There are antique shops where you go looking for something specific, and then there are the places where you really just want to wander.
Nathan Hale Antique Center in Coventry, Connecticut is definitely the latter.
And fortunately for me, it is practically in my backyard.
I have lived in Coventry for years, but lately I have been looking at familiar places a little differently. As I gather pieces and stories for NATURAWL, I find myself paying much more attention to the ordinary things people once lived with, the baskets, bowls, crocks, wooden cupboards, old tools and household objects that were made to be used rather than displayed.
So on a beautiful summer day, I headed over to Nathan Hale Antique Center on Main Street to see what I could find.
An old building with a story of its own
Before I even went inside, I had to stop and really look at the building.
Nathan Hale Antique Center is housed in the former Coventry Methodist Church at 1141 Main Street, built in 1867 in the Italianate style. The church originally had a steeple, but it was damaged in the great hurricane of 1938 and was never replaced. The congregation eventually dwindled and merged with the Bolton Methodist Church in 1949. The building later served the community for meetings and gatherings before eventually finding a new life as retail and antique space.
I love that.
A building that has stood in the center of town for more than 150 years is still being used and walked through and filled with people, just for an entirely different purpose now.
The old church is also part of the South Coventry Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. The village still contains buildings dating from the early 1700s through the twentieth century, along with remnants of the mills, dams and stonework that tell the story of Coventry's early industry.
Coventry itself has always had an interesting relationship with old things. Today, several antique shops are clustered right here along Main Street, and the town even describes South Coventry as a place where historic buildings have been adapted into antique centers, galleries and specialty shops.
It feels fitting.
Inside
Once inside, I pretty much forgot about the outside world.
This isn't the kind of antique shop where everything has been polished, styled and made perfect.
And I mean that as a compliment.
There are old wooden cupboards with worn paint. Primitive baskets. Crocks and jugs. Tinware. Wooden bowls. Early kitchen utensils. Children's things. Old books. Signs. Portraits. Boxes and benches and things hanging from the rafters.
Items are tucked into corners and stacked on top of one another.
You have to look.
Those are my favorite antique shops.
One of the first little displays that stopped me had an old wooden box filled with children's books, blocks and a photograph, sitting beneath a weathered God Bless America sign. Nothing matched. Nothing was trying particularly hard.
Yet together it told a story.
That is exactly what I have been trying to understand with NATURAWL.
Sometimes it isn't the individual antique that creates the feeling. It's the collection of ordinary objects together that makes you imagine the people who might have used them.
The primitives
There were so many primitives, and naturally this is where I spent most of my time.
I kept finding myself drawn to the pieces that showed their age the most.
A huge old wooden bowl with a surface worn smooth from years of use.
Stoneware jugs in soft creams and grays.
Old tin measures and kitchen tools.
A wonderfully worn cupboard filled with simple white dishes, with two enormous old utensils hanging from its door.
Baskets that had darkened almost to brown with age.
And then there was an entire area with dried gourds hanging against the most beautiful old blue-green painted wood.
The colors alone, tobacco brown wood, faded black, old mustard, worn green and that wonderful historical blue, could have been a NATURAWL mood board.
None of it felt decorated.
It felt lived in.
And I think there is an important difference.
The beauty of useful things
A basket wasn't originally bought because someone needed something to put on top of a cabinet.
It carried things.
The giant wooden bowl wasn't "primitive décor."
Someone mixed something in it.
The stoneware jugs stored food or drink. The strainers strained. The cupboards held dishes. The little wooden boxes organized the countless small things necessary to keep a household running.
Even the wear is useful information.
A rubbed edge tells you where someone's hand repeatedly touched it.
A darkened wooden handle tells you it was held hundreds — perhaps thousands — of times.
A repair tells you the object mattered enough to keep.
That is the part of antiques that fascinates me most.
Not simply how old is it?
But how was it used?
Who needed it?
Why was it saved?
And somehow, after all these years, how did it end up here?
A very New England afternoon
There is something especially appropriate about hunting for old New England things inside an 1867 church in a village where so much of the nineteenth-century streetscape still survives.
Nathan Hale Antique Center is a multi-dealer shop, so the feeling changes as you move through it. One corner might be filled with early country pieces and primitives while the next has books, china, folk art or something completely unexpected.
And there is more antiquing almost immediately outside the door. Coventry currently has several antique shops clustered along this little stretch of Main Street, including another shop in the lower level of the same building.
You could very easily make an afternoon of it.
But I wouldn't rush.
These are the places where I think you find the best things when you aren't necessarily looking for them.
What I brought home with me
I didn't leave empty-handed.
Tucked among all those cupboards, baskets, crocks and old kitchen things, I found this wonderfully simple 1940s pudding mold.
It isn't fancy. In fact, that is exactly why I loved it.
A plain metal mold with a handle, made for a job in the kitchen and used during a time when steamed puddings were still part of everyday home cooking. It has the soft gray patina that only comes with age and use.
These are increasingly the things I find myself drawn to ,not necessarily the rarest or most valuable antiques, but the things that once belonged to the rhythm of a home.
Someone filled this mold. Someone put a pudding on to steam. Someone lifted that handle when it was ready and brought something warm to the table.
And now, more than 80 years later, it has found its way into my own collection.
That's really what these antique trips have become for me. I'm gathering more than old things. I'm gathering little pieces of everyday New England life — the useful things, the traditions and the stories that might otherwise quietly disappear.
And every once in a while, one of those stories comes home with me.
Nathan Hale Antique Center
1141 Main Street
Coventry, Connecticut
Gathered along the way in New England.