Shopping for Vintage and Antique Furniture at The HighBoy

I have always had a great love for vintage and antique furniture and home decor. Growing up, we didn’t have a huge collection of vintage in our home, but we did have a wonderful antique desk as well as a barrister bookcase that belonged to my grandfather. These were my favorite pieces of furniture in the house, and I’m happy to say that the bookcase now lives in my living room, while the desk moved into my brother’s apartment. My sister inherited my other favorite – an old chest that we used as a toy box, which is remarkably handy for storing sweaters.

When I moved into my first solo apartment in Portland, I couldn’t really afford new furniture (there was no Portland IKEA at the time), so I made a habit of spending my weekends scouring sidewalk sales, estate sales, and the vintage shops in the Hawthorne district. I amassed a little collection of vintage pieces, including two Eames chairs for $10 that would probably fetch ten times that now. I loved my apartment because I felt like almost every piece in it had a story.

Fast forward almost fifteen years, and our current home is also filled with vintage pieces, mostly mid-century, that we inherited from Keegan’s family or collected one at a time. I think a good mix of vintage with new gives a home soul in a way that decorating without these one-of-a-kind pieces can’t match.

I recently became aware of a new online source for not only vintage and antique furniture, but also lighting, home decor, and even jewelry. The HighBoy curates its collection from hand-picked antique and fine art dealers across the US. Their inventory is quite extensive, but I found that filtering by category and then by price and style makes it very easy to find what I’m looking for. For example, the Seating category can be filtered down further to make it easy to find Arm Chairs in particular, while the Tables category has several different options, including Desks and Side Tables, which I used for my roundup below.

While The HighBoy wasn’t created with the budget shopper in mind, there are pieces available at a wide range of price points. I think it will be a great resource for specifying unique items for my clients who love collecting high-quality antique furniture. Below, I’ve rounded up some of my favorites, with a definite bent towards my favorite style of mid-century modern.

• American Mid-Century Squash Form Lamp on Lucite Base
• Antique French Napoleon III Period Single Slipper Armchair
• 19th c. French Side Table
• Art Deco Style Desk Lamp by Diamant Studio
• Pair of Fruitwood Mid-Century Modern Armchairs
• West Germany Ceramic Vase, c. 1970
• Mid-Century Ming Style Desk Vanity
• Mid-Century Signed White Ridged Wide Body English Hornsea Vase
• Art Deco Chrome Cantilevered Chairs
• Mid Century Modern Curved Desk
• Vintage 1970’s Yellow Ceramic Italian Table Lamp
• Italian Mid Century Modern Gio Pointi Inspired Brass & Marble Table
• Circa 1950’s Pair of Towering Murano Lamps on Brass Bases
• Danish Mid-Century Modern Arm Chairs
• French Art Deco Modernist Chrome Wood Glass Five Light Fixture
• French End Table

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