"With an eye for quality and beauty, informed by an impressive academic background, and over twenty years in antique sales,Helen Storey Antiques is a reflection of its owner's delight in beauty, design practicality, and storied histories of antiques from around the world."

Beauty touches the soul, but it is the real human lives that created and loved  beautiful objects--and the history through which these objects have traveled--that moves the imagination and the heart.  Blending antique objects with those in our contemporary lives not only makes our homes richer, it connects us to a deep current of what matters, and has mattered, to us throughout time.

The first iteration of HSA focused on scholarly and aesthetic foundations of American and English antiques. However, the new shop focuses on 18^th and 19^th century antiques that reflect a refined country elegance--directly sourced from a variety countries including France, Italy, Sweden, and the U.S.

Helen has most recently lived in the south of France, where she learned about French antiques and worked with many knowledgeable French antiquaires.  She sourced antiques, in particular, in Provence, the Cote d’Azure, and Italy and worked again with Paris sources and auction houses throughout the country and in Monaco.

Today, she returns to Charlottesville, Virginia, with a very current understanding of where to find gorgeous, authentic antiques not only in the U.S. but throughout Europe, and will travel often to collect them for her customers. Her goal is to make antique buying playful and contemporary, to serve designers, young and more experienced buyers, the trade, collectors, and anyone else for whom beauty -- in the present, and of the past -- is an essential part of life.

Biographical

Born in Virginia and raised in the UK, Helen Storey began to collect antiques as a child in London.  She studied art and literature in the UK and went on to further studies in art history, literature, and French and obtained an MFA in fiction writing.  While working as an assistant professor of English at a Virginia university, she became a certified appraiser, began selling antiques, and worked for House of Jacobus in Charlottesville.  She then left academics to open the first and very successful Helen Storey Antiques with a partner and expert in Southern antiques, Stephen Ramsey.

During this period, Helen worked with many top U.S. interior designers who came to rely on her expertise, eye, attention to detail, and strong service ethic. Her appraisal work has taken her to the homes of extraordinary collectors. And she has come to know and cherish a wonderful group of antique-loving, endlessly fascinating and wonderfully kind customers.

Before and during this period, she studied American Southern and American furniture at Winterthur and sold several important Charleston and Virginia pieces. She also exhibited at a number prestigious antique shows locally and in New York and Philadelphia and ran a successful outlet that featured European antiques in Center 44, al Manhattan design center.

The first shop was closed in 2010 in a decision to move back to England, where Helen worked on her writing, attended the KLS London School of interior design, studied ceramic restoration, gilding, and completed a PhD.  She also sold antiques in London, primarily at the Horticultural Hall Shows, not far from the markets she visited as a child.  Every spare moment was spent in either Paris or the south of France where she developed a list of antiques resources and began to work with the auction houses, antiques sources outlets and dealers in both areas, informing her present business and aesthetic decisions as well as the look (and contents!) of her current shop.