home: featured [ Seld ]

home: featured [ Seld ]

Seld is a gorgeous Welsh store of contemporary mixed homeware, gifts and accessories. Explore online for a plethora of ceramics, soft furnishings, candles, kitchenalia and more, or visit their store based at 4 Bridge Street, Aberaeron, Ceredigion, Cymru/Wales SA46 0AP

This is a shop with a story…

They say;

The STORY of SELD – pull up a chair…

The seld has always evoked strong childhood memories for me growing up on the family farm – a little like the reassuring clunk of the Aga door closing. Firstly, I should explain to all non West Walians what a seld is. Seld is the colloquial term for a wooden dresser – the central hub or ‘mothership’ (call it what you will) of a kitchen on a Welsh farm. Many people would polish their seld fastidiously and would use it to show off their best china, but ours was all about practicality and daily use. Ours felt like part of the family, in as much as a slab of wood can. As soon as I’d left the farm and got married there was only one thing on my mind, no – not the husband, but getting my hands on my own seld. We couldnít afford a new or a nice antique one so I rummaged through ‘The Exchange and Mart’ and found one advertised somewhere near Mountain Ash in the Welsh Valleys.

I dragged Gareth (the husband) over there without much thought of transport and decided after little deliberation that the aforementioned seld would be our first piece of family furniture. Gareth, being the practical one, uttered the words “There’s no way that’s going to fit in the car”, (a phrase which has since become as much a part of the family as the seld itself…). It turned out that he had a fair point, but who ever said that it had to fit IN the car?! We proceeded to strap both parts of the dresser to the roof of our Volkswagen Beetle and cheerily headed back down the A470 to our little terrace house in Cardiff. All was well until we lurched to a sudden stop at some traffic lights… and the dresser didn’t. Sometime later we arrived back in Cardiff –no reported casualties or deaths and the dresser was still in only 2 pieces. Since then, the seld has adapted well over the years to our evolving family life –from storing the children’s toys to now holding family heirlooms, memorabilia and a load of CDs. It’s had numerous coats of paint over the years, and by now I expect that the paint is the only thing holding it together… Any mention of getting rid of our trusted friend is greeted with shrieks of horror from the kids. When we had to choose a name for our company we thought that seld was a great play on words – being Welsh, and seeing as I ‘dressed people’s houses – a Welsh Dresser aka SELD was the only choice!