Story by Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – There are your high-end antique boutiques in places like Nashville and New York City, where price tags weigh heavy and items are carefully curated. Then there’s Pedigo’s Madison Street Antiques at 1461 Madison Street here. There, owner Annie Pedigo – called “Miss Pedigo” by shoppers –presides over fine antiques that are stacked to the ceiling and are offered at bargain prices.
I discovered Pedigo’s years ago and was immediately struck by the reasonable prices on high quality collectibles. Miss Pedigo specializes in beautiful glassware, porcelain and ceramics, particularly those that date from the Victorian era to the mid-20th century. Genres include portrait plates, Depression glass, carnival glass, English transferware, Wedgwood jasperware, Heisey glass, milk glass, Fiesta ware and Fenton glass. The selection is amazing.
In fact, when I was last there, Miss Pedigo and I bonded over our love of portrait plates. She lamented that the younger generation of shoppers doesn’t like the older, more ornate collectibles.
“They want Pyrex,” she said.
The aisles at Pedigo’s Madison Street Antiques are cluttered with treasures and, as a collector of many types of glass, I can say the prices are inexpensive. While there, I purchased a pink Victorian Bristol glass vase for $45. It would have been at least $30 more in a fancy antique store.
Miss Pedigo has a lot of Bristol glass in her store, which means there are many reasonably priced pieces left for anyone who wants to start a collection or just buy one statement piece. Such glass was manufactured in the late 1800s, and comes in distinctive semi-opaque colors, including pink, yellow and blue.
What many collectors love are the hand-painted botanical motifs – including flowers, birds and butterflies – that typically decorate these mold-blown pieces. There is an element of nostalgia in a piece that someone painted, by hand, in an English factory more than 100 years ago. Each brushstroke is unique.
Back during the Victorian era there was a fast-growing sector of middle-class homeowners who tended to be incredibly acquisitive when it came to glassware and tableware, which they proudly displayed. Bristol glass was so popular that it was made into vases, perfume bottles and lamps. The name comes from the town of Bristol, England, which was a major glassmaking hub in the 17th and 18th centuries, even though the glass wares of the Victorian era were not always made in Bristol.
I’m so thrilled with my Bristol vase find. Miss Pedigo has wonderful taste and, lucky for us, passes this on to the customer at bargain prices. While this retiree was a school teacher by profession, it is obvious to see that her passion lies in the collectibles from a bygone era.
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.