Every Saturday for the last five weeks, I’ve visited this antique shop near Szabadszag hid on Vámház korút. It’s one of those curious shops with two fronts. The first door opens into what looks like a rather small jewellery shop. Well, truth be told, it’s more like a pawnbrokers. But then you follow the carpets and wind your way back into the bowels of antiquity where you can find almost anything. It’s crammed with stuff… sofas, chairs, tables, mirrors, pot stands, pictures, cloths, china… everything that might have, at some stage, lived in a house. A veritable Aladdin’s cave. And priced accordingly. (It is certainly more expensive than the markets or the BAVs and I’m not altogether convinced that the stuff is any better.) Yet I’m quite taken with the place. I’ve even taken my visitors there on the way to the big market.
My normal decisiveness (and yes, please laugh…) deserted me: for five weeks, I hummed and hawed about whether to buy this lamp. My problem lay in deciding if it was really beautiful or just pure tat. My visitors were indecisive and of little help. The olde ‘not my taste, but if you like it….’ just doesn’t cut it. Eventually, I gave in. And my giving in had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the staff thought I was casing the joint. Honestly!

I think, or rather KAG thinks, that it’s a Rococo. And I believe her. The girl knows her vintage.

Okay, so normally, when of sober mind and body, gilt-edged roses just wouldn’t be my thing. Certainly, the tassly gold trim on the shade wouldn’t do it for me. And the green paint on white looks like dust from a distance. . But, c’mon, you have to admit, it has a certain something! I rather like the half shade, though and the green is the same green as my walls.

At the moment, this ‘certain something, is my bedside light. It’s a tad lost in the corner though and deserves to shine in its own space. So I think it will eventually graduate to the living room.

I think the pink is just the right shade to pick up the colours in the Chobis. And the gilt will add too the gilt in the Widow’s frame. And, if all comes to all,  it will give people something to talk about!

A snip, methinks, at 24,000 ft ($102, €80, £70)