twenty 21

I’ve walked past twenty 21 a few times a weeks for the last couple of years and every time I look longingly in the window at the midcentury furniture, wishing I was able to deck my house out.
Now I’m finally in the market for some furniture and it’s nice to venture inside with the possibility of actually making a purchase! The furniture pieces here aren’t cheap, but nor are they mass produced and likely to fall apart within a year of purchase. There’s original mid century pieces, both imported and local, and also some newer pieces designed in the Scandi style. All are beautiful and of a high quality. Their website is a good place to snoop before you pay a visit.
If your budget doesn’t stretch to teak sideboards and draw sets, then you can also pick up decorative items for around the home. Ceramics, lamps and the most gorgeous wooden egg cups painted to look like people. The perfect place to buy a gift for the hipster in your life.

There’s no point in alluding to how expensive Twenty 21 is more than cursorily as this little Johnston Street furniture store specialises in a) mid-​century furniture and b) exceptional Scandinavian design. Neither of which are EVER on the cheap side. But I digress…
Twenty 21 is, as Deborah Jane G. has observed, the stuff of dreams for vintage furniture fanatics, selling a small but perfectly edited collection of desks, sideboards, tables and chairs made mostly out of beautiful teak and rosewood and always with exceptional design credentials.
The thing that sets Twenty 21 out from its many, many competitors round these parts however is the clever mix of vintage furniture and contemporary accessories — both for person and home — and the emphasis on accessibility with all furniture being available for hire.
Twenty 21’s owners founded the store in 2006 with visions of popularising vintage furniture for the purposes of style and the environment positing that vintage furniture was proof that «We do not need to keep cutting down trees to make short-​lived furniture that decreases in value and we do not need to use the power needed to sustain these industries.» Quite.

I’ve driven by Twenty 21 many times and have always wanted to have a look at what this corner shop has to offer, but for some reason I was always on my way somewhere and wasn’t able to stop. But last week, I decided to tram down because it gave me the perfect chance to explore this delightful little store. I’m a huge fan of Scandinavian design so Twenty21 was a real gem of a find for me.
The store is littered with a good range of vintage furniture including Danish teak and Mahogany tall boys, Danish teak and oak coffee tables, dining chairs, rosewood sideboards and original Hans Wegner Plank chairs. In short, it’s a vintage collectors dream come true.
Adding colour to the store is a wide variety of whimsical ceramics by Anna Olivia Kristiansen, Helgo candle holders from Denmark, Lotta Kühlhorn’s nostalgic and playful tableware from Sweden and jewellery you won’t find anywhere else.