On the business card is a silhouette of a cozy cottage. Adapted from a vintage book for kids, it's a nostalgic reminder of life before e-mails, blogs, text messages, stratospheric caffeine levels, and, especially, the stresses of working 24/7. Job demands are what prompted Chris Switzer, along with architect Robin Muxlow, to open Stepback (3026 West Broadway, 604-731-7525) in March. It wasn't the hours so much as the multiple months travelling as a drum and percussion tech, most recently with Dido, that were hard when you have two small kids and are renovating your heritage house. "We'd always talked about doing this," says Switzer, who, from the age of two, spent weekends at garage sales and flea markets with his parents. Looking at old stuff, he says, gave everyone in his family an appreciation for the patina of aged wood and the simple functional shapes of earlier times. The shop's own story dates back to around the 1930s. The couple spent a week bringing its fir floor back to life, hung traditional schoolhouse lamps (a find at Rona Home & Garden) from the high ceiling, and painted the end wall a fresh green. (Plans are to change it seasonally.)
If Switzer and Muxlow are the band, his parents, Jim and Shirley, are the roadies: she finishes the furniture that he and grandson Rob Dyck make with materials salvaged from barns, fences, and other sources. The wood of a sturdy garden potting bench ($400) is "as aged as it's going to get", Chris Switzer says, adding that it could work in an indoor sunroom, too. Recycled pieces of pressed-tin ceilings create sharply angled roofs and a single shapely twig adorns the façades of houses for design-conscious birds ($45 to $65). Birdhouse-shaped cutouts, each bearing a coathook, flank the ends of a shelf unit ($36). Hooks are also attached to an old window frame made into a mirror ($170). "Nice if you don't have a window where you want one," Muxlow comments. Another frame surrounds a blackboard ($80) and is painted the same green as the end wall. (The colour is Fresh Sprout from Cloverdale Paints, and enough people have asked that she knows its number-7777-by heart.)
You have to like their attitude. Switzer says they would rather "sell lots of things at a lower price", keep the stock moving, and have customers returning just to see what's new. You find vintage suitcases complete with stickers, scarlet-enamelled dustpans with three-dimensional smiley face, sepia postcards of Vancouver, books on flea markets, and, obviously, several authentic stepbacks, those invaluable pieces of kitchen furniture that predated built-in cupboards. Examples currently include a cream-painted one with glass doors ($1,300) and another, its upper section a series of shelves in dark-stained wood ($850). A magnificent wood Zenith model ($1,000) from the 1930s has a built-in flour bin, spice rack, and the original decals on the doors. Opening the right-hand one reveals a small poster filled with useful household information and a handwritten note: "Put tomato leaves on top of cabbages to keep butterflies away."
If you had to define Stepback's style, call it authentic country, bringing to mind buttery sunlight and home-baked scones. Add in checked tea towels (they sell those too) blowing on the washing line. It's an aesthetic, Muxlow says, that appeals to both genders. This isn't chintzy-wintzy Marie Antoinette playing shepherdess. Pieces here are practical: they've lived a life and they have the scars to prove it. Most of the white enamelled pitchers ($50 to $65) on display, no two the same, have a few dings. But they're real. "There are all sorts of people doing replicas, even with chips," Switzer says, "but it doesn't look as good."
Benches are a big seller. (Every one in stock walked out of the door a few weekends back.) Small ones ($55 and up) double as ottomans, side tables, or stepstools. A large three-compartment one ($500) is ideal for a family hallway, especially when you put old high-school wire locker baskets ($32 each) inside. While cream and black are the most popular colours for furniture, a vintage album holds photos of other shapes, sizes, and colours, inspiration for the custom orders that are already a growing part of Stepback's business.
It's often hard to distinguish between the old and modern accessories that sit as neighbours here. Hotel-strength cups and saucers, maybe 50 years old ($8 each), have the same dusky pink and design simplicity as new china bowls, cereal to mixing size ($5.50 to $17). Also new, and looking amiably at home with Canadiana, are what the importers call Grandma Thermoses ($34) from China. Tall containers in red, yellow, blue, or green with a wire handle and a stylized flower on the side, they could have come straight from '30s Shanghai. Switzer and Muxlow probably have a few still for sale, but some of the pieces described here will have definitely flown the coop by publication. Not that it matters. As Switzer says: "Everyone in the family is always out there scouting."
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