Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
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The shop started out Victorian, then took a tipple of sherry. Now, Quintessential Antique & Furniture Company (5707 Manchester, 314-531-9701, antiquesstlouis.com) is giggly (jukeboxes and marbles), brazen (12-foot-tall rusted gates), and earthy (antlers and birch logs) as well. Andy Culbertson runs the 4,500-square-foot showroom with his parents, Jo Ellen and Lou Culbertson.
They open the doors during the first seven days of each month, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Then Andy spends the next three weeks crisscrossing the country and happening onto things, like the gabled upper-story facade of a just-demolished house, complete with a weathered balcony door that could become the gate to a secret garden.
“We work hard to find what’s original and unique—that’s the common thread,” Andy says. “I like being surrounded by stuff that has a story to it.” He gets excited by odd collections, unexpected scale (a 19-foot-long cabinet or a church steeple) and interesting textures (rough tortoise shells next to old silk or the warmth of wood against the tensile strength of metal). His favorite find this month: an old farm table from Ohio. You can almost hear those stories being told, with elbows on the zinc tabletop and a child’s foot kicking the turned, painted legs.
Andy looks for “what’s true and pure, not reproduction” and leaves the refinishing to his customers, many of whom are artists or photographers. They might put glass shelves inside an old church’s giant Gothic light fixture or hang jewelry inside a gilded oval frame. Tables get made from old streetlights’ iron bases; an old drafting table turns into a kitchen island.
“We try to be as realistic as possible in the way we price stuff,” Andy says, “so it’s not like a museum. It’s touchable.”
