An unlikely location for bottle colleting
We recently had the pleasure of visiting the shop Refrill located on Bondgate in Darlington, our home town. We were there to deliver a selection of our candles to stock there. We walked in to be greeted by the warm and convivial owner of the shop Karen, who made us feel incredibly welcome and at home in her shop.
What can I say about Refrill? It's a vintage shop, sure we've all seen or been to a vintage shop, but this one hits the mark in so many ways. The décor was truly charming, from the art deco wallpaper to the display cabinets and shelves filled with carefully selected and well placed pieces of desirable objects and artefacts from the previous century. It was like visiting the past and I mean that in the most positive and complimentary way. There were items everywhere catching my attention, from cute bottle stoppers, to Edwardian silver backed grooming kits, the kind you can imagine a lady of the house keeping on her dresser and using to primp herself for a day of composed lounging ahead. There was also glassware and homeware that Karen had clearly spent a lot of time and effort on selecting and sourcing, it was all so relevant to todays taste and yet was all original and novel.
The clothing was another key factor to this shop, one that can not be ignored. Karen had carefully comprised her racks of vintage clothing of beautifully preserved jackets, trousers, dresses and so on. So much care and attention had gone into her decision making process, that it showed in what she had displayed. The clothing was of an ilk that conjured imagery of a finely dressed couple, depending on the clothing you could imagine them in the different decades, spanning the century as a beautiful sartorial duo. Next time I'm to attend a wedding in the autumn, I think I'll pay a visit to Refrill to source myself a nice tweed jacket, something that is timeless yet is sure not to be worn by anyone else as it has been selected from a time gone by.
As I say, we had visited Refrill originally to drop off a selection of our stock, though we did soon get sucked into this wonderful swirling vortex of period pieces. One of the things that was pointed out to me by my brother was a wonderful bottle.
This bottle was a great find and it is not at all surprising that the place we found it was Karen's shop, as it is so full of beautiful things. So what a delight it was to stumble across this bottle from around 1900 that was originally from London and in such good condition, the lettering was bold and raised proudly on the glass. We couldn't resist but to ask Karen if we could buy this beauty to make into one of our candles, which she refused.
Karen instead insisted that we don't buy it but just take it. I cant say it's terribly surprising that she offered it so readily, as she is such a lovely and welcoming lady. So we are now in possession of a wonderful piece of history which we intend to turn into a candle and we simply had to share a couple of pictures of the bottle, so you can see exactly how special and unique this piece is. We can't wait to make it and we have Karen at her wonderful emporium Refrill to thank for it.