For Dig Haüshizzle, it all began in the year 2010 with a wooden letterpress coffee table

Photography by Lukasz Cypis Kaminski

Cassandra Linton and Edward Nicholas had purchased their first flat and were eager to furnish their new nest with items that they would love forever. The coffee table blew the budget; the price of 12 flat pack wood effect coffee tables – and it stirred something within them.

If they were to love a carefully chosen coffee table such as this, it’s more than likely that they would be able to see themselves in that heavy old piece of furniture until the end of their days. Love and forever are powerful words, but this thinking kickstarted something in the pair, a passion that would fill theirs and others homes and blow the dust from hundreds of antiques, making them ready to be set down and used again.

It’s nearly midday on a sunny Friday as we sit together with a cup of tea by a 1910 light wood French farmhouse table. The top of the table has a dotted effect on one side, you can lightly feel it if you run your finger over it. “That’s from the lino that would have been laid on the table, it’s left its own individual mark,” says Cassie. “We don’t get rid of details such as this, they’re part of the furniture’s history.

“We will restore pieces, clean them up, wax them, make sure there’s no wood worm or anything that could cause an adverse effect, but we leave the piece as it is.”

I ask her about the beautiful aquamarine piece on the opposite side of the shop, “The French larder is original,” says Cassie. She almost shudders at the thought of slathering paint on a piece of furniture. “That larder’s not been touched by us. The drawers aren’t original, but we didn’t put them in and they fit nicely. The paint work is original. We wouldn’t make something look older than it is, or paint any furniture.”

Dig Haüshizzle sell items from the mid 18th century, but nothing from further back than this. Certainly, it’s not kitsch. You’ll not find ‘Make do and [insert anything]’ rosy nostalgia. Would she ever go there? “No, not ever.”

Dig Haüshizzle are industrial, dark, smart and impressive without being inaccessible. The shop is a collection of pieces to care for and signify home to you. “As regards to style, it’s very personal. We sell decorative antiques, but also our interior ideas. We sell books, which are only the books we have at home. Sometimes we will sell flowers that we think will look nice with the room.

“It’s the feeling that an item gives a room. I love Victoriana, that whole look. I don’t like themes, but a black piece of furniture in the right place can just create that Victorian feel.”

Cassie and Ed, both originally from The Forest of Dean, have been married for two and a half years, together for 10. Cassie studied Fashion Photography in Southampton and while she started Dig Haüshizzle first with a pop-up shop in 2010 with Antlers Gallery, Ed until one year ago was working as a veterinary nurse. Now the couple spend their days searching for Dig Haüshizzle’s unique items in “amazing houses” and travelling around the country.

“We generally like the same things,” says Ed. “We have similar tastes and we always communicate what we’re thinking. We have had some ‘what the hell?’ moments, but then there’s lots of persuasion, we have to have that.”

They tell me about the one item that they purchased from their inspirational trip to San Francisco and Portland last year. “An Ox blind from the 1920s that looked like a woman’s bondage bustier – it was on the stand in the middle of the shop and attracted a lot of attention. People either loved or hated it.”

How long did it take to sell? “Oh, it was bought that day.”

“You can pretty much look at something and know it is us, even if there’s nothing else like it in the shop.” says Cassie.

We like to go to places, see something that may be unexpected. Commercial spaces, bars and hotels and designing your own house’s interior, it’s all creative. I would say we are very much more New York and Berlin than San Francisco and Portland, however. We went to New York right at the best time for us, three years ago, just before we launched and it really confirmed what we wanted to do with Dig Haüshizzle. It was so inspiring”

Downstairs the basement houses their latest discoveries. I imagine a dark room of cobwebbed antique gems, antlers and taxidermy – each item waiting to be picked and given Cassie or Ed’s undivided attention. They pick out the copper pots that they tell me they are going to plant them up with hyacinths.

Looking beyond the retail side of Dig Haüshizzle, Cassie and Ed have started to host taxidermy courses, which have seen an extremely positive response.“We love taxidermy and have always followed taxidermist Polly Morgan’s work – we are lucky enough to own one of her pieces; a blackbird and a telephone.

“We thought, why don’t we run a course in taxidermy at Dig Haüshizzle? So we arranged for Polly Morgan’s assistant Kim Zoe Wagner, an amazing taxidermist in her own right, to run our courses. They are on a Sunday and everyone around the area likes it because it’s so quiet everywhere but in our shop. In the evening we get the drunk people, banging on the door ‘ah, dead bird!’.

“We have had such a good response to the courses and each attendee gets to take home a budgie of their own. Kim’s very good at doing the tiny bits of movement, she will just tweak something and make it look a million times better and alive. She will tweak bits on our taxidermy pieces in the store too. She can just see, the tiniest detail.”

On top of this there’s the online shop, their pieces going to large hotels and houses, and the potential to further the interior design side of the business. Something Cassie is very interested in pursuing. “So many people ask us about our interior design. We love researching and have so much to offer and a brain ticking full of ideas. There’s so much that we don’t sell but that we really like. We don’t want to be out of reach though, we want to offer a design service; ‘this is what you should do and where you can get it’ – a service.”

Being independent is hard, and for Cassie and Ed: “there are no backers, or a secret old man out the back that owns it,” says Cassie. But these shop proprietors clearly love what they do and they have been received well in the Christmas Steps Arts Quarter. Cassie continues: “People understand now that we aren’t a traditional antiques shop, we are an interiors shop.”  

Bristol is the place to be independent, they both agree. “We always try to shop independent and local. Everyone is very dedicated to doing this here. We appreciate that so much,” says Cassie.

“We have so many amazing customers, from all over the country, but we know our Bristol-based best. Do you remember that sweet boy, Ed?” Cassie says smiling, broadly. “We had a sweet boy that saved up his pocket money for some antlers.”

“He’d go away and come back, go away and come back until eventually he got them,” says Ed.

The tables for hundreds of pounds, the £14 ‘Squirrel’ filament light bulbs, so many beautiful chairs. “We have people that first come in and say they want many items, but we think it’s about picking that one piece that they absolutely love, then coming back. A home can’t be filled in a day, it can’t be instant,” ethuses Cassie. It’s about discovery.

“Most people tend to like the one-off items. They come in and say ‘Wow I haven’t seen that before, I’ll have it.’”

51 Colston Street, BS1 5AX
www.dig-haushizzle.co.uk