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On Re-Loving Old Furniture with White Elephant
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Objects that are known to be useless or troublesome; that’s what people called a White Elephant: Things that are unloved, judged to be useless and often discarded. This is the namesake of the antique and vintage furniture company based in Kenya. A beautiful store located in Karen that specializes in rescuing unloved furniture from Europe and shipping it to Kenya where it is redesigned into exquisite bespoke pieces of furniture for your home.
Chris Payne who runs White Elephant spends months in Europe finding these White Elephants that have been set aside and brings them home to re-love them and give them a new life. This process is intricate: involving Kenyan craftsmen with a passion for creating and a team who personally select what and how it will be remade; from the design, the fabric, to the paintwork. Every piece has a story, a history and The White Elephant Trading Company are the ones to tell it.
Right now, White Elephant have a new special collection to their store: The Island Edition. This is a collection of unique pieces that showcase antique European furniture reupholstered in rare vintage ceremonial cloths from the islands of Flores, Timor and Sumba; exquisite sculptural pieces from the far-flung island of Papua and a range of elegant vintage teak furniture from Java. From the beautiful island of Bali, you can buy handmade baskets and antique decorative pieces to add texture to your home. Next month, White Elephant are going to launch two new furniture ranges that will be made in Kenya. Carefully crafted reproductions of some of their favourite sofas, armchairs and ottomans, the Classic range will be available to order in base cotton, ready to upholster in a fabric of your choice while the Limited Edition collection will showcase these same “Classics” already designed and upholstered in fabrics of Chris’ choice, ready to buy.
The quest to save and re-love unloved furniture from all over the world never ends. The pieces that come out of the workshop are as rare and eclectic and the items that make them up: an 18th-century French gilt boudoir chair, bought at an antique fair in the English countryside and now upholstered in vintage West African Asoke cloth is not an un-typical story at White Elephant. Every time you visit their store brings new surprises with beautiful pieces that once gone, will never be repeated.
