Margaret Brown spends part of every year on the road across France, Italy, Spain, and England, filling shipping containers with furniture and art that eventually lands on Maine’s midcoast at The Art of Antiquing, her shop and warehouse in the small harbor village of Round Pond. Unlike a general antiques mall stocked from local estate sales, this business is built around direct European sourcing, with Brown working as a curator who selects pieces in person before they cross the Atlantic to her Back Shore Road location. The result is an inventory heavier on Continental style than a typical Maine antique shop: French farmhouse tables and armoires, Italian seating and mirrors, English desks and case pieces, alongside oil paintings, watercolors, engravings, and sculpture chosen for their decorative and historical character.
The shop and its attached warehouse space give Brown room to display large-scale furniture alongside smaller decorative objects, serveware, and lighting, so a visitor might walk past a carved French buffet on the way to a case of antique glassware or a wall of framed prints. Because the buying happens overseas and inventory ships back to Round Pond in batches, the selection changes with each new arrival, and the business highlights rotating collections and Brown’s personal picks rather than a static, unchanging showroom. That model has earned the shop coverage in Maine-focused design and lifestyle publications, including Maine Home + Design, Decor Maine, Maine Magazine, and Country Living, which have featured Brown’s eye for pairing European antiques with New England interiors.
Round Pond itself is a quiet fishing village in the town of Bristol, on a small harbor along the Pemaquid peninsula, known for lobster wharves, a working boatyard, and a slower pace than the busier midcoast towns nearby. The Art of Antiquing occupies part of that village character at 4 Back Shore Road, drawing shoppers who are often combining an antiques outing with a coastal drive through the Damariscotta and Pemaquid area. The shop is open Wednesday through Friday and again on Sunday, from roughly 10 or 11 in the morning until 5 in the afternoon, giving visitors a few dedicated windows during the week and a weekend option without needing a weekday-only appointment. Because much of the inventory is large furniture shipped from overseas, the business also handles shipping quotes and logistics for customers who want a piece delivered rather than carried out of the shop, and it maintains an online storefront so collectors outside Maine can browse and purchase remotely.
What distinguishes this shop from most antique dealers in the region is that scale and specificity of sourcing: rather than reselling what turns up locally, Brown builds the inventory intentionally, piece by piece, from specific regions of Europe, then curates it for a Maine audience drawn to Continental style in a coastal setting. For collectors seeking a French farmhouse table, an Italian mirror, or English case furniture without booking a trip to Europe themselves, the shop functions as a standing bridge between those markets. The Art of Antiquing is a Round Pond, Maine antiques shop and warehouse specializing in hand-selected French, Italian, Spanish, and English furniture and fine art, curated by owner Margaret Brown through direct sourcing trips across Europe.
