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.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 7:09 am and is filed under Antiques, Consignment, Local Shops, Vintage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.