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Devin Kirk knows vintage shopping. The chief creative officer of Jayson Home, a beloved home design store (and online source) in Chicago, has been procuring vintage and antique pieces for the shop for 23 years. He travels to Europe four to six times a year on sourcing trips, filling containers with furniture and decorative objects to send back. “A lot of my time is spent at flea markets, mostly in France, Belgium, Italy, and England. But I tend to find a flea market no matter where I’m going,” he laughs. Whether you’re shopping on your next vacation or picking through your local flea market or antiques mall, Kirk has tips about exactly what you should be looking for—and never passing up.
Small Decorative Objects
Forget utility—if you’re buying an object simply to put it on display and call it an objet, Kirk says small vintage items are the way to go. “Look for great ashtrays, match strikers, the kind of interesting things that look good on a coffee table but are not necessarily something that we need nowadays,” he says.
Vases are another decorative item Kirk loves to buy secondhand, saying, “I just think they’re more special than something you’d buy new.”
1800s French
When Kirk visits flea markets, he’s not usually shopping with a list. But he often ends up buying French items from the late 1800s. “This Napoleon III-era in France is something that we buy over and over again, because it’s just great quality with really elegant lines,” he says. “It’s what you think of when you think of classic silhouettes.” Look for smaller scale seating with ebonized legs (often with casters) and delicate curves, which are signatures of this period. Unless you hit the jackpot with pristine vintage upholstery, Kirk recommends recovering pieces with a fabric that feels “fresh—something that really takes its silhouette and brings it into a new era.”
Original Art
The one thing Kirk personally can’t stop buying on all these sourcing trips is art. “Original art is the best thing to buy because you can just throw it in a suitcase,” he says, noting that his own home is full of such finds (“it’s getting a little bit out of control!”). Kirk says not to worry about provenance, instead just ask yourself, “Is it cool? Will it look great on your wall? Will it look good framed, or what would that look like if you just took the frame off?” Kirk has gotten great deals by suggesting a dealer keep an overly ornate frame to sell to another buyer.
On the flip side, Kirk says, “A frame sometimes is what makes something art. You can take an old student’s drawing that you find at a flea market and put it in a modern frame and it looks amazing.”
Faux-Bamboo Chairs
Whenever Kirk sees a classic, faux-bamboo Chiavari chair, he’ll scoop it up. “It’s a banquet hall chair that they just made buckets of back in the day, but it’s such a great silhouette,” he says. “They have a little seat and it’s just such a cute little chair that works great in an entry or next to a dresser in a bedroom.” Jayson Home often uses interesting fabric remnants to recover the seat cushions to turn them into eye-catching conversation pieces.
Gilt Mirrors
Scroll through the vintage section on Jayson Home’s website and you’ll notice a lot of vintage mirrors. Kirk loves an antique mirror, especially a gilt framed one with some patina, but he says. “Be picky about the mirror itself, because the frame [is easier to find],” but an intact antique mirror is rare (because they so often break!). “To find that old glass that’s like mercury—it has that interesting wave—it’s instant atmosphere,” he says. Just be sure to pack it up carefully.
Antique Rugs
“Vintage rugs are so great because they’re just so beautiful,” says Kirk, who appreciates the patina and quality of these pieces. As a parent, he also loves that “you can beat them up and they’re just going to get better and better with time.” However, Kirk notes that larger pieces can get pricey. “Sometimes it’s a lot of money at a bigger size, but it’s still totally worth it. It’s just something you buy once, cry once, and then you’ll have it for life,” he says. “Your kids will have it.”