A letter from an old Shell Gas station.
Morgan Miller spends every Monday through Thursday traveling around Wisconsin, stalking estate sales and auctions, even the occasional St. Vinnie’s and Goodwill store. He searches for the beautiful, nostalgic and curious. He buys everything interesting that catches his eye.
“I’m no hoarder, though” says Miller, proprietor of Rewind Decor, a welcome addition to the string of home goods stores poised to turn Williamson Street into Madison’s design district. “As much as I grow attached to many of the pieces I pick up, I’m a minimalist at heart. I don’t want to keep these things.” Continues Miller, “I’m just happy to now have a place for these things to pass through me.”
Kick back in a vintage orange telescope rocking chair.
Open only Friday through Sunday, what Rewind Decor’s storefront may lack in size (it measures a cozy 300 square feet), it more than makes up for with its impressive selection of merchandise, making good on its tagline “Pausing somewhere between high design & kitsch.” From an original Alexander Calder lithograph celebrating the 1965 grand opening of the Los Angeles County Museum, to numerous pre-painted paint-by-numbers pieces executed by artists far less renowned, the store pays tribute to both the high- and low-brow.
Rewind Decor also carries a carefully edited selection of furniture that would be at home in the residence of any east-side hipster, as well as nostalgia-inducing board games and puzzles, including some of the choicest Rubik’s Cubes and View-Masters the 1970s had to offer. The store also showcases an impressive selection of atomic age barware and high-quality copies of the popular late-20th-century science fiction and fantasy comic magazine Heavy Metal. To say there is something for everyone — at just about every price point — is understatement.
But what really sets Rewind apart from other vintage décor dealers is not only plenty of vintage turntables, but also, in a not-so-subtle nod to its name, an admirable selection of 1980s boomboxes. “Vinyl is still big, but cassettes are poised for a comeback,” says Miller. And if your nondigital collection of music has thinned over the years, Rewind is a great place to replenish — especially if your tastes tend toward Elvis, Madonna or John Coltrane.
A Sears Clock-o-graph record player.
The Willy Street storefront represents just a fraction of Miller’s collection. The curio curator, a Madison native with more than 16 years of experience as an art dealer in Hawaii, Los Angeles, Barcelona and Las Vegas, also maintains a 2,000-square-foot showroom of larger items, much of it furniture from the midcentury, Hollywood Regency and postmodern periods. The showroom is around the corner on Baldwin Street and available for viewing by appointment only. Miller also rents a small stall in Odana Antiques on Madison’s west side.
Miller, who’s a one-man show right now, says he loves spending time in his new store, sharing anecdotes with the customers that stop in, many from the surrounding neighborhood. “I’ve got a story for how I acquired every piece in the place,” says Miller. “And when you’re dealing with vintage items, every person who seeks to buy is going to have a story about what the piece means to them, too.”
Rewind Decor 1336 Williamson St., 608-509-7995, rewinddecor.com, Instagram @rewinddecor, Fri.-Sun., 11 am-5 pm, or call for appointment
