“Everybody needs a hobby I guess but it’s certainly turned into a lot more than that.” A collector with an eye for design, Shae teamed up with Val Plavan about a year ago to thanks to a shared appreciation for post-World War II pieces. “We’ve been at it for a little while so we’ve been able to develop relationships with pickers,” Shae says. “Though some of the best finds we’ve been able to find are in Nova Scotia, every month or month-and-a-half we rent a 16-foot cube van and head out of province.”
After a year of finding, re-finishing and re-homing the gems they collected sans showroom, the pair settled on downtown Dartmouth, in the former location of Frosting Cake & Event Design. And with renovations behind them, Retrospekt opened its doors last week. “Val knows the product—it’s unbelievable the amount of knowledge he has, he’s taught me a lot about the product itself,” says Shae. “In the late ’40s, early ’50s, even ’60s, the furniture was made so well and is so solid. A lot of times it just needs some love. We bring it back to life.”