Writing and photography by Liz Stanley

At last, YHO features Elemente—an eclectic furniture and household consignment store on Pierpont Avenue where midcentury meets modern. Interested yet? You should be.

Elemente has been around for 20-odd-years, providing Salt Lakers with nearly one-of-a-kind items spanning the thirty years from 1940 to 1970. Offbeat and unusual, this treasure trove serves up a hard-to-find touch of nostalgia minus the cutesy, cottage-esque feel of your average antique shop.

Smack-dab in the middle of SLC’s art district, yesterday’s mirrors, paintings and maps cover the high walls of the vast, converted loft-style warehouse. I can always find a must-have knick knack on their well-stocked shelves, and their prices are reasonable too. Sofas go for around $300; table lamps as little as $15.

Retro desks and coffee tables sit aside full sofa sets reminiscent of your hip grandma. And unlike most vintage stores, Elemente is good about keeping sets of furniture together: You can often find an entire set of chairs or a pair of matching floor lamps.

Even better, be loyal to Elemente and they’ll be loyal to you. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, they’ll take your name and number and call if and when that original ’70s-era arching floorlamp shows up. And they really do call. Take my word for it. It’s no wonder they’ve been around for more than 20 years.

{Elemente, My Dear Watson}

Elemente
353 Pierpont Avenue
Salt Lake City, Utah
(801) 355-7400

Anyplace where there is a significant number of golf courses, early-bird specials or AARP members will, most likely, also have a significant number of treasure troves in the form of vintage and consignment stores.

Take Palm Springs, California, for example, where estate sales run amok. Or—better since it’s just a wee five hours from Salt Lake City—St. George, Utah. A recent jaunt to the southern portion of the state turned up many pleasantries, but one that shined brightest was Urban Renewal, situated right on the Boulevard alongside mid-century hotels with kidney-shaped swimming pools.

Urban Renewal scouts out consigned and found vintage furnishings as well as used-but-cute apparel. Walk inside, and your inner antique scout will steer you directly toward a vintage blue tablecloth with white scalloped stitching or a tea set fit for your grandmother’s windowed hutch. Or maybe it’s a ’40s-era striped cigarette case or gingham apron that will speak to your heart.

Our crew left with a set of yesterday’s place mats, embroidered dishtowels and a baby blue train case. We left behind vintage kitchen chairs, enameled brooches, midcentury cribs and, as you can probably imagine, house-fulls more.

The best part is that unlike many of Salt Lake’s consignment stores, a glance at the price tags at Urban Renewal won’t leave you gasping. Plus, it’s easy to shop thanks to the store’s no-clutter (or at least low-clutter) merchandising. And, let’s get serious, it’ll leave you with a Boulevard experience worth bragging about. (Unlike Spring Break ‘99.)

{Treasures Untold}

Urban Renewal
5 E. St. George Boulevard
St. George, Utah
(435) 634-8031

*Photography by Lacey Pappas

What do you do when you like to collect and antique so much that the door on your storage unit won’t close, thanks to a few too many vintage chairs and antique dressers? You open up an eclectic consignment boutique so that others can browse and purchase your your treasured collectibles, of course. It’s more fun that way, anyway.

A scenario along those lines brought about Salt Lake’s Abode. The bright turquoise box-of-a-building on 900 East is filled (almost to the brim) with colorful items from yesteryear, both found and consigned. Alongside vintage aprons, dishes and serving trays that will brighten any living quarters, you’ll see antique hutches, retro lamps and mirrors fit for your grandmother’s parlor … and now yours.

Ask any interior decorator and he’ll tell you that while filling your house with fresh, modern pieces is a must, it’s the few conversation-worthy pieces that will morph yours walls into a home. It could be the bright yellow cuckoo clock that greets visitors in the entryway, or the unusual collection of salt-and-pepper shakers decorating the top of your console.

Though not quite as thrifty as the thrift store—not to mention the garage sale or your grandmother’s linen closet—Abode offers a serious handful of vintage doodads fit for making your home interesting. You might have to look high and low until you see the one item (a teacup? a spoon? a skeleton key?) that speaks to your heart, but when you find it, you’ll know.

Abode also hosts flea markets in their parking lot on summer Saturdays beginning May 3. If you’re interested in becoming a vendor, visit the Abode website.

{Gone To Market}

Abode
1720 South 900 East
Salt Lake City, Utah
(801) 486-2633
www.abodepfm.com

Chelsea wrote in looking for a good consignment exchange for her still-cute but gently used sartorial goods from chains we love like Boden, Banana and Anthro. We know handfuls of shops for furniture and other home goods, but clothing consignment seems to be a little more slim pickins.

The only three we can recommend—if you can call it that—are 1) Namedroppers, 2) Plato’s Closet and 3) Pibb’s Exchange. We’ve only shopped Namedroppers racks but hear that as far as picking up inventory goes, they’re pretty picky—which can be both good and bad. Plato’s Closet is known to carry great basics but skip over the designer-label drop-offs. Pibb’s is entirely unpredictable. But as anyone who has stepped into its walls knows, they’ve got a thing for retro, and we’re guessing that right now it’s more of a costume outlet. We’ve also heard of Cassandra’s Closet, but have no real knowledge of what’s inside.

Anyone have any feedback for Chelsea?

Ask Fred Hightower why he started up the quirky antiques shop he runs on West Temple, and he’ll tell you it’s “a collection gone awry.”

A collection of what, you might ask. Well, at Moriarty’s—a 5,000-square-foot showroom named after a favorite pet parrot—it’s safe to say that there’s something for everybody. Sitting somewhere between a regular thrift store and a stuffy antique dealer, Moriarty’s selection includes vintage salt-and-pepper shakers, paperback novels, cheeky tablecloths and virtually untouched 50-year-old drugstore items that are easy to become enamored with.

Not as big on presentation as they are preservation, you might get sucked into Moriarty’s time trap if you’re the type that’s up for scouting out diamonds in the rough, whether it’s a charming 1950’s-era musical cake stand or a typewriter circa 1943. The inventory is the result of countless hours the owners spend at area estate sales and auctions. It’s fun to peruse now-retro issues of Better Homes & Garden, Life, Popular Mechanics, and Women’s Journal as well as run your fingers across old organs, radios, cameras, telephones and tea sets.

In a day when faux-vintage runs rampant, and when our favorite boutiques “find” objects for us and mark the price tags up quite liberally, Moriarty’s gives a rare opportunity for a style- and history-conscious urbanite to scout-out treasures and knicknacks of his or her own. Moriarty’s stands ready to serve up eclecticism and culture—if not a little oddball-ishness. It’s the kind of place we can see Brooklyn dwellers being wild about, but we prefer that it be kept one of Salt Lake’s little secrets.

{Nifty and Thrifty:}

Moriarty’s Antiques and Curiosities
959 S. West Temple
Salt Lake City
(801) 521-7507
Open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Sunday, noon - 5 p.m.

Meandering through Millcreek’s Second Hand Chic (900 E. 2006 South, Salt Lake City) is as fun as rummaging through local estate sales or vintage collectibles on eBay, only it’s a whole lot easier. You’ll find teacups that could have belonged in your grandmother’s hutch, colorful John Derian platters, classic velvet pillows, refinished lamps and the cutest collection of old timey aprons.

It’s said that about half of the products at Second Hand Chic are consignment, but it feels a little bit more like 25 percent. Found objects—pieces that have been scouted-out by antique hunters or just D.I. shoppers with good eyes—seem to have taken precedence over cutesy, refinished dressers and tables you see at most area consignment shops.

Displays here are color- and theme-coordinated and easy to shop, despite nooks and crannies that are practically packed to the brim. Vintage cookbooks sell for $6, a clear glass bird goes for $3, a set of pretty indigo china bowls are $12 for a set of six. Fun antique birthday and get-well cards go for $1 each. You’ll also see cake stands, glass buckets, and old chairs, desks and settees—even beds—and maybe an Elvis poster or two.

Little treasures at Second Hand Chic can give a little legacy or maybe just a nice quirky twist to any typical Salt Lake living room, kitchen or bedroom. Sometimes things are better the second time around.