Old Friends and New
When Obscura Antiques and Oddities officially closed on December 31st, 2019 I had big plans. After 24 non-stop years in New York City retail I had decided to take a year-long break. I was going to travel to all those places I’d always meant to visit, but never had the time. Tokyo, Berlin, Barcelona, Reykjavik: there were so many cities at the top of my list - too many for one lifetime.
But it was not to be. Just a few short months after Obscura closed, the COVID-19 global pandemic hit, infecting millions, killing hundreds of thousands, shutting down international travel and bringing life as we all knew it to a halt. It was a time of lockdown and introspection, a time for the counting of blessings and self-reassessment.
I had considered getting out of the antiques business altogether: all those years of running one of the busiest little shops in NYC had left me burned out and ready to move on to the next adventure. I considered doing something else, being somewhere else, reinventing myself and starting all over again.
But the old loves do linger, and some obsessions never lose their hold. After six months of COVID-imposed isolation I was itching to get back in the game. It was then that an old friend gave me a call: he had a space at the People’s Store in Lambertville, and would I care to split it with him? At first I was hesitant: I didn’t miss the rigors of retail (and I was still dealing with a pile of paperwork in the wake of Obscura). Also: I had sold almost everything I had at Obscura and COVID had paralyzed much of the antiques business: in-person auctions, flea markets, house sales, antiques shows - nearly everything had slowed to a crawl or stopped completely. I still had my connections, and there was still private buying, but I would need a lot more than that to start again.
So I found some nice old display cases and started haunting the reemerging flea markets. Buying with a slightly different eye, focussing on design, industrial elements, original artwork, textiles and religious articles - I wanted my new business to reflect the twin realms of spirit and matter, and all those liminal things that fall in between.
So here I am, sharing a little space in Lambertville, starting again. After all the madness and intensity of those high-octane years in the Big City I’m putting together another life in a quieter place. But a few things haven’t changed: my first love is the history of science and medicine; natural history continues to be the focus; the 19th century is still my aesthetic obsession, and mourning will always be observed.
Welcome to Obscura West.