Mark Denver Vintage Industrial

After a taxidermied pheasant, a lizard skeleton or perhaps a mounted wild and woolly ram head to stick on your wall? Of course you are, why wouldn’t you be?
Well assuming you are then no doubt you’ve been to Mark Denver to check out the extensive range of stuffed and mounted animals, industrial pieces of furniture, old scientific posters and general weirdness that fills every inch of the store. It’s really quite the site and should be high on your list of «must dos» if you’re in the market for interesting items to fill your home.

If you’re in any way interested in antique medical equipment or supplies this is a shop for you. In a tiny shop off Brunswick Street, the owner manages to pack a lot into the store. Some of it is easily transplanted into anyones home, other pieces I’d imagine would need a far more themed environment to shine. On the day we visited we were left to explore and were only briefly attended to by the shop assistant. It’s my kind of shopping experience. We knew, should we need it, the shop assistant was only a moment away. There was no hovering over us as we moved around the store. The prices are high here but it is an expertly curated collection so it seems reasonable.

Wow. Did Tim Burton explode in this store? Because it sure looks like we’re on the set of some bizarre fantasy film starring Johnny Depp.
Denver is new to the Brunswick street scene and is fitting in quite well amongst the quirky café’s and vintage stores as a rather odd antique and industrial store. You won’t find any of nanna’s lamps in here but rather mannequins, moose heads and creepy Jesus statues.
If you are re-​decorating and want a quirky piece for that back corner of the lounge room, check out Denver. In fact, even if you’re not redecorating I suggest you pop in for a squiz. But be careful, you might have nightmares…

I came across this place when looking for some props for a photo shoot that a magazine I used to work for was doing. I stopped immediately and took some phone snaps of the deer heads on the wall and the medical dummies in the window and sent them around to the people involved in the shoot, and within a few weeks there were deer heads on the cover of the mag and I was hearing about everyone else’s trips to Mark Denver.
That’s the kind of reaction this place gets with its oversized furniture and film-​like decorative pieces. None of them come cheaply, of course, and personally I do take issue with charging so much for recovered industrial materials, but then again, rustic old ship models and life-​size statues of Jesus also don’t come around very often and I’m probably just sulky that I can’t afford to buy it all.