I've been vintage shopping longer than I've been designing. It started in high school with clothes — thrift stores before thrift stores were cool — and the moment I moved to San Francisco for college, it became a weekly ritual. I would hit vintage shops and thrift stores constantly. It helped that my first apartment was two doors down from a Goodwill. Some of those pieces still live in my house today.

Over 20-plus years of hunting — through markets, estate sales, antique malls, and vintage stores from San Francisco to Saint Paul — I've developed a very specific list of categories I return to every single time. Six of them. Here's what I look for, why I love each one, and what to actually do with them once you get them home.

Vintage art is where I spend the most time and, honestly, the most money. Not because it has to be expensive — some of the best pieces I've ever found cost less than dinner — but because I refuse to rush it. Art is the most personal thing in a room. Get it wrong and no amount of beautiful furniture saves you.

What stops me first: figurative work. Portraits, figures, faces. That brooding oil portrait study — loosely painted, atmospheric, almost dissolving at the edges — is in a carved gold frame that's as much a reason to buy it as the painting itself. The charcoal figure study on the easel is another example: large scale, classically trained hand, the kind of draftsmanship you simply don't find in new work. These are the pieces that anchor a room and start conversations.

Prints and works on paper are where I find the best value. The set of six Versailles garden engravings in matching gold frames is the perfect example of what I mean by buying the set — six framed pieces with original matching frames is a gallery wall handed to you. The signed Kachina-style diptych? Graphic, bold, mid-century in feeling, with a story behind every mark.

Don't overlook the frame as reason enough to buy. The abstract still life in that tortoiseshell frame with a gold liner — the frame alone is worth $200 at a framing shop. When you find a remarkable frame, you buy it even if you eventually change what's inside it. And the pair of irregular abstract wall pieces painted on what appears to be slate or stone slab — those are the kind of thing that stops people mid-conversation. Sculptural, unexpected, impossible to replicate.

For original art specifically, my top recommendation in the Twin Cities is Century Gallery. It's my go-to for vintage art — consistently strong, well-edited, and the kind of place where you find genuinely significant pieces.

✦  What to look for: Signed lower right corner, original frames, figurative or abstract work from the 1940s–70s. Sets of matching framed prints are always worth buying together — the framing alone justifies the price.

✦  Where to find it: Century Gallery (top pick), estate sales, antique malls. Skip the 'wall décor' aisle and go straight to the art. The best pieces are usually leaning against something in the back or hung on the wall.

I have a chair problem. I see a good one and I physically cannot walk past it. My husband has learned to factor this into weekend plans.

The chairs I'm always hunting: chrome-framed anything from the 1970s, barrel chairs with tight upholstery in unexpected colors, Parsons-style chairs with clean lines, good swivel chairs, chairs with a dramatic high back, and anything on a tubular chrome base. That chrome loop rocker — white vinyl, oversized circular frame, with a retro geometric throw pillow — is exactly the kind of find that defines a room. It's sculptural, it's functional, and there's nothing else like it. That one came from Southside Vintage.

The rust patchwork leather lounge on a chrome cantilever base is the other kind of find I can't resist — a corner chair that becomes the entire point of the space. Put a lamp behind it and a stack of books on the floor and that corner is done. The green tufted silk armchair with tapered legs is a reupholstery candidate hiding in plain sight: the bones are perfect, the scale is right, and a good mohair or velvet in a deep tone would make it extraordinary.

The Parsons linen armchair is proof that not every vintage chair needs to be dramatic. Clean lines, fresh neutral upholstery, good proportions — that chair works in every room and costs a fraction of its new equivalent. I found that one at Andie Collective.

✦  What to look for: Frame first, always. A beautiful frame with bad upholstery is a gift — you're getting the hard part for free. Check for wobble in the joints, collapse in the cushion, and cracks in any chrome. Everything else is recoverable.

✦  Where to find them: Southside Vintage, Andie Collective, Find Furnish, Style Society, Eastwood Gallery, Succotash. Good chairs move fast — check these regularly.

Glassware is the category where I have the most fun and spend the least money. It rewards patience and a good eye more than any other category, and the payoff — a shelf of collected glass in different colors, forms, and eras — is one of the most beautiful things you can build in a home.

That full wall of sorted glassware is exactly what I'm looking for when I walk into a shop. Row after row of amber goblets, smoky stemware, gold-rimmed champagne flutes, pressed glass in cobalt and teal — it's an embarrassment of riches and most of it is priced under $20 a piece. This is where I slow down and really look.

What I'm hunting: colored glass in saturated, unusual hues. Teal, amber, cobalt, smoke, blush, sage. I am not particularly interested in clear crystal unless the form is exceptional or there's a gold rim that earns it. The set of gold-rimmed crystal wine glasses with the amber glass mushroom objects is a perfect example — the etching is exquisite and those mushroom pieces are sculptural objects that happen to be glass.

The frosted mint martini set with the matching pitcher? I did not buy it. I thought about it for a long time. The frosted aqua stems with gold rim edges, the tall frosted pitcher with a mint handle — it's one of those sets that exists in perfect, complete form and almost never shows up again. That's the thing about vintage glass: when you see a complete set in an unusual color, you buy it. You don't come back for it.

The teal pressed glass goblets on the brass étagère are the more everyday version of this — moody, saturated color, great form, priced right. Milk glass is another category I'm always watching: that soft, luminous opacity adds warmth to any shelf and mixes beautifully with darker glass.

✦  What to look for: Run your finger around the rim before you buy — chips on the rim are a dealbreaker, chips on the base are livable. Look for sets of four or more. Check for maker's marks on the base; Blenko, Viking, and Morgantown pieces are worth knowing.

✦  Where to find it: Loft Antiques, Wild Things Antiques, Succotash, West Saint Paul Antiques, Style Society. These shops rotate stock regularly — glassware is worth a second look every visit.

I have never once bought a lamp and regretted it. I've regretted selling them. Vintage lamps are one of the most undervalued categories in the entire resale market — and I say this as someone who once paid $6 for a lamp at Peter's Oldies But Goodies that now lives in my upstairs den and is genuinely one of my favorite things in the house. Six dollars. The shade was wrong, I replaced it, and now it's perfect. That's the lamp story in miniature.

The rule I follow: evaluate the base as if it has no shade at all. The shade is replaceable — and often should be. A new drum shade in linen, black, or a deep jewel tone can transform a $30 lamp into something that looks like it came from a boutique hotel. So when I'm standing in a shop looking at a lamp, I'm looking at the base only.

The dark stone and amber resin lamp is what I mean by a statement piece. That rectangular base — dark fossil stone, sitting on amber resin clusters on a brass platform, topped with a black tole shade and an amber ball finial — is a complete design moment. Every material is considered. Every detail earns its place. You don't find that at a retail store.

The round drip-glaze ceramic in gold and taupe is the more accessible version: sculptural glaze, beautiful form, and a linen shade that's already right. The stacked-rings resin moon lamp is in another category entirely — it's a sculptural art object that happens to emit light. The glow through that mottled white resin is extraordinary. That one came from Eastwood Gallery.

The brass ornate claw-foot pair up on the shelf is a lesson in buying pairs: two identical or closely matched lamps command a premium, but they earn it. Bookending a console, a bed, or a credenza with a matched pair is one of the fastest ways to make a room feel intentional and complete.

One more thing: if you ever find yourself in New York, carve out time for the high-end antique lighting dealers. The teal art glass fan sconces, the brass sculptural pieces — these are in another price bracket but they train your eye. You walk out knowing what quality looks like, and that matters the next time you're standing in a shop wondering if something is worth picking up.

✦  What to look for: Ceramic, glass, stone, or brass bases — these age beautifully. Check that the socket and harp are intact. Rewiring is inexpensive ($25–50) but a missing harp is annoying to source. The shade is worth $0 in your calculation.

✦  Where to find them: A Rare Bird, Eastwood Gallery, Peter's Oldies But Goodies (seriously — good lamps, always), Retro Wanderlust. For the wall sconces in the images: those are from a New York visit, but sconces are worth hunting locally too.

I came to my own pottery collection sideways. I've been buying studio pottery for clients for years — stoneware vessels, glazed bowls, sculptural pieces that anchor a shelf or give weight to a vignette. Then one day I looked at the top of my kitchen cabinets and thought: there's space up there. Now there's a full lineup of stoneware crocks, salt-glazed jugs, lidded vessels, and handled pieces running the length of the cabinets, and it is never finished. I am at peace with this.

Studio pottery — hand-thrown, with visible marks of making — is what I'm always hunting. The two stoneware vessels with textured white glaze are a perfect example: one with a crinkled, almost coral-like surface crawling across the upper half, the other a squat sphere with white drips running through deep brown. Both have the kind of surface you want to touch. Both were made by someone who cared about the object they were making. That's what separates studio work from everything else.

The colorful pottery shelf is what I look for in a good shop — abundance and range. That large ribbed stoneware planter, the multicolor splatter-glaze jar, the red cylinder vases, the purple flask, the orange ribbed UFO vase — that's a complete education in what studio pottery can do with form and glaze. You don't have to buy everything. You learn from all of it and buy the piece that speaks to you.

The terracotta abstract figure sculpture is the other kind of pottery find I love: not functional, not a vessel, just pure sculptural form. That interlocking figure in red-orange clay with the eye detail — it's an art object that happens to be made from clay. These are the pieces that anchor a shelf and make people stop. The eye motif is very much my language.

✦  What to look for: Turn it over. A signed base — initials, a studio mark, a location — tells you it's studio work and adds value. Tap it gently: a clear ring means sound, a dull thud means a crack. Look for glaze that feels intentional, not accidental.

✦  Where to find it: Find Furnish, Style Society, Retro Wanderlust, Mid Mod Men, Succotash. All have strong pottery sections and rotate stock regularly. Estate sales are also excellent — look past the kitchenware and dig into the shelves.

Books are the category I get asked about most. People see how I stack them — horizontally, mixed with objects, sometimes spine-forward, sometimes color-coordinated — and want to know where I find them. The answer is: mostly estate sales, and occasionally a vintage or antique shop that happens to have a good selection. It's hit or miss at shops, but when it hits, it really hits.

There are two completely different things I'm hunting. The first is content: design books, architecture books, fashion monographs, photography books. These are working references and beautiful objects simultaneously. My most recent estate sale haul — Mario Buatta, Maximalism, Tom Ford, Collected Interiors, English Eccentric, British Designers at Home, Design Remix — every one of those is both a book I'll read and a book I'll display. Estate sales are the best source for this category because the family is selling the library of someone with taste, often without realizing what they have. I've found first-edition art books for $5. Signed monographs for $8.

The second thing I'm hunting is purely aesthetic: old leather-bound or cloth-covered books with interesting spines. The leather-bound French and English volumes — Histoire d'Angleterre, Observations Morales, Voyages of the Nemesis — with their gilt spine detail and aged leather covers are exactly what I mean. Those are not books I'm reading. They are objects. The Italian marbled endpapers inside those volumes are a whole separate category of beautiful — that swirling pattern of teal, ivory, and gold is why marbled-cover books are worth hunting specifically.

Old cloth-bound books in interesting colors — grey-green, deep burgundy, faded gold — are the workhorses of shelf styling. Stack them horizontally, put something on top, and you have instant architecture. Those grey-green stacks on the burl wood console are a perfect example: two minutes of styling, beautiful result. And my own shelf — Hawthorne and Rabelais under the face planter and ruby glass compote — shows what happens when you treat books as pedestals and platforms, not just reading material.

✦  What to look for: For content books — condition of the spine, copyright page for edition, any signature or inscription (adds value and story). For decorative books — color and texture of the cover, quality of the spine lettering, whether they stack well together. Italian marbled covers and marbled endpapers are always a yes.

✦  Where to find them: Estate sales above all else. Vintage and antique shops can be hit or miss for books specifically — but when they're good, they're very good. Budget $2–20 per design book at estate sales; decorative old volumes $5–40 for a stack.

My single most useful piece of advice for vintage shopping: walk the store twice. Always. You will see things on the second pass that you completely missed on the first — I guarantee it. A lamp tucked behind a dresser. A stack of paintings leaning against the wall. A chair you walked right past because you were distracted by something else. If I have the time, I always do a second loop. It has changed what I go home with more times than I can count.

The trained eye isn't something you're born with. It's something you build by showing up — to the stores, the estate sales, the markets — and looking carefully, even when you're not buying. Especially when you're not buying. Every visit is an education. Every room someone else assembled is a lesson in what works and what doesn't.

You're not just buying objects. You're inheriting someone else's eye, their travels, their version of a beautiful room. That's worth showing up for.

The hunt never really stops — see where it's taken me lately. Mood boards and The Aesthetic Edit are linked right here. 🖤

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