Ali and I have been scheming a trip to Glasgow for months now, to visit the latest salvage hot-spot in the west, Love Salvage. The opportunity finally arose when Ali decided to submit a piece of sculpture to the Royal Glasgow Institute open exhibition. Having fairly unsuccessfully navigated the bewildering one way streets of Glasgow’s city centre, we headed out across the Clyde Arc to blue skies over Govan.

Love Salvage opened in May and since then has marketed to great success via Instagram et al. I’ve enjoyed seeing their regular pics in my insta-feed (is that even a legit phrase?), including all sorts of retro, vintage, up-cycled and kitsch items. Feeling that many bargains were precipitously slipping through my fingers, I was keen to get acquainted with the place and its wares. Laid out temptingly in a sunny old former church building, there was everything from vintage eye charts to roulette tables, huge maps, church pews, school blackboards, ladders….

A few things caught my roving eye including these retro tulip chairs, a lovely selection of vintage picnic ware, and colourful pub trays.

If i had an inch or two to spare at home, which i don’t, i’d have snapped up this unusual narrow vintage filing cabinet.

Most impressive was the wide selection of vintage and industrial lighting, all at very reasonable prices. I came away with this cool little battered danish table lamp.

Ali and I received a warm welcome from John, and negotiated a decent trade of my spectacular but formerly under-loved overmantel mirror, lamp and some slates, in exchange for a very reasonable £30 plus some blog post publicity!

Here’s my mantel mirror in situ. Its absolutely perfect and exactly what i had been looking for.

All in all a very worthwhile trip indeed. Any other east coasters up for it?