When we walked up to the meticulous window displays at Bloodworth Bellamy, we didn’t immediately see the charismatic owner of the store, Nick Cadey, behind the glass. He was tinkering with a new colourful collection – the personal effects of the 1960s president of the Australian magicians’ club. Once disentangled from the cloaks, light displays and trick hats, he introduced us to his menagerie of unusual objects.
The small space surprisingly clutter-free, with items from 19th and 20th century England, France and Japan neatly interwoven on the shelves. Collections of Hornby trains and textile sculptures are carefully curated, and Nick has chosen individual objects that share a narrative or preserve a moment in time.
“I love things that are just about to be destroyed and then they’ve been saved. It’s like that last moment of a sunset,” he says, showing us a set of chipped Japanese Kobe dolls from the 1850s. They’re beside a geisha wig – “should you ever need one” – and across the aisle from a tin sink painted to look like wood so it wouldn’t rot on a French sailing ship in the 1800s. While there’s furniture and taxidermy pieces for the avid antique collector, the shop also does a roaring trade in more affordable items, like 1980s comics going for $8 a pop.
The store has been operating for almost three years with Cadey at the helm, armed with an English education in car-boot sales and reruns of TV show Antiques Roadshow. Sometimes functioning as a gallery space – and as a wedding venue – Bloodworth Bellamy is a versatile retail home for lovers of history and anyone up for a good chinwag.