In Store: Kitsch Kingdom

Aurora Antique Pavilion is a sanctuary the size of a football field for stuff you won’t believe you forgot — and some you wish you could go on forgetting.

Store manager Ruthie Hodges has worked at Aurora Antique Pavilion for more than eighteen years.  But she doesn’t really care about antiques. Back when she started, Hodges was stumped when asked about Fiesta china, and she shrugs off the faux pas to this day, claiming: “There are too many things in life to remember.”

Photography by Kyle Johnson

If that’s true, this football field–sized store seems to want to disprove it. Located in the attic of a Burlington Coat Factory in Edmonds, the Antique Pavilion houses more than one hundred independent sellers and thirty thousand square feet of stuff.

As Paul Simon reminisces about Africa over the PA, I catalog a small inventory of familiar but faraway culture: a Todd doll, “Barbie and Ken Dolls’ Handsome Friend,” still in his box and wearing a purple tux; Sonics lunchboxes; and a dull velvet, heart-shaped box that Kurt Cobain himself, I’m sure, would have coveted. “I used to have so many of these!” one customer shouts with genuine glee when he comes across a case of collectible toy cars.

Then there are pieces of history we have all, for better or for worse, left behind:  anthropomorphized cookie jars, Doris Day’s Greatest Hits, Life magazines dating back to 1939, Kiss action figures, a cougar-skin rug and a series of custom liquor decanters celebrating cultural stereotypes: a pirate holds rum; a Russian contains vodka; a Colonel Sanders type holds bourbon; and you can guess who for firewater.

The best thing about the pavilion is the space itself. Once known as Doces Mall, this two-story building was designed to have a lush atrium at its center spanning both floors. Now, in the Burlington Coat Factory downstairs, merchandise peg boards completely obscure the windows looking into the atrium (Hodges tells me that a fountain and tree-sized rhody were both taken out years ago). But natural light still pours in through the windows of the pavilion upstairs, keeping claustrophobia at bay for browsing collectors.

The pavilion also boasts Café Maurice, a charming sitting area (furnished with inventory for sale) where you can get a fresh cup of espresso. All employees are trained baristas. “Well, kind of,” Hodges says. “We try our best.” And on second Sundays from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., twelve or so musicians crowd the café for an open bluegrass jam.

It’s nice to have a soundtrack, because you will get lost in the maze of stalls, some stacked so tightly with stuff you can hardly squeeze in to take a closer look. Others are more Spartan: just a few slick furniture pieces daintily complemented by a single antique mirror. The pavilion is not just a junk shop; Jon and Christine Ovenell, the owners of the pavilion space, ship over high-end antiques from England every year for their own handful of stalls.

Toward the back of the store, if you dare venture through “Jack’s Alley” (where the owners’ work and hobby bench is located), down the creaky stairs running parallel to a lengthy conveyor belt, and forward into the belly of the dimly lit warehouse, you’ll find even more chairs, large bookcases, sideboards and dining sets, as well as the store’s Christmas decorations (Santa waves at me from a mezzanine, where even more inventory is stored). Chairs hang on the wall ten feet high, some with their wicker seats blown out. Sewing machines, antique dentist chairs and display cases are shoved into soldier formation, leaving just enough room for shoppers to get by. Down here, you get good deals, Hodges tells me. A lot of the pieces are for sale “as is,” which sometimes means without hardware — or with cracks and bubbles in the finish or other reminders of the previous life this piece has lived.

Still confidently blasé about antiques, Hodges proudly describes the dining set she bought here years ago, with a “Barley Twist” style of leg.  She can’t remember the year, or the type of wood, but if there’s any place where you can find what you’ve forgotten, it’s here.

Aurora Antique Pavilion

4111 Highway 99, Edmonds
425.744.0566, auroraantiquepavilion.com