Nicholas Fitzgerald started scavenging as a child. By the time he hit adulthood, he had amassed so many castoff chairs, industrial light fixtures, and old commercial signs that he had to park his finds in friends' apartments throughout his hometown of Melbourne, Australia. Meanwhile, in another part of town, Natalie Jeffcott was stockpiling vintage cookie jars. When Hoarder One met Hoarder Two (at a party), it was like the reunion of a flea-market teacup and its saucer. Together the couple have braked at curbsides, climbed inside Dumpsters, and pawed through thrift shops, swap meets, and the homes of their own extended families—in hot pursuit of the 1950s and '60s designs they love. And they've put much of it on display in their quirky apartment and their recently opened store, Arthur's Circus, named after their 4-year-old son.
Home and shop are in a brick Victorian on a quiet commercial street in North Melbourne, a few tram stops from the city center. Customers who push open the door to the store enter a nostalgic world of Bakelite phones, pull-down school maps, cereal-box cowboys, and pillows stitched from old flour sacks.
It's the sort of stuff that can look cloying in mass quantities. But in the couple's apartment on the two floors above the shop, everything is stylishly grouped and displayed, thanks to Jeffcott's knack for arrangements, honed during a stint as a window dresser at Selfridges & Co. department store in London. Against the apartment's white walls, the midcentury designs—which she and Fitzgerald admire for their simplicity and upbeat colors—stand out.
The place didn't always look so nifty. When Jeffcott bought the three-story 1890 building 10 years ago, it was, as she puts it, "a dump." She hired an architect, and together they added big windows to the rear and mapped out an extension of the top floor to accommodate an expanded kitchen. But around this time, Jeffcott began dating Fitzgerald, who is trained as an electrician but also has experience doing interior renovations. Together they decided they could mastermind the rest of the project themselves.
Next Page: Their Design Process
