This month the Local Rag had a chat to Wendy Lemmon about her eclectic gallery of goods featuring rare, unique and vintage wares – Rivet.
How old is Rivet?
Rivet turned 5 on 1st January this year, time has gone fast – sooo many changes.
What was your vision when establishing Rivet?
Rivet was created with the aim to give people a destination where they could source items with a difference, functionality and beauty combined with a vintage industrial tweak – place local art amongst this and form amazing eye candy. A place where people would feel at ease to come discuss their wants and ideas, and let me help them find that special piece for that awkward spot, help with a colour palette or find that special gift, and if that wasn’t enough include art exhibitions into the mix.
5 Years on – how is it tracking
Pretty well to plan if you take Covid out of the picture. Rivet has become that place where customers end up friends as I search for that special piece, scroll over house plans, visit their homes with numerous bits to find just the right thing – fantastic to be using my interior design skills again. Over the last 6 months Rivet has doubled in floor space enabling more floor stock; can’t wait to start up exhibitions again and enjoy this space even more.
How do you source the eclectic mix of items?
Stan and I travel a lot within NZ searching for just the right items – time consuming but lots of fun. As well as over the years having previous galleries I have built up a really good network of people who help source our type of stock and we are also very lucky that we work in with friends that have similar businesses that help source our European range. On top of all this, some of our customers play a big part when they are needing that old shed cleared out !
What do you specifically look for?
This is a hard one to answer – something different with a designer edge. I am drawn towards vintage industrial especially French or German but also love mid century classics and enjoy mixing the two together. I like to know the story behind our stock – who owned it before. what it was used for etc to be shared with its new owner.
What is your back story Wendy? What lead you to the creation of Rivet?
Having owned a couple of galleries and training in interior design sadly circumstances had me back in an office 9 – 5. Of course this didnt go down well and before too long we took on a project of building our own industrial home in Raglan which lead to realising how hard it was to source something unique, stylish and functional and here Rivet evolved, back in my happy space helping people with their visions for their own home or finding that unique gift..
Aside from Rivet what else do you spend your time on?
There isn’t much spare time as I do a lot of the restoration and our trips away but when I can I love to be on the water in my kayak. I have done a lot of kayaking over the years and would like to get back into it again. I also have an interest in Black Nosed Valais Sheep which we currently breed – the cutest friendliest sheep you can find with long dreadlocks, beautiful wool. I have just sourced an old spinning wheel which I’m trying to master which will produce a new range for Rivet. Other than that spending time together with family and friends is all I need.
It’s been an intense and challenging few years for most. Any future plans for the remainder of the year or moving forward?
We have a few tweaks with our gallery extension including lighting and heating and then we can be back up and running for future art exhibitions. We have a couple in the pipeline and I can be contacted on 027 412 7082 or via email info@rivetvintage.co.nz or just drop in for a chat if anybody has something they would like me to consider. Our guitar maker is also sorting a date for a spot on our calendar so watch this space! You will soon see a few larger pieces in store which we are currently working on – lighting, cabinets, safes, old french armchairs to name just a few.
