What is it?
As the name suggests, Fern Avenue Antiques Centre is a space dedicated to antiques (although one person’s ‘antique’ seems to be another’s ‘vintage’). Clare Smith and partner Seppe Anthony have run it since 2014, keeping one end of the cavernous centre for their own stuff and renting space to more than 16 other dealers.
Clare says they were keen to keep the concept of Jesmond ‘Antiques Village’ alive (another shop, Antiquites Francaises, is just round the corner on Gowan Terrace). She and Seppe are experienced hands, alive to the fads and foibles of the market. But profit isn’t their sole motivation. “We buy whatever we like and what makes us smile,” says Clare. “That’s what it’s about.”
Fern Avenue Antiques Centre offers a perfect excuse to shop and browse in Newcastle
Why is it smashing?
Because it will probably make you smile too. There are snooty, high end antiques shops but this is an Aladdin’s cave, a mish mash, an intellectual teaser and a nostalgia trip all at once.
It has the air of an attic of eccentric treasures, the kind loved by fans of Antiques Roadshow and the many other TV programmes of that ilk. Here you might find a pair of mighty buffalo horns next to a dish of elderly and retired golf balls. Or a ‘Happy Buddha’ grinning over thousands of other relics of times past.
Fern Avenue Antiques Centre offers a perfect excuse to shop and browse in Newcastle
Jewellery, medals and badges, glassware, ceramics, paintings, photos and period furniture are in abundance. At the time of writing (Oct 2020), a “rare” 1940s National Savings poster showing a Spitfire hangs near a faded stuffed otter in a display case and a collection of toy vehicles of the kind long vanished from our roads.
A pair of nodding ceramic figures resembling a favourite Dickensian aunt and uncle await a buyer, as do a rack of pre-loved clothes, an old Remington typewriter, a flamboyantly decorated Victorian chamber pot and the kind of object that might easily turn up as a ‘mystery object’ in a pub quiz but is actually an 18th Century milliner’s block – a snip (possibly) at 90 quid. If you pop in, you’ll vow to return; that’s almost guaranteed.
Website www.fernavenueantiquescentre.co.uk
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Address: 75-79 Fern Avenue, Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne NE2 2RA
Tel. 0191 209 4104
Words and images: David Whetstone