Jan 28, 2010

Dover House Antiques sells the old and the newBy Steve KaufmanVoice-Tribune.com

Frankfort Avenue was once a toll road for horseback riders and carriages between Louisville and St. Matthews. And some of those original buildings still remain. It seems a perfect location for Clarence Smith’s Dover House Antiques & Mercantile, set in a Federal-era townhouse on the corner of Frankfort and South Bellaire avenues.

Smith opened the store in 2003, in a former artist’s studio and residence, to pursue his lifelong interest in early American antiques. As a boy in rural Tennessee, he used to accompany his parents to country estate auctions.

“My father would buy tools and farm animals,” Smith recalled, “and my mother would buy antiques.”

He came to Louisville with Brown-Forman, working in finance. But he saw a void in high-end gifts and accessories, especially after the shuttering of Jacobson’s. So he fell back on his years in product development and store planning at Hartmann Luggage, a former division of Brown-Forman, and opened his bright and elegant store.

Read complete article.