“It was originally a general dealer, then a men’s bar, a wine bar, a place to buy picnics, a function space — but it never quite worked. Then it occurred to me that Stanford didn’t have a museum — so I turned it back into a general dealer — as a museum.”
A compulsive collector since the early 1990s, Penny van der Berg, owner of the Stanford Hotel, has had so much fun with this corner-store museum, sourcing goodies from across the country and describing it as, “A little bit Selfridges, a little bit Stuttafords, using my own poetic licence.”
“The hotel turns 100 years old in 2020, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate,” says Penny, who has collected wedding dresses, one from every decade since 1920, from across the country and from France, where her sister lives.
The display of mannequins, some with glass eyes, moulded shoes, flexible limbs, even a Twiggy lookalike, are a story in themselves.”
The Museum is open on Saturday mornings when the market takes place on the Hotel’s stoep. It is always open to Hotel guests.
