Liave Home arrives Downtown, uniting luxury and affordability in home accessories and furnishings

For so many of us, boutiques are a window-shopping-only proposition, but Cornelia Veit, owner of Downtown's new Liave Home, is looking to change all that.

"Everyone should be able to afford beautiful things," says the German-born proprietress, who looks for small-scale artists in the United States and Europe to help keep her prices affordable. "My pricing's made for the consumer at the bottom of the high end."

That means cashmere shopping bags for $34 and pretty Indian and Tibetan silk scarves for less than $20, along with a rainbow of hand-blown glass vases from Japan ($200 or less).

Sure, there are occasional splurges -- like the German-designed "Private Cloud" bed, a circular wooden bed that rocks its inhabitant gently to sleep and retails for thousands of dollars, or the sturdy, handmade concrete tables from the store's signature line, Holmes Wilson ($2,900). But these big-ticket items are the exception, not the rule.

The drive behind the store's pretty-yet-affordable philosophy is Veit's mission to find beautiful bargains around the world. She goes to trade shows in her native Germany to hear about small European artists, and calls on her stacked Rolodex when all else fails. "I've wanted this store and have been collecting addresses for so long," she says.

Following her around the store, a customer learns the story behind every product, like the linens from a female-only business in Lithuania, or the bowls from a ninth-generation Greek potter. It helps that all of her items are beautifully displayed on tables accompanied with vases of flowers. Art from English artist Bella Bixbie lightens the walls.

Veit discovered the space herself and worked with her husband and a few friends to bring it up to speed, including laying the wood floors herself. The result is a labor of love that we can all appreciate.

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