My grandfather, Robert Keyes founded the antique furniture restoration business in the East End of London in the late 1930s and then went to war for 6 years, restarting where he left off on his return.  I took over the business after apprenticing with him in the early 1980s and set up a workshop in Islington, near our current site.  I met my wife and partner, Zoë Candlin, a textile designer in 1981 and it was always obvious that we would collaborate on a project such as this from early in our relationship.  We set up After Noah together and  first opened our doors on the 11th May 1990 in a little shop on Upper Street, Islington hoping to break the mould of stuffy antique shops where you were too embarrassed to ask the price. We combined the old and vintage furniture with well produced contemporary design, as we believed that no one lived in a museum and most lived with a jumbled mixture of old, inherited and newly purchased items.  Our background in antique furniture restoration, made bridging the gap between stuffy antique shops and twee, samey gift shops, by selling antique and vintage items mixed with contemporary homeware a real goal.  As it transpired, 21 years later, most of the antique shops in London have since closed down (doubtful that we had anything to do with it, but probably because a lot of the dealers couldn't be bothered to get out of bed in the morning) and the plethora of rather boring gift and homeware stores has multiplied further, all selling the same stuff as each other. If you want to yack on about the homogenised high street (we do it all the time) and clone town Britain, click here.  We didn't and don't specialise in a particular period, but rather our only criteria is that we sell items which we like from whichever age - hence the name - we sell anything After Noah. 

Early on, we met and forged a unique working relationship with Simon Tarr and Nathalie Hankey (now part owners) who have been integral to our success and development and have helped shape what we have become. We were probably the first company in London to mix modern and vintage and about 10 years ago, developed what were essentially Christmas offerings of vintage toys into a shop next door which we purchased and extended and which specialised in what you might consider to be traditional toys, infused with an element of fun, education and nostalgia.  We also built a new workshop and incorporated our restoration business into the shop site.

Our customer base has grown with us as our own tastes have changed and we genuinely have a following from the very youngest of children, through to young adults building their new homes and all the way to an older, established generation who appreciate the quality of pieces made in times gone by and who react with fondness to the nostalgic element of the goods on offer.

The shop carries a wide range of products - large comfy leather sofas, antique French wrought iron bedsteads as well as contemporary counterparts, handmade English & French kitchen tables, restored telephones,vintage children's furniture and toys, jewellery, linens, salvaged industrial lamps, modern Italian lamps, kitchenware, bathroom accessories, gifts and much more, brought together from the most diverse sources imaginable - working with new designers, scouring antique fairs across the country and frequent trips to continental Europe and America.

We are always sure to have something unusual and interesting to fit pretty much any requirement.  We strive not to stock the stuff that everyone else does and you can pick up everywhere - and we go to great pains to try to ensure that when you visit us, you really feel as though you've not seen it all before. There is of course, sometimes an overlap of some contemporary item or other with another supplier, but when that happens, you can be certain that we'll be more competitively priced - and if we're not, we'll price match.

Come and see us soon. 

Thanks, Matthew Crawford