Midsummer Common

Founder Deborah Warren launched her Antiques and Interior Design business 30 years ago in a small shop in Manhattan’s West Village after more than a decade as a banker and trader on Wall Street. Following extended stints in Connecticut and Los Angeles, she brought Midsummer Common Antiques and Interiors to Charleston in 2002 and settled into a space on King Street.

There she met English dealer Julie Stiles, owner of the popular shop English Rose Antiques. The two became fast friends. When circumstances and family matters took Julie back to her native England, they kept in touch. Julie would come back some day. The two would work together.

Years passed. Charleston grew. Deborah focused on interior design work and renovating period homes. Julie bought and sold antiques in England, working while raising her daughters. The antiques trade changed. Vintage became the rage and by the time they knew that Julie would finally be returning to live in South Carolina, pretty floral plates from the 1950’s and 60’s were being offered by event rental companies for weddings.

So, if Brides were eating off of floral plates from the 60’s at their receptions, Deborah reasoned, why not real antiques? Since there isn’t much more fabulous in the way of dinnerware than English Victorian Spode and Minton and Crown Derby, why not put something different together? Line up the spectacular porcelain and stoneware plates, the deep roses and corals and emerald greens, Delft blues and creams and gold...alongside spectacular tinted glassware, combine Irish damask linens with the vintage quilts and pillows that had long been a staple of Midsummer Common, and make it all available for rent, for dinners and receptions?

Sort of Downton Abbey meets Charleston and throws a party. Why not? Why not indeed! Deborah had been giving dinner parties in downtown Charleston for years, so the rest was easy. And so on both sides of the Atlantic, the shopping began. From Brimfield to Little Round Top in the US and from Newark to Shepton Mallet in the UK. Boxes of glassware were piled to the ceilings in the guest rooms at Deborah’s house in Beaufort and crates of dinnerware stored under the beds in Julie’s country cottage near Nottingham. A massive container was packed and shipped. Showroom space was secured just off King Street at the lovely Italian shop, The Hidden Countship.

Julie arrived with the container right behind. Boxes were unpacked and hundreds of plates, bowls, platters and pitchers counted and stacked. Linens were washed and ironed, silver candelabra and flatware polished...quilts folded, water glasses and champagne coupes neatly arranged, pillows plumped. And then the doors opened.

Welcome to Midsummer Common!