Monday, June 07, 2010

Chief Trading Post

The best shop in the Bristol area, and probably the world, is Chief Trading Post, in Oldland Common. It is, I suppose, a Garden Centre; but Chief Trading Post is a ‘Garden Centre’ in the sense that Salvador Dali is a ‘landscape painter’.

It consists of a series of vast greenhouses, some which contain heaped junk, rejects and broken things; and some of which (and the boundaries are fuzzy) contain many hundreds of items for sale, grouped into categories all of which seem to be ‘Misc’.

There is also a very good café. The food and drink is relatively normal but the seating is not. For example, inside the main building we have The Satanic Table:



And then just outside in the greenhouse is a bewildering range of themed seating, such as the giant clay pot containing circular benches and a table, and guarded by this sort of African warrior…

…or this one, below, which we call the ‘Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Table’, for the very good reason that next to it is a model of Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a big wobbly head. Above the table is a big blue glass ball, a birdy thing and a heater with the sign: “Touch Button Every Twenty Minutes For Continuous Heat.”




You can buy many things at Chief Trading Post. I will illustrate some of these in future postings, but here is a foretaste:



11 comments:

  1. Fakes, the lot. Bristol cannot be as interesting as this post suggests.

    btw, Are the satanic chairs for sale, they would look great in my office?

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  2. Ah, the hippy-dippy West Country. A business idea conceived whilst looking up at the sky in a mushroomy field somewhere in Somerset, I feel.

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  3. I thought the Scottish borders were Wicker manish, nothing compared to the West Country. How long has the owner been out of care?
    Although I must say the Portuguese bread oven come caravan rear end shows artistic imagination on the Damien Hirst scale.

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  4. Sean - I don't think the Satanic chairs are officially for sale, but there's no clear lines between furnishing, decoration, merchandise and junk, so I expect you could make them an offer.

    G and M - wait til you see what else they've got on offer...

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  5. Willard2:24 pm

    Admit it, Brit. They paid you for this blatant example of blog advertising. I've see my fellow bloggers do it but I've always believed that men like you and me, Brit, we were above that sort of thing. Or I thought we were...

    GET A QUOTE ON HOME INSURANCE FROM DIRECTLINE.COM

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  6. I wish. I've given up on selling out since Fevertree ignored me despite a first page of Google ranking

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  7. Willard3:49 pm

    Would that be Fevertree the premium tonic water that goes well with any drink? Surely that's too expensive for humble bloggers to drink...

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  8. I would like the buddha, but only if it had a nodding head and dispensed beer

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  9. Ooh, I've been rather tied up and unable to catch up on posts, but now you have caught my attention. I love rummaging around old salvage shops like this..

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  10. 'Salvage' would make it explicable, Susan. CTP imports this stuff. It's all premeditated.

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  11. I really like the infomration about circular benches ... I love the images,I agree with the information and with the comments,thanks for sharing!22dd

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