale, we chose a pop of velvet peacock blue with golden trim for a pillow. I mean, c’mon!

 

My mother was the one who was obsessed with lamps and lampshades. While we were in Paris collecting for our store, my mother always made a point to find usual objects to be used as bases for lamps. We would bring them back to the states, have them wired, and then the fun would begin. My mother would go to a little atelier in Montecito and work with a woman who was a master at lampshades. They would look at the base and decide what its characteristics were, its attributes and then they would decide the best shape of the lampshade, the best color for fabric, the best texture and most importantly the best trim. The love and care that my mother put in the lampshades was evident because the lamps would never be in the store for more than a couple of days… Sold!

 

One of our most favorite pieces to buy were mirrors. My mother and I absolutely adore mirrors… Mainly 19^th and 18^th century gilt mirrors. Honestly, a mirror is one of the most important pieces of a room. It’s your focal point, it’s the reflection and it is the highlight of any room. One of the main reasons that I rented this apartment in Paris is because of the two monumental 18^th-century gilt mantle mirrors. My mother and I brought back at least 15 mirrors from Europe for our shop. Only four of them made it to the store and the rest only made it as far as my mother’s house.

We both were obsessed with accessories. Sconces, chinoiserie boxes, tole trays, coffee table books, vases, candlesticks, blue-and-white anything, picture frames, Anichini hand towels, paintings, sculptures, busts, garden urns, tablecloths, Faberge boxes, jardinières… Total obsession. There were so many different types of accessories in our shop but somehow they all went together perfectly. When you buy what you love, it all works.

 

We did have one little accessory that was extra extra special. A woman in Paris was offering her entire collection of gold hearts. Why is that so special, you ask? The hearts are called ex voto which means in Latin “from the vow made.” These little hearts /sacre coeurs were used as religious offerings to a saint or deity as gratitude on little hand written notes inside. The ones that I bought have a little French prayer on the front,

“Lisez, O Notre Dame

Dans le coeur que voici

L'espoir de mon âme

Son amour aussi.”

I bought all of the hearts… And kept most of them… Giving them as gifts to my friends. Yolanda still keeps hers on her bedside table.

 

There are a few things that I wish I never sold… My white taxidermy peacock named Ursula, the set of four black leather chairs with gold detailing from the 1920s, a Jacques Garcia black lacquered clover table, a marble and iron industrial table, every lamp we’ve ever had, every Fortuny pillow, every statue… I basically wish I never sold one thing.

Do you want to know something interesting? My best sales were before 10 o’clock in the morning before the store opened. I would go to the shop after I dropped little Gracie off at school at about 8:30 in the morning. Our shop was on a street that was great for early morning walking with a Starbucks latte after the farmer's market. My mother and I made sure that our windows stopped the early morning walkers in their tracks. Our windows were huge so you could see the entire first level of the store from the outside. Without fail, the people who had their faces pressed to our windows could see that I was inside at my desk… Tap tap tap. Something you might not know about me? I’m actually overly polite and I would never ever just sit at my desk and not open the doors early for customers. (Some shop owners do that and I think it’s so rude.) The good news is that these early morning openings resulted in some of my best sales. My favorite early-morning sale was to an older gentleman (he told me he was 82 years old), very refined, who bought my beloved 18^th-century statue of a woman draped in a beautiful gown/robe. It was a gift for his wife for Valentine’s Day. How sweet!

 

 

Our shop combined antiques with new items as well. My mother and I traveled to the famous Maison et Objet show in Paris twice a year. For furniture and accessories, this is the show of all shows. You want to know something funny? The first time we went to the show, my internal biological clock was off and I wasn’t thinking clearly and I accidentally took too many birth-control pills and I basically threw up the entire first day of the Maison et Objet show and I was completely delirious. Day 2 of the show was much better and I was so glad because this is not a show to miss. I wrote a blog about it back in 2009 that is kind of funny. If you want to read it click HERE. We placed our biggest order with a company based out of France. Everything that they have is a reproduction based on the original… Let me tell you, these are the best I’ve ever seen. They are masters of getting the gold gilt just right and can make the piece look exactly like it was handed down to you by your rich great aunt who lived in Paris. We bought lamps, chinoiserie boxes, lanterns, small tables and these great skinny rectangular mirrors.

 

We also designed our own line of sofas and headboards. For the bedding, we chose the best…Anichini. We could barely keep the Anichini throws in stock with their great patterns and colors. While we were in Paris, we found an artisan who made the chicest Moroccan tea sets you’ve ever seen with vibrant colors of purple, blue, pink and green with little chains. We were offered the chance to design the tea sets with our own shapes, colors and accoutrements to make it very special for our shop. My other favorite “new” product was our line of Faberge. Can you believe Faberge still makes stuff? They do! We purchased for our shop their line of picture frames, enamel boxes etched with love notes inside, and a fabulous set of champagne glasses and caviar bowls. Amazeballs!

 

I wish I had better and more pictures to show you but they are all packed away in my storage in Los Angeles. Let’s take a look at what I do have…
 

 

Voilà! Circa!

I have a little surprise for all of you regarding Circa as well! Stay tuned for the next blog…