Inside Tallahassee’s Midcentury Modern Furnishing Store, Rare Bird Interiors

​​With a slam of her cargo van’s trunk, the turn of the key in the ignition and the burn of tires hitting hot the Florida pavement, Jackie Skelding took off on a 24-hour trek from her home in the Florida Panhandle, cruised along the Gulf of Mexico and ended up just shy of the U.S.-Mexico border in Southwest Texas. The goal? Score one-of-a-kind midcentury furniture.“You have to go out to source and find all the different items because they don’t just fall in your lap,” Skelding explains. “Somebody could call me at 3 a.m. and I’d go. It wouldn’t matter.”

“You have to go out to source and find all the different items because they don’t just fall in your lap,” Skelding explains. “Somebody could call me at 3 a.m. and I’d go. It wouldn’t matter.”

She doesn’t remember her haul from that mission to the border. It might have included a teak credenza, a Danish daybed or a Malm fireplace begging to be connected to a butterfly roofline with its bold metal flue—all sought-after pieces from another era that have entered and exited the doors of her furnishings and design studio Rare Bird Interiors in Tallahassee.

Skelding’s foray into retro furniture reselling began five years ago with a string of trips much like this one—hurried and full of excitement. “When I first started out, I had a little Volkswagen Rabbit hatchback, and I would shove literally anything I could inside,” she recalls. “I remember distinctly driving down Tennessee Street in Tallahassee holding a giant painting to the roof of my car because it wouldn’t fit, so I strapped it to the roof using Christmas garland and then (held) onto it with one hand while I drove with the other. You just do whatever it takes, especially when you’re first starting out.”

But her obsession with everything ’50s, ’60s and ’70s style began even earlier: first, while thrifting and reselling clothing as a teen and then as a student at Florida State University studying retail merchandising. Skelding opened her first vintage store, Curio, in 2014 during her senior year of college. Instead of doing a mandatory internship, a 21-year-old Skelding decided to pour her savings into the shop, filled with fashion and gifts. “I do not recommend this as a business plan,” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t walk in my graduation because I was working at the shop.”

Her dedication paid off, and the boutique became a mainstay in Tallahassee’s arts enclave, Railroad Square. “It was just kind of a place where it felt like anything was possible,” she says.

Skelding’s love for vintage midcentury design didn’t waver, but her fixations within that scope did evolve from clothing to furniture. Seven years after starting Curio, Skelding opened the first location of Rare Bird Interiors next door. Customers could jump between vibrant vintage vetements in one storefront to stately ’60s sectionals just a few steps away. Tallahassee quickly embraced Skelding’s elevated eye for interior design. The entrepreneur opened Rare Bird’s second location in a white brick building in Midtown just two years later.

But on a windy May morning in 2024, multiple tornadoes ripped through Tallahassee for nearly half an hour, with winds exceeding 100 miles per hour. “(It) took all of our inventory from the original location because our skylights blew out and it rained inside the store for three days. We lost just about everything.”

While the storm ruined Skelding’s collection, her building remained intact. Her now-husband, Gregg Pla, owner of a nearby antiques and architectural salvage store, was less lucky; Skelding closed Curio and Rare Bird’s Railroad Square location, gave the space to Pla, and focused all her attention on her Midtown shop.

When stepping inside Rare Bird’s Sixth Avenue storefront, there’s no mistaking that Skelding, 32, is the Capital City’s preeminent midcentury expert. The space is a masterclass in mod merchandising, with a curated collection that avoids the pitfalls of the reductive ideas of ’50s and ’60s style—no kitschy boomerangs or fake flower power here. “A lot of times people assume that midcentury modern is just like the set of ‘Mad Men,’” she explains. “But there’s so much more variety … you have all these tangential styles, materials, ones that lean more organic, or wabi-sabi, or Scandinavian or Italian midcentury modern.”

Skelding’s sourcing looks a lot different than it did in those early days. There are no more midnight rides to Mexico or holding onto hatchbacks for dear life. She has cemented herself as a fixture in the Tallahassee design community, and those rare finds seem to find her instead. It’s a talent and taste that extends beyond her business and into her own home, built in an angular style and complete with a 1963 Eames lounge chair and ottoman she says she’ll never part with.

“I think part of why Rare Bird works, and the same reason (our) home works so well, is because it’s not trying to be a set,” she says. “I make Rare Bird, essentially, in my best possible way, feel like a home.”

---

For the latest in Florida chic, click here.

---