Shopper’s Diary: A Poet-Collector’s Finds at Pidgin in Upstate NY

In the early days of pandemic, when so many of us were starved for inspirational browsing, news of Kostas Anagnopoulos’s new upstate New York antiques shop, Pidgin, sent ripples of excitement throughout the design world. Kostas himself could relate: Since his purchase of a pelican-shaped Art Deco bottle opener at the age of 14 , he’s been on the hunt. “I think all antique and vintage dealers who go into business do so in part because they’ve been accumulating for so long that it’s just time to practice detachment and share the finds,” he tells us. “That’s certainly true for me.”

Kostas is also a poet and a seasoned salesperson—he and his husband, Jesse James, founded the creative consultancy/design firm Aesthetic Movement, which we have been chronicling for years: see the couple’s city apartment here and the upstate tent resort they designed here. As anticipated, Kostas’s offerings are far-ranging and soulful: “I’m a very democratic collector. I like patina, and often gravitate towards the homespun and anonymous, how something feels in the hand. The thing has to have nice lines, like a drawing within a larger space.” Come see.

Photography by Victor Schrager, unless noted.

Not all is vintage but everything has a story: the wood-handled knives in the glass case are by The Shin Blacksmith, a fifth-generation Korean family business. Writes Kostas on Instagram: “Master Shin hand makes each piece using the repurposed carbon steel of railroad track, which is rich in manganese and can be heated to a very high temperature. The handles are chestnut, slowly dried in sunlight for years, so it is lightweight, strong, and rot-resistant.”

Shown here: a driftwood lamp—”the most monumental I’ve ever seen,” says Kostas—and, on the floor, an outsized ceramic fruit of mysterious origin.

Of the materials he gravitates to, Kostas explains: “Glass is always good to brighten an area and create reflection. Wood is extremely soulful and has a sense of life. Metal can be weighty and formidable or shiny and delicate.”

Pidgin is at 7811 Route 81, in Oak Hill, New York, a two-and-a-half-hour drive north of NYC (and 30 minutes west of Hudson). . You can read some of Kostas’s poetry here.

Peruse our Shopper’s Diary archive for more Remodelista favorites, including:

• Flotsam + Fork: A Couple-Owned Housewares Shop in Minneapolis
• Better Tools for Living: Casa González and González in Madrid
• Minka in Toronto: A New Online Shop Offering Uncommon Objects for the Home

N.B. This post is an update; the original story ran on January 15, 2021, and has new links and information.