Lexington, KY - It's no great secret that Lexington is flush with great antique shops - a map created by the Lexington Antiques Dealers Association pinpoints 18 in the area; and a quick Google search will give you even more.
While the precise definition of "antique" is difficult to pin down, many consider antiques to be items that are at least 50 years old, and valued at least in part for their age. With that in mind, it should be noted that Lexington is also stocked with locally owned shops that are filled to the brim with unique, high-quality, previously owned items that aren't traditional antiques, but that span many decades and cater to a variety of styles and budgets.
What follows is a helping of the city's best treasure troves for funky secondhand finds, each with its own unique and ever-changing selection of recycled items, ranging from knick knacks and decorative accents to large pieces of furniture. We've limited it to those that don't exclusively carry traditional antiques, in the aforementioned sense of the word, but those that feature an eclectic mix of older vintage and more contemporary items as well.
Another Man's Treasure
With a sprawling 22,000-square-foot showroom, Another Man's Treasure is the largest new/used furniture store in Central Kentucky. The inventory is described by owner-buyer Dennis Gibbs as a unique variety of new, used and antique items, and consists mostly of furniture but includes a large selection of artwork and home accessories as well. Due to the amount of space, the store is able to maintain a large selection, from gently used couches and dining room sets to a bedding gallery that includes brand new mattresses and box springs. The store occasionally brings in large outdoor items, such as outdoor canopies, as well.
"We're kind of a cross between a new furniture store and a used furniture store - we have a mixed selection, which is the way most people's homes are," Gibbs said. "We try to find things that you're not going to find other places, whether they're art sculptures or old pieces of antique furniture that you won't see anywhere else."
Gibbs opened the shop in 1991, expanding to the current location in 2000. He spends a couple of days a week buying, which amounts to a constantly shifting inventory. The store doesn't offer consignment, Gibbs buys all of the items outright, from individual pieces to entire estates.
New items are brought to the store almost daily, which contributes to a loyal customer base who stop by the shop every week to see what's new.
Room Service
Seventeen years of experience as the owner of Room Service, a Liberty Road consignment shop specializing in gently used home furnishings, has given Julie Selby a keen eye for what her customers want to see in her shop.
"We try to have a wide variety of things," she said. "Right now we're trying to get more of the newer types of home furnishings; the vintage things are also very cool.
"Traditional antiques are a little slower right now," she added. "We do take antiques, but we don't pursue them like we did in the past."
Stylistically speaking, Selby finds most of her customers are looking for more modern, vintage furniture -
mid-century pieces -
than they are traditional antiques.
"We also do really well with the really newer kinds of used furniture - things that they can really compare in a (new) store," she said.
Room Service has expanded in its current location twice in the 17 years since it opened, now with 9,000 square feet to accommodate a growing customer base and group of consignors. Selby said she takes as much consignment as she can (interested parties can e-mail photos of their items to roomservice@roomserviceinc.com), and has recently started incorporating brand new items that she buys at market, such as lamps, pictures and accent pieces. She added that the recent opening of other interior decor-themed shops on Liberty Road, including Scout and Great Danes, has imparted a great sense of energy to the area.
"We've got a lot of regular customers," Selby said. "I think that's what we're probably the proudest of, is that we know so many of them."
Scout Antiques & More
Named after the owners' dog, Scout specializes in unique art-deco and mid-century-modern items that owners Jeff Perkins and Greg Feeney travel all over the country to find. The inventory includes
furniture, light fixtures, shelves, art and accent pieces, with an emphasis on repurposed, industrial and edgy items - unusual pieces that you won't find anywhere else in Lexington.
Recent items sold by the shop include a pair of 1920s wooden aircraft wings, repurposed to create a shelf, and a 1955 molded plywood chair. According to Perkins, the store aims to turn over its entire inventory in 60 days or less, so they are constantly bringing in new items.
"Our goal is to price it right and mark it down quickly," he said.
Perkins and Feeney opened the shop in 2009, and Perkins said the concept stemmed in part from his longtime interest in Kentucky history and knowing the history behind items. It was important to the couple that the store be different from traditional antique stores, however.
"We want to appeal to a new generation of antiquers," Perkins added. "We want it to be fun."
Cowgirl Attic
Opened by Karen Payne about 20 years ago, Cowgirl Attic specializes in salvaging antique architectural elements that might otherwise get discarded during home renovations and the razing of historic structures.
"We're in the business of recycling things, and that's what we love to do," Payne said. Years before her humble beginnings running the shop from a "teensy house on Walton Avenue," Payne, the daughter of a former antiques dealer, knew she wanted to run a resale shop, and found that the items she was most attracted to were the architectural pieces - doorknobs, light fixtures and the like. With a hefty collection of old doors, sinks, tubs and hardware, Cowgirl Attic is an ideal place to look for period-theme remodels - many pieces found at the store date as far back as the early 1800s.
Payne has clients who contact her to salvage materials from old homes, barns or cabins, so much of her inventory is locally sourced, but she has purchased items from Bali, Egypt, Europe and, most commonly, Mexico.
"Repurposing is really big right now, everywhere," Payne said, and due to the store's wide inventory of old wood, iron and windows, Cowgirl Attic attracts a number of artists and other shoppers looking to refurbish older materials for new uses. Perhaps the most popular aspect of the store is the outdoor garden component, which features a selection of iron benches, arches, trellises, fencing and windowboxes.
"We specialize in cast iron urns and fountains, antique brick - you could actually build a house from what we have," Payne said. "It's truly a treasure trove."
The Delaware Avenue shop recently joined forces with the interior design and event specialty shop House, which moved into the front section of Cowgirl Attic. Payne said that she plans to expand her garden section in the near future, possibly to include plants and more artistic elements.
Feather Your Nest Antiques, Collectibles and Accessories
Geralyn Wojtowicz, who along with business partner Sharon Woodrum owns and operates Feather Your Nest, wants to make sure her store is like a river - you never walk into the same one twice.
"My goal is every time somebody walks in that front door, I want it took different for them," Wojtowicz said. "I don't want to run a museum, I want things that are interesting and unique and priced right so they sale."
The duo first started working together at the monthly antique show on Angliana Avenue, but when that operation shuttered Wojtowicz and Woodrum opened Feather Your Nest over nine years ago on Leestown Road.
The deceptively deep retail store has a wide selection of trinkets, such as toys and old-time kitchen utensils, and furniture -
vintage and antique. They also have an ample selection of accessories. Each item in the store has been personally curated.
"I don't shop online because I can't feel it, touch it and smell it," Wojtowicz said. "The No. 1 criteria is the item has to be old. Here we define 'old' as 1970s or older. If you look around the store, we're much more vintage. We definitely have our antiques here, but we're more vintage."
Wojtowicz's fondness for everything "re-purposed" -
she says older things, aside from being of a better quality, are just more charming -
was instilled at a very young age and was carried over into her professional life.
"Since I was about this tall," Wojtowicz said, holding her hand a few feet above the floor, "my grandmother would take me rummage shopping in Chicago. If it cost more than a quarter, we couldn't buy it. I have been doing this since I could walk."
Street Scene
For the Flower Power generation, walking into vintage haven Street Scene is a complete retro flashback, and for younger customers, the shop offers a chance to revisit the much-romanticized era of design previously inhabited by their parents and grandparents. Street Scene's inventory primarily consists of goods from the '50s, '60s and '70s, from clothing, jewelry and vinyl records, to couches, lamps and art pieces. The store has a large emphasis on kitchen ware, from unique glass sets and serving trays to vintage aprons and formica dining sets. "Basically, anything you would use to serve with," said co-owner Terri Wood. "Bar ware was really big in the '60s."
"Light fixtures were another thing that was really unique from that period," she added, and though the store's inventory changes almost daily, it frequently includes funky chandeliers, oversized lamps and other unusual sources of light.
Wood opened the shop along with co-owner Kathryn Wiseman in 2007. Longtime friends, the duo used to hold yard sales together and soon discovered they shared a taste for the same funky old items.
"We started figuring out how we loved all of these things that our grandmothers had," Wood recalled. "One thing led to another."
The store owners welcome consignors with unique items from the '50s - '70s to bring items they may be interested in selling on Mondays; Wiseman and Wood spend some time during the rest of the week scouting for items at auctions and estate sales. The store has developed a unique identity, with similar bright colors and unique textures found on many of their items.
"There are some things from that period, like Early American, that we don't like," Wood said. "We really choose the parts of that period that we love, and if it doesn't fit in that criteria, we leave it out."
Sage Antiques & Uniques
When JoAnn Ludwig moved to Kentucky from West Virginia, it was not her intention to open up her own shop. However, Ludwig, a longtime collector of unique knick knacks, home accessories, jewelry, purses and other thrift store and yard sale finds, soon realized that her collection of stuff had outgrown the charming but small downtown Nicholasville home she and her husband moved into.
What started as a small rented space to sell some of her wares in the back of Scout Antiques & More evolved into Sage Antiques & Uniques last June, after Ludwig came across a former house-turned-retail space for rent on Winchester Road.
Sage's wares consist primarily of an eclectic and (very) affordable mix of home decorations and accessories, including small lamps, candleholders, decorative boxes, statuettes, vases, small dishes and other kitchen items; the shop also contains a collection of vintage and costume jewelry, scarves and purses. While two of the rooms in the shop are rented out to consignors whose items tend to be more traditional, higher-end antiques, for the most part, Sage's inventory is bargain-based, with many of the smaller items clocking in under $10.
"I like to have something for everybody at affordable prices," said Ludwig, who used to run a thrift shop in West Virginia. "I get a lot of young girls from UK who are just starting out - who want some new stuff but don't have a lot of money. I remember those days."
Though she said she wasn't sure which direction the shop should take when she first opened, being unfamiliar with the local market, Ludwig admits that the shop has really become a bit of a "shabby-chic" shop, with most items marketed toward women who are looking for fun and affordable items to accessorize their homes with.
"I know if I'm having a bad day, and I go somewhere and find something cool for $3 or $5, it makes me happy," she said.