The first things I ever bought for my own place as a teenager were silver-rimmed wine glasses and silver candlesticks from an antique store. Not exactly practical, but it tells you everything you need to know about me.

I've loved beautiful old things my whole life, and the eye I have now was built slowly — through an art history degree, decades of haunting antique stores and period houses, and a lifelong habit of looking closely at things most people walk past. My own home is furnished almost entirely from the antique mall near me that imports containers from England. It's not really a hobby so much as just the way I'm wired.

After a career in IT, I retired and finally built the shop I'd been quietly imagining for years. The Mauve Maven is a vintage home décor shop rooted in English style and guided by William Morris: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Every piece here has been chosen by me, and I hope you find something that feels like it was waiting for you.

— Diane

P.S. I've always appreciated British pub names — the way something like The White Hart or The Prancing Pony is quirky and visual and completely impossible to forget. Add in my affection for the color mauve — I wear it, decorate with it, own a mauve bathrobe and a mauve cereal bowl — and Maven for the alliteration and the quiet confidence of the word, and there you have it. After months of considering different business names, The Mauve Maven came to me and I was committed on the spot. I immediately started building the shop.