Just going to quickly apologise for the quality of some of the photos in this newsletter — my phone camera has a weird tremor and is basically dying a death right now.
Yesterday at 5:45 am, Andy and I got up and drove to Kempton Antiques Market. Jasmin had had a late night, so she was still asleep in the back of the van when we left, and I think the bumps in the road helped to rock her awake because when we arrived she emerged dressed and ready, if a little bedraggled.
We were meeting our friends V, Grace, Georgie, and Rory there, and after a coffee and probably the worst pastel de nata I have ever eaten, we all set about hunting down the bits and pieces on our mental lists.
I’d had a vision for our living room for a while, which involved switching out our very long, skinny dining table for a round one, and adding an armchair perpendicular to the couch so that Andy and I could stop sitting on top of each other every evening. The thing is, a plan like this needs to happen in order. To make space for the armchair, we would first need to switch the table, so this is where our hunt began.
I gravitated towards round, mid-century varieties, all about the same price and in similar condition, and it wasn’t long before V realised that the table I was looking for was exactly the table that she and Rob (her husband) were trying to replace with a long, skinny, rectangular one.
It really was a moment of perfect serendipity because it meant that instead of us each paying £350 for new tables, we decided to trade. This solved all sorts of financial, and logistical issues, and made me want to flag it to anyone reading this as a clever thing to do before you commit to buying a big-ticket piece of furniture. Are any of your friends looking to switch things around in their houses? How would they feel about this chrome coffee table in exchange for that wooden one? There’s no harm in asking, no one spends any money, and you can just trade back whenever someone wants or needs to.
It also meant we could move on to the next chapters of our respective hunts. For me, that meant an armchair. For V it meant two new lampshades, a sconce, and a Romanian bowl that I am quite jealous of — she has a real talent for shopping.
I sat on a few chairs before I found the right one, and ended up buying from a man called Christian who drives over from Strasbourg once a month to pedal his wares. The chair is a low-slung, wooden Ercole with beautiful joinery and yellow cushions that I’m going to have recovered. I spent last night watching Sex and the City in it and I honestly couldn’t be happier.
It ended up being the only thing Andy and I bought, which I think shows great restraint on our parts, but I am still thinking quite obsessively about these Rwandan pots, which used to store honeycomb and have been repaired in the cracks with aluminium plates.
A great lesson I always learn and re-learn when I go to these kinds of markets is that anything you can buy new, you can buy old, better. Our group alone went home with coffee tables, side tables, ottomans, blue plates, blue chairs, and little embroidered artworks to hang in the bathroom. All of it with so much character and story and texture.
The 6:30 call time can be a bit of a stretch, but Facebook marketplace is a perfectly good, un-time-restricted alternative. If you give the algorithm a second it can really nail it. I recently bought a side table from a lovely guy in Dulwich and it makes this one little corner of the flat look so much more grown up.
I’ve also loved discovering some amazing bits of vintage IKEA and these adorable Swedish wooden lamps. They got away from me, but I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled.
Anyway, it was the perfect way to spend the morning before the heavy rains came in the afternoon, and I am so happy with my traded table, my new old armchair, and the way my living room feels now that they are in.
The market is on Tuesdays twice a month. It’s £5 to get in at 6:30 and free from 8 — but in this case, the early bird quite often gets the worm.
See you in the next one,
Annabel
Okay I need someone to table-swap with me?? I love that! And those wooden lamps are everything!!
loved it!