Now Retail Store is the online shop of NOW VINTAGE LIMITED, a small British business that buys, restores and sells homeware and everyday objects from roughly 1900 to 1980. We are not a marketplace and we are not a dropshipper. Everything listed on nowretail.co.uk is stock we have bought ourselves, handled ourselves and photographed in our own space before it goes up.
The buying is done in person, which is slower than most online retail and deliberately so. We go to house clearances, provincial auction rooms, closing workshops and the occasional car boot where the seller actually knows what they have. A chipped enamel jug, a set of Hornsea cups, a pair of brass candlesticks: each one is checked for cracks, repairs, missing parts and the sort of wear that photographs flatter and daylight does not.
Restoration is kept light wherever possible. Wood is cleaned and waxed rather than stripped and refinished, because the patina is usually the point. Metal gets a gentle polish, never a mirror shine. Electrical items such as lamps are rewired to current British standards by someone qualified to do it, and we say plainly on the listing what has been replaced. Where a piece has an honest repair, we photograph it and describe it rather than hide it.
The range is deliberately mixed. You will find ceramics, glass, textiles, lighting, kitchenware and the odd piece of small furniture, chosen because they work in a modern home rather than because they match a period. Four mugs from four different makers can sit happily on the same shelf. That is how most people actually live, and it is how we buy.
If you are looking for something particular, tell us. We keep a note of what customers are after and pick things up when we see them, and we are happy to send extra photographs or measurements before you commit. It costs nothing to ask, and a conversation about a coal scuttle is usually more useful than a filter.