Treasure trove in thriving Milton antiques business

Antique dealer Rachel Wightman at work at Provincial Antiques, in Milton. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
Antique dealer Rachel Wightman at work at Provincial Antiques, in Milton. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
Rachel Wightman has found treasures in all sorts of unlikely places.

Mrs Wightman who, with her husband Kevin, runs Provincial Antiques in Milton, was once doing a house lot and, as part of the deal, tidying the house for sale.

She thought she should check the safe in the kitchen and found the owner had hidden her jewellery in it, among the jam and butter.

Then there was the time she was going through a box. Her hands were burning and she discovered a small bottle of cyanide; or the time she discovered a perfectly preserved mouse in an oil bottle.

''There's never a dull moment,'' she said, laughing.

In February next year, Mrs Wightman (54) will mark 30 years since she first opened an antique shop, initially in Balclutha, having ''bought too many tables'', she quipped.

Originally from Akaroa, she moved south to attend teachers college but ''got carried away and chucked it away''.

As a pupil at boarding school, she was a keen visitor to antique shops and, even back then, she enjoyed wearing vintage clothing.

Retro dresses were now something she made as a hobby.

She sold the Balclutha business and had a year off after having her first son, Matthew, and then opened a shop in Milton when the family moved there in 1989, changing premises several times in the ensuing years.

She described Provincial Antiques as a ''traditional'' antiques shop, where customers often became her friends.

''I don't have anything to do with the internet, I don't have a website. I do what I do.

"I love the fact you don't know what's coming through the door each day. We buy from people bringing stuff in. You've got to be on your toes all the time,'' she said.

Mrs Wightman and her husband worked as a team - she looked after the china, jewellery and linen, and he was responsible for doing up all the furniture - and having those divisions worked well.

''We're like a couple of old draught-horses ... we're in tandem,'' she joked.

Business was ''ticking along nicely ... it's good and sure and steady'', and she described it as the ''ultimate in recycling''.

''You're not buying something from China, adding to their pollution ... you're taking something that's 100, we've had stuff that's 250 years old. We do it up, we make it look nice, we don't take the character away from it ... and it's our heritage,'' she said.

The couple did keep some ''very strange hours'' and their two sons had to work in with that.

They had to accept that if they were going to the movies, they would be delivering furniture at the same time.

Mrs Wightman encouraged people to develop their own tastes, rather than following trends, and to buy something because they loved it, not because of its value.

''You do get a lot of satisfaction when you go back years later and look at something and people say to you, 'I love this, I bought this from you umpteen dozen years ago and I still love it'. That's nice,'' she said.

She also enjoyed living and working in the Milton community, saying people were very accepting, friendly and astute.

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