STEVE KAUFMAN | contributing photographer

Frankfort Avenue was once a toll road for horseback riders and carriages between Louisville and St. Matthews. And some of those original buildings still remain. It seems a perfect location for Clarence Smith’s Dover House Antiques & Mercantile, set in a Federal-era townhouse on the corner of Frankfort and South Bellaire avenues.

Smith opened the store in 2003, in a former artist’s studio and residence, to pursue his lifelong interest in early American antiques. As a boy in rural Tennessee, he used to accompany his parents to country estate auctions.

“My father would buy tools and farm animals,” Smith recalled, “and my mother would buy antiques.”

He came to Louisville with Brown-Forman, working in finance. But he saw a void in high-end gifts and accessories, especially after the shuttering of Jacobson’s. So he fell back on his years in product development and store planning at Hartmann Luggage, a former division of Brown-Forman, and opened his bright and elegant store.

The merchandise is a mix of period antiques and giftware lines, but everything is tastefully presented. And it’s unique, even in collection-mad Louisville, because it’s specialized.

“There’s great interest here in English and Continental items, but nobody before focused on American antiques,” he said.

STEVE KAUFMAN | contributing photographer Clarence Smith owns Dover House Antiques & Mercantile.

Smith’s gift and bridal registry encourages people to come into the store for tabletop and home accessories items.

“It’s an opportunity to educate people, to show them how to mix what they own, inherit and buy,” Smith said.

The goods go far beyond antiques. There are also artistic, upscale lines like Simon Pearce hand-blown glass, Juliska ceramics, Match pewter, Good Earth pottery, Michael Aram tabletop items and John Derian decoupage, which applies authentic antique lithographs to plates, trays and the like.

“I know the artists personally,” Smith said, “so I can give people the story of the workmanship, how the glass is blown by hand.”

There’s also furniture, candles, robes, towels and other unique items, plus free gift wrapping and local delivery.

The residential feel of the space – with its wood floors, big windows, stairways and multiple rooms – allows Smith to present the goods as they might look in someone’s home.

He feels the collection craze has been spurred by TV shows like “Antiques Roadshow,” which makes people more careful about disposing of family items. But he also worries that it has made people think of antiques as expensive.

“Actually, they’re quite a good investment,” he said. “You can almost always sell them for more than you paid.”

Dover House is at 2000 Frankfort Ave., 899-1699.