I’ve just moved into my new home, and it is truly lovely! It’s an old red-brick building in the very middle of Hollywood. Yes, that Hollywood, the one in California! Yes, I’m an English gal, and this web site is all about British organic food, but… well, that’s the beauty of the internet – I can write to you from ANYWHERE!!! Anyways, I moved into this classic old silent movie-era pad, and then… realised that I had no furniture. Oh no, didn’t think that through.
Hmmm, I said to myself. I suppose I should do what everyone else does and buy cheap disposable furniture from a well-known out of town big Swedish store. So I went there, twice actually, and wandered around the ginormous shop floor, looking at things that looked pretty nice from a distance, but had zero soul up close and questionable eco impact.
Sadly, I returned home, twice, empty handed and perplexed about wanting to have lovely eco-friendly furniture, and not wanting to spend a fortune on hand-crafted pieces.
And then… A-ha!!!! OLD FURNITURE!!! Of course. Of Course!!
So I went to a lovely little local owner-run shop thejunkmarket.com run by a sweet couple named Kerry and Nick, with an adorable new born baby girl called Lou. We chatted. We passed some pleasant time, talked about things. They sold me nice stuff, gently worn period pieces full of ‘prana’. I left feeling like the world is a sweet place full of the kindness of strangers.
The desk that I bought from them and am sitting at right now is scratched with the endeavours of its former owner, someone who inspires me in their absence with a life of creativity and activity. My new dressing table upstairs is from the 1920′s, with little old-fashioned curly details on the top that just shout out ‘vintage’ and make me want to wear a pair of clickety clackety heels and dance the Charleston. Not to mention the lovely new set of four chairs with wooden backs that were rounded by wetting the wood sometime in the early 1900′s and steaming it into a curve – a technique that’s simply wonderful but is almost extinct in this day of dwindling craftsmanship.
And you know what? All this vintage loveliness is the most eco-friendly way to furnish a pad. Double nice!
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This was posted on Wednesday, October 11th, 2006 at 12:02 am by Ysanne Spevack. To link here, use the permalink. You can follow any responses to this post through the 
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