Olde Curio Shoppe

I wonder sometimes if my life were a Curio Shoppe, what they would have in the window display? Do you ever wonder that? I have. There’s something to be said for a curious day, it brings emotions to the surface that sneak past all the required rhyme or reason of the mind and (at least from what I can gather) appear to be health-giving for the soul.

I like the idea of having my nose pressed up against the window with its gold lettering, both hands cupped round my eyes to shield them from the glare of the light and having to blink repeatedly just to adjust my eyes to the darkened space inside. I love what the Interior Designer has done just left of centre.

There’s a rich burgundy coloured leather wingback chair with solid brass nailhead trim and matching ottoman with a pile of books on the table. The books have a loved quality about them, I can tell because you can see they’ve been handled alot but the pages are still attached to the spines. There are no dog ears, but small threads of blue cotton as a reminder of where to come back to. I smile at that. It’s the detail.

I strain even further, and for a moment the wingback chair does seems somehow out-of-place, but not, if you know what I mean, maybe it’s the contemporary paintings on the wall behind it. The strange thing is, nothing appears discordant, not to the eye or the heart, infact they seem perfectly at ease in each others company. Old worlde and contemporary together, interesting. Agreeable even.

There’s a comfortability about that scene that I can’t quite put my finger on, but the eclectic familiarity of it all causes a gentle well-spring of delight to rise up on the inside of me, yes, I think that’s the feeling. Or even her first cousin, joy.

So many little, interesting things, each having their own space, some quirky like the Wordspin Scramble, others aesthetic, like Modette, a verdigris muse, eyes closed her face raised slightly as if to catch the sun’s first rays, an oval deep ocean blue glass dish by Crabtree and Evelyn for putting delicate pearl earrings in.

There are alot of blue objects I realise. It’s my favourite colour, how canny of the Interior Designer to have picked that up about me. And they’re not just any old blue, there are stunning eye hurting blues, dark look-at-me blues, there’s definitely nothing subtle about them.

And why would all this be curious you ask? Because, more often than not, we forget. We forget just how interesting we might look to someone else and that thought alone is worth the scuffling that’s now taking place as others join me and jostle for a place to stand. They like this shoppe too.

For me, it’s the squeals of delight from others, the “oh look at this!” and the, “how does this look on me” or “I know exactly where I’m going to put this” that bring me the most joy. Window shopping is not for the faint-hearted but it is for the adventuress, but that’s a whole other story. I like this Shoppe, I think I’ll come again another day.