The Buku Vintage Story
Buku Vintage is a true labor of love. After spending years in the corporate world working in the Mortgage & Promotional Products industries, I decided to finally make my dream of being my own boss a reality.
Growing up, I was surrounded by items which were already "vintage" in the 1970s - 1980s. We always had lots of older furniture, dinnerware, and decorative items in the house. My mom loved carnival glass, and she also had a collection of vintage plates & cups with saucers on display. My parents were married in the 1950s, so the daily dinnerware we used was Russell Wright. We also had antique items stored in the basement - an old sewing machine with a pedal, an antique spinning wheel, an old heavy wood buffet. You could spend hours in the basement looking at all the great items which my mom just considered "old junk". I was always fascinated with all of it.
When I was in high school, I started becoming interested in the new wave/punk scene and the vintage clothing that many fans wore. At that time, consignment stores were just starting to see the money in selling vintage clothing that was in good condition, and of course there was always plenty to choose from at local thrift stores as well. By the time I went away to college, I was fully in to vintage clothing & jewelry - old 1940s dresses and rhinestone jewelry, as well as old men's suit jackets in the ugliest colors & patterns I could find.
I also took some art history courses, and became fascinated with the art nouveau and art deco periods as well. The aesthetics of those time periods really spoke to me for some reason - even though the designs used drastically different details, I found beauty in both. I started to collect posters with images that showed the "whiplash curves", swirls, and floral motifs of art nouveau. In the mid 1980s, a kind of neo-deco movement was going on in jewelry and clothing as well; I decided I would rather collect items from the original deco period instead of the newer, mass produced items. I started to haunt antique stores and thrift stores to find jewelry with the rich colors and geometric style of the art deco period. I loved the lavish "bling" of the jewelry from that period.
After & graduated from college & moved to Florida, I started getting into vintage porcelain when I discovered "Cash in the Attic" on BBC America. There was something so fun to me about watching people discover that what they considered "old junk" (just like my mom did) was actually collectible. I really loved the information you could get about different items just by watching the show (and the great British accents and homes were a plus). This is where I started to get a love for beautiful old porcelain - especially English & Irish porcelain styles, since that was obviously what you would see most often on the show. I decided to start looking for pieces of nouveau, deco, and mid-century English porcelain. Poole pottery became one of my favorites, and is the only type of porcelain I actually collect myself (although if I could find some Clarice Cliff or some Fairy Ware, I would snatch that up as well). Soon, I began to find myself drawn to European porcelain as well. German, Austrian & Czechoslovakian designs of the 1930s - 1950s had the great art deco feel that I loved, and the artists used great bold colors which really caught my eye.
At this point, I started to attend auctions in order to get a better feel for what items were collectible, and what kind of prices they would bring. I started having conversations with antique dealers that attended the auctions, and most of them were great at answering questions or offering suggestions of what I should look for on items. After attending (without buying anything) for a year, I started to bid on things that I felt I had enough knowledge to purchase. At this point, I decided to open up an online vintage/antique store to see if I could start to make a little extra money. I worked on it when I could, and attended auctions and estate sales nearly every weekend to get more inventory.
I was dabbling in the vintage & antiques resale business in my spare time - but I soon realized that I never had any spare time to spend on it with the long hours I was working at my "real" job. I started to try to figure out how I could justify working on it full time. One day, things just started to point to it being time to make the leap. Work-related issues were starting to cause me to have issues with migraines, and I was also having difficulty making time to visit my family in Michigan because I never felt like I could afford to take time off. One morning I woke up and I just decided to take the plunge. I put in my notice, and once I was no longer working I spent every day for the next month photographing, inventorying, and posting the items that had been sitting in my extra bedroom for way too long.
Sometimes, I still wonder if I made the right decision. But then I think about how much I actually love doing this - it's worth the uncertainty and struggle. I love being able to make a customer happy by finding that "perfect item". I've had customers tell me how great it was to find something that reminded them of their childhood, or to be able to replace an item that was lost or broken. And I never get over the excitement of finding something that I've never seen before, or an item that I've been trying to find for a long time.
I hope you will love the items at Buku Vintage as much as I do - please contact me at any time if you have a specific item you need, or if you have any suggestions on how to make the site better!
Growing up, I was surrounded by items which were already "vintage" in the 1970s - 1980s. We always had lots of older furniture, dinnerware, and decorative items in the house. My mom loved carnival glass, and she also had a collection of vintage plates & cups with saucers on display. My parents were married in the 1950s, so the daily dinnerware we used was Russell Wright. We also had antique items stored in the basement - an old sewing machine with a pedal, an antique spinning wheel, an old heavy wood buffet. You could spend hours in the basement looking at all the great items which my mom just considered "old junk". I was always fascinated with all of it.
When I was in high school, I started becoming interested in the new wave/punk scene and the vintage clothing that many fans wore. At that time, consignment stores were just starting to see the money in selling vintage clothing that was in good condition, and of course there was always plenty to choose from at local thrift stores as well. By the time I went away to college, I was fully in to vintage clothing & jewelry - old 1940s dresses and rhinestone jewelry, as well as old men's suit jackets in the ugliest colors & patterns I could find.
I also took some art history courses, and became fascinated with the art nouveau and art deco periods as well. The aesthetics of those time periods really spoke to me for some reason - even though the designs used drastically different details, I found beauty in both. I started to collect posters with images that showed the "whiplash curves", swirls, and floral motifs of art nouveau. In the mid 1980s, a kind of neo-deco movement was going on in jewelry and clothing as well; I decided I would rather collect items from the original deco period instead of the newer, mass produced items. I started to haunt antique stores and thrift stores to find jewelry with the rich colors and geometric style of the art deco period. I loved the lavish "bling" of the jewelry from that period.
After & graduated from college & moved to Florida, I started getting into vintage porcelain when I discovered "Cash in the Attic" on BBC America. There was something so fun to me about watching people discover that what they considered "old junk" (just like my mom did) was actually collectible. I really loved the information you could get about different items just by watching the show (and the great British accents and homes were a plus). This is where I started to get a love for beautiful old porcelain - especially English & Irish porcelain styles, since that was obviously what you would see most often on the show. I decided to start looking for pieces of nouveau, deco, and mid-century English porcelain. Poole pottery became one of my favorites, and is the only type of porcelain I actually collect myself (although if I could find some Clarice Cliff or some Fairy Ware, I would snatch that up as well). Soon, I began to find myself drawn to European porcelain as well. German, Austrian & Czechoslovakian designs of the 1930s - 1950s had the great art deco feel that I loved, and the artists used great bold colors which really caught my eye.
At this point, I started to attend auctions in order to get a better feel for what items were collectible, and what kind of prices they would bring. I started having conversations with antique dealers that attended the auctions, and most of them were great at answering questions or offering suggestions of what I should look for on items. After attending (without buying anything) for a year, I started to bid on things that I felt I had enough knowledge to purchase. At this point, I decided to open up an online vintage/antique store to see if I could start to make a little extra money. I worked on it when I could, and attended auctions and estate sales nearly every weekend to get more inventory.
I was dabbling in the vintage & antiques resale business in my spare time - but I soon realized that I never had any spare time to spend on it with the long hours I was working at my "real" job. I started to try to figure out how I could justify working on it full time. One day, things just started to point to it being time to make the leap. Work-related issues were starting to cause me to have issues with migraines, and I was also having difficulty making time to visit my family in Michigan because I never felt like I could afford to take time off. One morning I woke up and I just decided to take the plunge. I put in my notice, and once I was no longer working I spent every day for the next month photographing, inventorying, and posting the items that had been sitting in my extra bedroom for way too long.
Sometimes, I still wonder if I made the right decision. But then I think about how much I actually love doing this - it's worth the uncertainty and struggle. I love being able to make a customer happy by finding that "perfect item". I've had customers tell me how great it was to find something that reminded them of their childhood, or to be able to replace an item that was lost or broken. And I never get over the excitement of finding something that I've never seen before, or an item that I've been trying to find for a long time.
I hope you will love the items at Buku Vintage as much as I do - please contact me at any time if you have a specific item you need, or if you have any suggestions on how to make the site better!