Rod Donaldson from Source Antiques is passionate about lights. "You can decorate and design a room to perfection but if you don't get the lighting right … lighting makes or breaks a room."
 
Anyone who thinks enamel lampshades from old factories is a new fad should have a chat with Rod Donaldson of Source Antiques. Retro Rod, king of the 1950s revival, first started selling ubiquitous green enamel factory lampshades forty years ago, and has a photograph to prove it.
 
Sitting drinking tea at a roadside cafe near his new premises in Brislington he shows me a photo of him and Philippa, his wife, standing on their Edinburgh street market stall selling bits and bobs of antiques and vintage clothes in 1975. He looks exactly like his son, Tom Donaldson, who is now a major part of Source Antiques.
 
"Moving to Bristol and this recent development of the business is ninety percent Tom." Rod explains "He's the driving force behind it all now. It's great. I like to sit around drinking tea and reminiscing about the old days." It is not true. The whole family work hard to ensure Source continues to stock a wide range of exciting, restored, rewired, reclaimed, antique, salvaged and vintage lighting - and the UK's main supplier of refurbished 1950s English Rose and Paul Metalcraft kitchens.
 
Source Antiques opened in Bath twenty years ago, after a stint at Walcot Joinery and Walcot Reclamation, Rod opened a small shop in Walcot Street, and then moved to Widcombe, a stone's throw from Bath Spa station, also renting some nearby basement workshops, and then, helped by Bath's MP, added a much bigger group of industrial units near Bath Recycling Centre where there was more room for workshops and storage.
 
Having spent years looking in Bath for a place to buy, Tom set his sights on Bristol. Rod says, "We found this old factory building just off the A4 into Bristol. It was built in 1956 when I was born, so it was meant to be!" The building has a corrugated iron arched ceiling with decorative wrought iron supports, a bit like a small version of an old train station."I love the ceiling here. It sold the building to me. This is a 1950's factory. I like to think that the English Rose kitchens would have been made in a place like this. It feels like English Rose is coming home."
 
The move from Bath to Bristol was a fairly easy decision to make, with many Source customers being Bristol-based. "Our clientele is eighty percent shop pub restaurant cafe business, twenty percent domestic. In lighting, we enjoy the innovative projects. We're investing in machinery to develop old European aluminium industrial pendant lights into side lamps, table lamps, wall lights and outside lights. The original lights come from Belgium, France, Poland, Hungary and South America."
 
Rod shows me a few more photos on his phone which appears to be full of photos of lights. "This one is made from an upside down fire extinguisher with a glass torch flamant shade attached on top." It looks like a surreal Victorian Olympic torch. "This one is a wall light made from an old metal parts tray, set in the wall with a bulb inside and a piece of toughened glass hanging in front. You can flip up the glass to change the bulb. They were made for a straw bale house."
 
From lights for straw bale houses, bars and restaurants, and 1950's kitchens for an 'Amazing Space' in a high spec mobile home owned by George Clarke, and the set of BBC's 'Call the Midwife', Source Antiques' clients reach far and wide.
 
"Look at this photo. This is the cast of Call the Midwife (which includes comedienne Miranda Hart) posing for us on set in front of one of kitchens. Tom and the boys in the workshop took a similar photo for them."
 
Rod and Tom hope to set up the new premises next month. "We'll have kitchen workshops, lighting workshops, an environmentally friendly dipping tank out the back, and a big beautifully designed and arranged stock room, which customers are welcome to come and see, and we will stock samples of restored antique radiators from The Old Radiator Company."