Love old stuff, but aren’t quite sure how to combine it with your contemporary furnishings? Pay a visit to Kristen Alcorta’s tiny new storefront, Pursuing Vintage. The shop is essentially a showroom for the vintage housewares and furniture she sells through her online boutique of the same name. “I want people to walk into this space and feel like they’re walking into a friend’s living room,” says the Falls Church mom of two. “I want them to find something unique that they can envision in their homes.”
Alcorta runs her online business on Etsy, using the brick-and-mortar space—which is open one weekend per month, and by appointment—as a design tableau. It’s located adjacent to Zoya’s Atelier (which occupies the former Stifel & Capra building) on West Broad Street in Falls Church. As its name suggests, Pursuing Vintage carries vintage items, but also new home goods such as pillows from local fabric designer Mira Jean Designs and original artwork from nationally renowned painters like Kerry Steele and Esther Boyd, whose abstracts and still lifes “bring color to a space and make people happy.”
Among the proprietor’s favorite finds? “Anything acrylic,” Alcorta says. “I also love brass figures and gravitate toward chinoiserie—particularly rattan or blue-and-white pieces. [But] I do not paint furniture. That’s not my thing.”