Gurley Antiques Gallery

Furniture, Folk Art, and a Bit of Macabre

It may seem that I post more about visiting antique and collectible shops than any other type of Maine adventure. And it’s true; I do. Growing up in a family of collectors, finding a good shop to browse is my favorite pastime, and it’s in my DNA. It’s all about the hunt for treasure. Years ago I was the proprietor of a little shop, 2nd Fl Thriftiques, because as you guessed, it was on the second floor and filled with carefully curated antiques, collectibles, and thrift store finds. I had a steady stream of Boston area collectors that would routinely stop by the shop on their way to their summer Maine properties and clean me out. It was all the more fun for me to search out more inventory to fill up my shelves. Of course being the decorator I am, my shop was full of vignettes, pleasing groups of collectibles, easy on the eye and enticing. A buyer would spend more on buying the compatible collectibles as a group than just buying a sole treasure. That was my marketing, and it worked like a charm. 

I always enjoy a shop that has pleasing displays, like-items grouped together, and carefully curated vignettes. There have been places I’ve visited where I was afraid to pick up an item for fear the wobbly shelf of knick knacks would come crashing down. Even worse is to have everything covered in dust or actually filthy and stained. 

It was a pleasure to have found Gurley Antiques Gallery on Route 1 in Scarborough. It is a quality, multi-dealer shop with both quality antiques and fun and funky vintage finds. Opened in 2008 by Rachel Gurley, Gurley Antiques Gallery offers quality antiques from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. There are 36 antique dealers that come from all over New England; including Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont. They are professional dealers specializing in American furniture, folk art, paintings, silver, ceramics, jewelry, textiles, Fine Arts, and the decorative arts. I fell in love with a vintage orange vinyl couch that definitely said “Buy Me”. Unfortunately, its size was a problem considering my downsized living quarters. However, I did add to my collection of Nutting prints, found a bakelite bracelet, and brought home a collection of orange pool balls, much smaller in scale than the orange couch. 

My favorite items were the eclectic oddities that some might even call macabre because of their disturbing association with death or its depiction. They had several displays of vintage medical instruments, mourning lithographs, and funerary, religious, and fraternal objects. I was mesmerized by the expansive collection of death photography. In Victorian times, it was not unusual to take photos of loved ones after their death. They could be “posing” with other family members who were obviously alive. I cannot imagine the grief of a mother holding her dead infant for the length of time needed for those early photographs to be taken. Perhaps morbid, but it was a way to commemorate the dead. These images are both unsettling and strangely poignant. This is what makes for a good shop, to have a wide variety of goods, all different but all telling a story. Are you ready to find something to make part of your story?