Quintessential duckeggBLUE

Driving around the European countryside in a hired van looking for furniture takes a special kind of grit. Leanne Carter-Taylor has it, as well as the insatiable drive to find something one-of-a-kind for her store, quintessential duckeggBLUE.

The hard-to-get-to places are where treasure often hides. The back of barns on French farms; in industrial warehouses in England; or Belgian farmhouses where they’ll invite you in for coffee. One table in the shop was bought right out of a farmer’s kitchen.

After these treasures are brought back to life by a team of skilled furniture restorers, quintessential duckeggBLUE finds they attract a waitlist of hopeful buyers. Take the ancient apothecary cabinet, once smelling like something long since dead, now thoroughly refreshed.

No piece in the shop is younger than the 1930s. Carter-Taylor can’t abide the clean lines of mid-century modern furniture, nor today’s fast furniture, which she dismisses as tomorrow’s landfill.

Her mission is to find the ultimate version of a particular piece of furniture. For tables, that’s a heavy farmhouse model made of oak or chestnut. The ultimate chair is a leather clubhouse chair. These pieces are becoming harder to find, but Carter-Taylor never stops hunting for the quintessential piece.