Dirty Jane’s Antiques to open Friday in Red Bank
Dirty Jane’s Antiques, a new antiques mall with room for about 150 vendors, will open Friday in Red Bank at 1910 Dayton Blvd., in the former Mill and Mine Supply Co. building.
“No matter what you like, you’re going to find something in here that’s interesting,” said the antique mall’s owner, Ryan Bush.
Bush requires that vendors stock at least 80 percent of their booths with items dating from the 1970s or before.
“You can’t just chalk paint it,” she said, referring to the trend of chalk painting old furniture to give it an antique, “shabby chic” look.
Dirty Jane’s Antiques gets its name from Jane Dumphrey, who was born into poverty in Northern Ireland in the early 1800s and
became a highly successful merchant and trader through her wits and a keen eye for value in objects that others would dismiss.
She had a hard-knock life. Dumphrey grew up the poor daughter of a “rag and bone” man, or scavenger of unwanted goods, and worked as a domestic servant until a unscrupulous boyfriend encouraged her to steal a carved ostrich egg from her employer.
She got caught and was banished to Australia. There, she got her “dirty Jane” nickname when she showed up disheveled at a merchant’s doorstep after a 250-mile overland journey. Dumphrey later worked for the merchant, Bush said, and helped make him rich.
Bush first heard Dumphrey’s story from family members in Wales and later came across it as she was trying to name her antiques mall.
“That’s perfect,” she thought. Bush charges vendors between $175 and $400 a month per booth at Dirty Jane’s Antiques.
The space is 24,000 square feet on one level and has had many upgrades, Bush said.
Bush is a Chattanooga native who went to the Baylor School and then got a degree in anthropology from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
She previously managed the Knitting Mill, a well-liked antiques
mall that Scott and Lynn Short founded in 2003 in their historic brick and timber textile mill building at 205 Manufacturers Road. It closed in mid2016 after Atlanta developer David Woodbery bought the property from the Shorts and turned it into a retail and office complex named Signal Mill.
The Shorts told Bush she could use the Knitting Mill name.
“We offered it to her, but she wanted to start fresh — which I completely understand,” Scott Short said. “I think she’s going to do great.”
Bush said keeping the Knitting Mill name ”was intimidating to me” and that her new space has a different feel.
“It’s a different atmosphere here,” she said. “I just wanted to have a new spin on it.”
Many of the Knitting Mill’s vendors have set up shop at Dirty Jane’s Antiques.
Among them is Candy Martin, whose booth at Dirty Jane’s Antiques has an eclectic mix of items that range from an Edison cylindrical phonograph record to a corset to an Old Pollyanna board game.
“I am excited about it,” said Martin, who’s from Florida and has sold antiques for about 30 years, including six years at the Knitting Mill. “I think she’s gotten a lot of great dealers.”