Antique & Vintage Sourcing in North Carolina

Antique & vintage sourcing is something I have loved doing my whole life. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how I’m sourcing for our one-of-a-kind Vintage Drops for my brand, Heirloomed. 

Growing up one of my favorite parts of a road trip was stopping at the little antique stores along the side of the highway in small rural towns. The hunt of finding a treasure is one of my favorite memories.  Each summer we would drive the long 14 hours from Florida to North Carolina, where my family had a wonderful, small cabin growing up. I’d sleep in the backseat with my sister, play the Alphabet Game with passing signs and eat our favorite car snacks, cheese balls from the tin and starbursts (ha). We’d listen to old school country music for hours and hours upon end.

Along the way, my stepmom would find a random antique store and on a whim we’d always pull in to hunt for treasures, as she loves to say. She collected those Franciscan Apple dinnerware so she loved looking for vintage pieces to add to her collection. We’d pop around the dusty shelves and find treasures of our own. At the time, the drives seemed long, the antique stores seemed boring and the twangy old country was not very cool. Today? Those are some of my favorite memories, favorite music and vintage sourcing has turned into somewhat of a passion. Learning the history behind some of my favorite items like cast iron, quilts and transferware and chatting with the folks who own these little nooks of curated antiques are some of my favorite things. I even drag my own kids along with me now, and I’m pretty sure they feel the same disdain that I once did.

We’ve changed our “vintage strategy” over at Heirloomed a few times over the years. I still swoon over the notion of one day having a space or way for you all to see and shop our goods in person, because gosh, sorting through the shelves of it in our warehouse is beyond a dream visually. We decided to streamline a bit and pick our top-selling and most coveted vintage goods and whittle down to what we like to call an evergreen collection.

Our Vintage Goods are an assortment of things like old glass canning jars with metal lids, vintage transferware tureens, mismatched silverware and more – some have a few size choices, some have a color option, others you can actually see the specific piece and choose your favorite (like our Vintage Quilts). Overall, they’re items our customers have loved, they are somewhat easy for us to feel comfortable being able to continue sourcing and restocking, and ones we plan to keep around for a while.

BUT I miss the one-of-a-kind pieces. I see them allllll the time and I miss scooping them up for you to enjoy and fall in love with as much as me. Each year when I make the trek back to North Carolina with my family to the same small town craft fair weekend that I’ve grown up at each summer, I always build in time to vintage source for our shop among my favorite stores in NC. This year, I made a decision to bring back a NC Vintage Haul for you, a drop of unique items you can shop on our site. Once they’re gone, they’re gone for good. If you follow along on Instagram (@heirloomedcollection) you saw some of our finds in real time, and even had the chance to claim your steak. If you missed it this time – don’t worry, I plan to keep doing this for our future sourcing trips because I loved getting feedback and interacting with you guys.

Another vintage category I personally LOVE finding & shopping is home decor. In the very near future my plan is for us to incorporate much more of a home-focused good for you – from furniture pieces like old wooden tables, bookshelves, and wooden chairs, to small decorative accessories like little stools, chests, crates, baskets, frames and more. I love a clean space with a truly unique old piece that just begs you to ask about it, the focal point of the room. The tiny pieces help add a curated culture to nooks in your home. These are the one-of-a-kind drops I dream of bringing to you and places like North Carolina and Texas are gold mines for my design aesthetic.

Architectural salvage like doors, columns, banisters & railings and corbels are some of my favorite finds.

Do I sort through a bunch of junk? Absolutely. But my eye catches something, sometimes I don’t know why, and I know immediately if it’s a keeper or not. Old books, chairs and quilts are some of my favorite things to find, but I’d love to know what items you’d love to see in our assortment. I love seeing how you use our pieces, from setting a table to decorating your home to styling for a shoot. We’ve seen so many customer finds over the years and it warms my heart to give these old items new homes & purposes for being.

Be sure to check out our Vintage Goods section over on the site, sign up for our emails so you are the first to know when a new drop goes live, and follow me over on Instagram @heirloomedcollection and @ashleyheirloomed for some in-the-moment sourcing trips for first access to shop my finds, as I find them! And remember, you can always send us a note and let us know what you’re on the hunt for so we can be out there looking for you too. We have a lot of interior designers, photo stylists and even movie prop stylists that come to us with specific requests for items or to just pursue the collection of goods we have on hand.

The North Carolina Drop

I am so excited to share with you all of the amazing goodies we found this past weekend. We are getting them all cleaned up (don’t worry we still leave some of that beautiful patina for you!) and ready to hit the site this week. Be sire to check your emails + Instagram to be the first to see and claim your treasures. Click here, or below to find the collection.