London toy 'shop' window where nothing is for sale

LONDON — With its twinkling Christmas fairy lights and nostalgic array of vintage toys, the window of one London "shop" never fails to enchant passers-by.

A Punch and Judy puppet, old board games, model trains and planes, papier mache masks adorn the window of Number 43, Camden Passage in the north London neighbourhood of Islington.

Would-be shoppers intrigued by the quirky collection immediately start searching for the entrance.

But Number 43 is not a shop and nothing here is for sale -- to the huge disappointment of the excited children who press their noses up against the glass.

The adjacent blue door with its festive wreath remains firmly closed and no one answers the bell.

Sandwiched between a Chipotle Mexican grill and a jewellery store, neighbouring shopkeepers say people are forever asking where the entrance is.

In fact, the property is the former home of Bob Borzello, 88, and the window display is the result of a lifetime obsession with collecting, or "accumulating", as he prefers to call it.

"Everyone comes and says, 'Oh look at that, I wonder when they're open'," his daughter-in-law Belle Benson, 51, who recently took over the displays with her daughter, told AFP.

"People just like it, especially little children," added Borzello.

The property was once home to a poster shop where Borzello and his former wife sold pin-ups of iconic figures like Che Guevara.

Originally from Chicago, the former businessman and tabloid newspaper editor came to London in the 1960s to study at the London School of Economics.

After a short spell back in Chicago he and his now ex-wife returned to settle in London in 1967 and ran the poster shop and a print business from the property.

Accumulator

All along, however, Borzello was "accumulating" his vast collection of items picked up in antique shops and junk sales.

"The fun of it is looking around and finding it... a lot of it is just things I find interesting," he said.

A decade ago Borzello began displaying the items, and the window in the property he still owns is now something of an Islington institution.

The toy collection began with airplane models which are soon to be the subject of another themed display.

As well as toys, Borzello has accumulated lots of souvenir items from the late Queen Elizabeth II's coronation.

Other collections include clocks, badges, wedding cake toppers, shop mannequins, his children's old school reports, even his old Covid tests, which he has lined up next to his phone.

The fireplace in Borzello's nearby flat is surrounded by all things green, from glass vases and ornaments to ladies' shoes, hats and necklaces.

He says he thinks he picked up the "collecting gene" from his Italian-American mother and that his children are also collectors in different ways.

"My daughter, she's a 'mudlark' and she's got her whole house filled with things that she's got from the [River] Thames," he said, referring to people who search for treasures on the shores of rivers.

His "minimalist" son, meanwhile, has "gone the other way", although he "picks up everybody else's dying plants and nurses them back to life", making him a collector of a different kind, he said.

Despite his lifelong dislike of throwing anything away, Borzello laughed when Belle revealed she recently found him "slaving over the shredder".

He admitted he was shredding his old love letters so his grandchildren can't read them after his death, although he has insisted on keeping the shreds.

"I just have a hard time getting rid of things," he said.