The Cornish Magpie Eye
Salvage, Stories, and Seeing Beauty Where Others Don’t
I found these at the dump.
Which, to some people, might not sound like the beginning of a story, but to me, it always is.
As a child, a trip to the dump was a normal weekend activity.
We’d arrive with a car full of things to throw away and leave with a car full of things we’d found.
My dad would build us bikes from old bike parts he’d collected, then paint them whatever colour we chose. We made go-karts from bits of wood and old wheels. We built ramps. We melted down old lead pipes in the garage and poured the molten metal into moulds to make fishing weights.
Looking back, I realise now that nothing about that was really about saving money or making do, it was about seeing potential in things. Seeing what something could become, not just what it currently was.
I think that’s where it all started.
Learning to Spot Quality
My mum used to take me to flea markets. City Hall in Truro, which is now the Hall for Cornwall Theatre, and markets and sales around the county. She loved clothes and fabrics, and without realising it at the time, she was teaching me how to recognise quality.
How to feel the difference between a good fabric and a poor one.
How to spot something well made.
How to see past the dust and the bad lighting and recognise something special.
Years later, when I lived in the Cotswolds, that same habit followed me around antique shops, auction houses, reclamation yards and second-hand shops in places like Cirencester, Tetbury and Nailsworth. I bought and sold old houses there, renovation projects mostly, and I spent as much time searching for the right old pieces as I did doing the renovations themselves.
I’ve always preferred homes that feel like they’ve been put together slowly over time.
Not designed in one go.
Not ordered out of a catalogue.
But gathered.
Homes That Are Collected, Not Decorated
When I bought an Art Deco renovation in Perranporth, I spent years doing it up and filling it with pieces I’d found along the way. Auctions, car boots, reclamation yards, second-hand shops, anywhere that might have something interesting.
Now I’m renovating a mid-century modern house in Newquay, and it’s the same process all over again. Keeping as many original features as possible and carefully sourcing pieces that feel like they belong there.
Cornwall is actually full of places just like this if you know where to look.
Antique shops, auctions, vintage markets, house clearances, reclamation yards.
I love visiting places like Treasure Antiques in St Agnes, Shiver Me Timbers in Penzance, and the vintage markets that pop up around Cornwall. I also have friends who work in house clearances, and the stories they tell about the things they find in old houses, and how those things then find their way into new homes, are always fascinating.
Objects move on.
Houses change hands.
But good pieces just keep going.
Objects With a Past
Which brings me back to these corbels.
They’re large, heavy plaster architectural pieces with beautiful scrollwork and a chalky, weathered patina that only time can create. The edges are worn, the surface is layered and uneven, and the colour shifts slightly across each piece.
You couldn’t replicate this with new materials even if you tried.
This is what time does. This is what use does. This is what weather does.
Pieces like this were never meant to be disposable. They were made to be part of a building, part of a room, part of a story.
Now they get to be part of a new one.
They could be used as fireplace features, shelving brackets, console supports, or simply as sculptural objects, the sort of pieces that make a room feel finished, not because everything matches, but because something in the room has presence.
Weaving Old Into New
At Lovan, the rope I use has already lived a life working at sea before it’s woven into something new. That’s always been part of the story, materials with a past, made into something for the future.
Salvage feels like a very natural extension of that idea.
Old objects carry stories.
And when you bring them into your home, they become part of your story too.
I’ve always loved that idea, that a house can be filled with things collected over time, things found, things passed on, things rescued, things made.
Not just decorated.
But layered.
Collected.
Lived in.
Maybe it all comes back to those trips to the dump when I was a child.
Seeing beauty where other people saw rubbish.
Seeing potential where other people saw the end of something.
A bit of a Cornish magpie eye, I suppose.
And I don’t think that ever really leaves you.
Zoe 🩶