Jeff Nelson and Lorna Leese PHOTO BY JOSHUA KODIS

Why are a couple of retired chiropractors running a French antiques store in Vero Beach that used to be the preferred supplier to celebrities and stars on the New York scene?

It’s kind of a long story, says Jeff Nelson, 66, who, along with his Canadian-born wife Lorna Leese, has run the House of Charm antiques store along Vero Beach’s Design Row on U.S. 1 at 44th Street, south of Grand Harbor, since 2010.

The business is now in the third generation of the family. At one point, when Nelson’s parents owned and ran it, they had four stores by the same name on Long Island, and another outlet in New York City on Madison Avenue at 96th Street.

Remarkably, then and now, the business marketed itself almost exclusively through word of mouth, although it has been featured in design magazines like House Beautiful, Architectural Digest and Elle.

The main store at Bridgehampton on eastern Long Island became a magnet for stars who hung out in the Hamptons. A Hall of Fame list of customers included Billy Joel, Alan Alda, Barbra Streisand, Cheryl Tiegs, Lauren Bacall, Dick Cavett, Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford, Kelsey Grammer, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Angela Lansbury, Morley Safer and Kurt Vonnegut.

Why did all those celebrities patronize their store?

“I think it was because my mother, Rosemary, never asked to have her picture taken with them and never even asked for an autograph,” Nelson says. “We were not autograph hunters.

The only autographs we ever got were on their checks and credit card receipts. My mother treated them like normal people, like everyone else, and they often became friends.”

He recalls that Lauren Bacall regularly dropped in on the Nelson family on Sunday afternoons, sitting on the front porch with them for hours, sipping a cool drink.

“Passers-by would do a double take and ask if it was really her. ‘Yes, darling, it’s me,’” he recalls her replying to the startled questioners.

Most of the celebrities who used to buy from them have passed on now, but occasionally Nelson still hears from one of them.

“Barbra Streisand called recently looking for some American antique wingback chairs,” he says. “But we couldn’t help her. American antiques are not really our specialty.”

Upon entering the 4,700-square-foot store, the first impression for a visitor is being overwhelmed by an incredible array of what seems to be cluttered pieces piled on top of each other – antique bed boards that have been painstakingly repainted by Lorna, keyhole-shaped mirrors with gilded edges, repainted armoires, re-upholstered sofas and chairs, paintings of all kinds, ancient chandeliers odd-shaped tables and other curios.

The most expensive piece in the store is actually not a French antique, but a Dutch triple-flip game table exquisitely hand-carved out of wood, with a typical scene from the 17th century, Holland’s Golden Age. On one level there are chess and checker boards, but you flip it over and it becomes a card table. You flip it over again and it becomes a writing desk. The unique piece – nothing else like it exists anywhere in the world – is listed for sale at $23,000.

As with many things in the store, the name House of Charm has a story attached to it. Back in the 1970s, Nelson’s parents had a friendly neighbor who built boats for a living and his mother helped him name his business Boatland.

When she needed a name for her growing French antiques business, he suggested House of Charm, and it stuck.

“She helped him name his business, and he returned the favor by helping her name hers,” Nelson says. “Except that he suggested adding French antiques to the name so people wouldn’t think House of Charm was a bordello.”

Vero Beach customers have shown different tastes in antiques than their New York-area patrons.

“Down here they prefer lighter pieces, brighter colors in a British colonial beachy style with beachy themes,” he says.

As has happened with many businesses, the antique business has undergone many changes since Nelson’s family first entered it in the 1970s when his father set it up for his grandmother to give her something to do.

At first Nelson did not want to go into the business, instead making his own career as a chiropractor, setting up a practice in the Orlando area where he met his wife, a fellow chiropractor. But when his parents began needing help in the late 1990s because of advancing age, he sold his practice and joined the family business back in New York.

In 2010, he shut down all the New York stores and moved the business to Vero Beach.
“I almost moved it to Jupiter, but a friend of mine, a fellow chiropractor, urged me to give Vero Beach another look, and I decided it was more what Jupiter used to be 30 years ago. I liked that small-town feel, and here we are.”

When he first took over, around 2000, French antiques were super-hot and Nelson, who learned to speak French slang on the streets of small towns, made three or four yearly trips to France to buy whatever he could, shipping it back in bulk to the U.S. in containers.

“At that time,” Nelson recalls, “you couldn’t buy or sell it fast enough. “More than 3,000 dealers would be milling around the doors of an exhibition hall waiting for them to open and within an hour, all the good stuff would be gone. We filled containers of the stuff and at one time we were among the three biggest customers of these antique fairs.”

It all changed around the time of the 2008 financial crisis, when many people started thinking twice about discretionary expenditures, but the decline was accelerated by a generational phenomenon.

“The market took a nosedive as the Baby Boomers started to retire and downsize to keep only as much stuff as would fit in a smaller condo,” Nelson explains. “And the kids didn’t want to be tied down with stuff. The minimalist movement was taking over.”

Nelson says the last 15 years have been tough, with prices as low as they were 30 years ago, and at times he and his wife thought about getting out altogether, but they decided to hang in there.

“We’ve been around it our whole lives. Our whole lives are tied up in it,” he explained.

To branch out, Nelson has started taking many items on consignment.

“One of my former good customers from New York who downsized and bought a condo sent me a whole collection,” Nelson says. “I asked him why he preferred to exhibit the pieces in a small market like Vero Beach with only 30,000 people, rather than somewhere in the tri-state area around New York City with 30 million people. He said he trusted me more to sell it for him.”

Nelson is also now selling more and more pieces directly on the web through virtual antique market sites like chairish.com.

“That has turned out to be a good direct sales platform, and I might start selling directly on the web myself, too,” Nelson says.

Photos by Joshua Kodis