Benjamin Albucker is, by his own description, an exacting, opinionated, slightly neurotic aesthete. He has a refined eye and a drive to sharpen it further.
His canvas is his vintage design store in Lambertville, N.J. The carefully curated space stands out from the many antiques shops and galleries in the town along the Delaware River. For starters, it has been open for more than a year without a name.
“Naming a business is a creative endeavor,” said Mr. Albucker, pronounced All-beu-KER. “I want something that feels and tastes right, or I’m not going to be happy.”
Mr. Albucker, 29, offers only pieces he really loves. That includes the aluminum furniture of early modernist and industrialist Warren McArthur; home or garage-made folk-art furniture; the rare early work produced by Herman Miller and Knoll, and just about any object made of perforated metal.
“I have a weird addiction to perforated metal,” he said, whether it’s from Mathieu Matégot or a mechanic’s workbench.
Like all good store owners, Mr. Albucker is a gifted set designer, placing, say, the honeycombed part from an industrial air-conditioner below an unusual oil portrait to create something striking and greater than the sum of its parts.
The skill runs in the family; his father, Stewart Ross, ran an art gallery in SoHo in the early-’90s that sold evocative paintings by little-known 20th-century American artists.
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Mr. Albucker said he realized at 15 that he didn’t like new things. After studying textiles and international business at the Fashion Institute of Technology and living in New York, he returned to the Lambertville-New Hope area. “I want to do this for a lifetime,” he said. “I care a lot about it.”
As for a business name, he recently downloaded and read through a list of every municipality in the country hoping to hit upon the right sound and connotation.
For now, he is operating under his own name.
36 North Union Street, Lambertville, N.J.; 609-397-8730; Ben-albucker.com.
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Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/style/this-vintage-store-still-needs-a-name-benjamin-albucker.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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