Latest Crown Street addition Glass Et Cetera is a hole in a the wall shop brimming with hand-picked antique glassware, that was once the personal collection of owner Jenny Tran Hanssen.
In her other life Jenny Tran Hanssen is a criminal defence lawyer and owner of her own law firm, but she has also turned part time glassware retailer. Jenny has always had a passion for design and antiques, having studied and collected homewares and art in the past.
“I’ve lived in a lot of places around the world, we moved around a lot and everywhere we lived we would acquire a lot of glass and vintage things. Anything antique I love!” says Jenny.
The stock at Glass Et Cetera was once Jenny’s own personal collection, which she hopes to give new life and new love through her shop. According to Jenny: “Everything has a story.”
Glass Et Cetera was established partly out of a COVID-19 inspired whim. Jenny says: “During COVID, my husband, my dog and I were just walking down Crown St on our COVID walk, and we saw this shop and at the time it was a pop-up student gallery, and I said ‘This is it! This is the shop!’”
“I had no intention of opening a shop, I don’t have retail experience, I’ve never owned a shop. But I thought, I already have all this glassware, this shop is perfect…”
For Jenny, Glass Et Cetera is an opportunity to share beauty with the local community and offer a way of breathing life and colour into people’s lives.
“I think that we had a huge movement of minimalism, of white, beige and black. But during COVID, when people were stuck at home staring at a beige wall, they want colour, something to motivate and stimulate them” says Jenny.
In future, Glass Et Cetera hopes to expand into other neighbourhoods in an effort to spread a love of sustainable antique pieces.
