Keeppley
Keeppley Fashion Department Store Set C0105
Keeppley's Fashion Department Store is a City Corner model built from 389 blocks, measuring 17.5 Γ 9.7 Γ 9.8 cm assembled, with display windows and a fitted interior. Age 6+.
Somebody had to invent the shop window
Plate glass and the idea of using it to sell things arrived together in the nineteenth century, and the change was larger than it sounds.
Before that, a shop was a counter. Goods were behind it, kept by the shopkeeper, and you asked for what you wanted β which meant you had to know what you wanted, and you had to talk to somebody to find out what was there. Nobody browsed, because there was nothing to browse.
The department stores changed it. Le Bon MarchΓ© in Paris from the 1850s, then Wanamaker's, Marshall Field's and Selfridges, built their business on the opposite principle: fixed prices marked on the goods, everything on open display, and no obligation to buy anything.
Harry Gordon Selfridge is credited with saying that customers should be free to look without being pestered, and he put his best merchandise in enormous street windows that were lit after closing β so that the shop was still selling at ten at night to people walking past.
That is why this model has windows at the front and why every shop since has. Before 1850 it would have made no commercial sense at all.
Eleven shops that make a street
City Corner sets stand shoulder to shoulder β narrow shopfronts around 18 to 20 cm tall with flat side walls. A run of four or five becomes a terrace, and reads as a place in a way one building never does.
The others are the dessert house (C0101), cafΓ© (C0102), cosmetics store (C0103), florist (C0104), bookshop (C0107), teddy store (C0109), luxury store (C0110) and styling hall (C0111).
Specifications
Pieces: 389 Β· Series: Keeppley City Corner Β· Display windows and fitted interior Β· Age: 6+
Model dimensions: 17.5 Γ 9.7 Γ 9.8 cm (6.9 Γ 3.8 Γ 3.9 in)
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