Milieu – Spring 2025

The Eye on the Prizes

Tara Shaw is a direct descendant of talented shoppers, a pedigree that has led to her recent collaboration with Century Furniture, itself a third-generation family-owned business. “My grandmother had a Ph.D. in shopping, as did my mother,” says Shaw with humor from her New Orleans showroom, her whippet Sister Lucca nestled against her (named for one of her favorite Italian cities). “My grandmother would literally take me out of school for the day when I was growing up in Baton Rouge so we could go shopping for pearls. We’d do comparative shopping expeditions when buying eggplants. And my mother was a talented real estate agent and painter. I feel that I was surrounded by strong women.”

For decades, Shaw has been what she calls a “guerilla antiquer,” scouring antiques markets in France, Italy, Sweden, and Belgium, driving for weeks at a time from village to village. On these shopping expeditions, she readily fills multiple forty-foot-cube containers of her finds—and upon shipping them to her New Orleans showroom, selling all of the goods sometimes within minutes. It’s not apocryphal that a line forms early in the morning outside her Garden District showroom when the word of new arrivals begins to circulate. “I felt that I had such a refined eye when it comes to finding antiques that I should probably start a furniture line.”

“It’s the exquisite European styling of the antiques that Tara finds and collects that was so highly appealing to Century Furniture,” says Alex Shuford III, President of Century Furniture. “What she has designed for the Tara Shaw Collection is more than 70 pieces, each of which offers a unique look and perspective.”

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WRITTEN BY DAVID MASELLO

This story appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of MILIEU.