Culture

“Black Antiques is like the last of the mohicans. Regularly described as an Aladdin’s cave of retro, vintage, industrial and antique objects. A regular dragon’s hoard. Some people come in and their minds are instantly blown, they might stay for hours, other people are just confused and can’t wait to get out of my wizard’s maze.”

Black Antiques has been years in the making and is a bizarre convergence of literally dozens of hoards! The owner, Rex Black and his assistant Mr Brown the loyal hound (seen posing on the grand piano) invite you to peruse their collections to your heart’s content.

“We hear the word ‘forage‘ and ‘rummage’ a lot in here,” says Rex. “It’s nice when people are just amazed by the quantity and diversity of my place. We have a lot of foragers and people who like to dig, but it’s also cool when people ask for something particular and I probably have it. I had a guy he was looking for an esoteric book for ten years and deigned to ask, I did have it and strangely I even knew where it was! He left with a first edition of ‘The Pheonix’ a very happy man.”

The place was named as a homage and reference to Black Books. “Seems shallow but it’s mine and everyone’s favourite show, but myself and the business and our ethics have little similarity really, well, maybe...” Rex admits.

“Strangest thing I ever sold? It would be impossible to say but to name a few maybe a painting by Rosaline Norton the ‘witch of kings cross’ complete with a curse inscribed in the back, pretty cool, I still have Elvis Presley’s autograph, dame Joan Sutherland’s travel trunk and an ocelot named Baboo. It’s all good fun. I sell a lot of furniture but I prefer dealing in oriental stuff, art, swords and motorcycles – y’know, the really cool stuff.”

“I must go now dear friends for it is time for me to terrorise my customers by practising on my grand piano, find us on Facebook, stay tuned.” @BlackAntiquesKatoomba