Bricks and Mortar: Bequeath & Bestow
By Catherine Harvey Bequeath & Bestow is a vintage furniture and homewares boutique owned by Chella Monaghan. Chella not only owns this store, she also manages it full time - sourcing all the unique items and restoring all of the pieces of furniture herself. What this creates is an eclectic mix of 'one-offs' that would easily satisfy a range of tastes.
Although the store is relatively new (having opened in July 2012), and also relatively small, within it contains some of the most lovely and affordable pieces of furniture that I have seen.
Chella's has added her own personal touch to the many items and in this way it is definitely an easy store to come back to again and again. Fortunately, since the stock changes quite quickly, you can return and enjoy a unique experience each time you walk in - what you saw in the store last week has probably sold, but it has also been replaced with another equally amazing item.
In addition to keeping up with the demands of a retail space, Chella devotes a lot of her time to ensuring that Bequeath and Bestow's Facebook page stays current and provides an accessible way for customers to find out what is in store now or what may be coming into the shop in the future, along with the prices. The Facebook page describes the store perfectly. "We have an eclectic mix, so whether you are after the French provincial look, a bit of rustic, a little taste of industrial, something up cycled and reinvented for a new life or maybe just the quirky, please drop by."
Chella has embraced the shop's location on Brighton's Martin Street and has even joined the Traders Association to promote and help attract more people to the area. The street itself, I must admit, does seem to lack it's own identity and sense of community. But although Martin Street may not currently be a destination in itself, Bequeath & Bestow certainly is.
144 Martin Street, Brighton, Victoria 3186 Phone: (03) 9596 7591 Wednesday - Friday: 10am – 5pm Saturday: 10am – 4pm Sunday: 10am – 2pm
Catherine Harvey lives and breathes design. Working at one of Melbourne’s top studio’s, she is rarely ever away from her computer. She loves to keep up to date with the design industry in a global and local context and follows too many blogs to count! You can follow her findings here.