07/24/2006 10:32 AM EDT

In a city filled with up-and-coming neighborhoods, Maria Bernal is staking a claim in a part of Providence that many pass through with some frequency, but few think of in terms of an upscale and cosmopolitan shop like her new Antiques & Interiors.

The store is on Ashburton Street -- and you may wonder, even if you have lived in Providence a long time: Where is that?

The long answer is that it is the back loop of Charles Street, the one-way section that brings you to Kelly's Carwash right at the on-ramp for Route 95, next to the railroad tracks, and not far from the main post office.

The short answer is that it's the street behind Amazing Video.

In a heavily trafficked, mostly industrial area like this, who would expect to come upon a shop like Bernal's?

Yet, there it is: A beacon of panache and chic, reflecting its owner's keen eye for good design of any period and in many price ranges, as well as her taste for the unusual and international.

Bernal, who owns the shop herself and runs it along with her little Shih Tzu dog Stitch, led a peripatetic existence before moving to Providence 14 years ago. Antiques & Interiors is her first retail venture; she has been a globetrotting publishing executive for a medical trade journal for many of those years.

The job took her to Prague, Istanbul, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark and Spain -- and she always kept an eye out for the great bargain, the good source, the exporter-importer who specialized in beautiful things at a good price.

She stockpiled, she sourced, and a couple of years ago she bought an old brick firehouse on Ashburton. Built around 1900, it had housed engines on the ground floor and stabled horses on the second. Later it had been a boiler factory, and recently an evangelical church.

In between trips abroad, Bernal fashioned the upstairs into her lofty living space, the back (which had been a parking lot) into a serenely Zen garden courtyard, and the first floor into an antiques shop that she opened about a month ago.

People who find the place can't believe that they are on Ashburton Street.

The shop specializes in large pieces of furniture, of periods from 18th century to the 1950s. Also rugs, tapestry hangings and draperies, chandeliers, fine art, and a few special gifts such as soy-based candles that burn 70 hours and have a heavenly scent ($25).

Bernal is the natural hub of a network of artists and artisans, both local and international, with whom she connects customers who have special desires. She doesn't take a "cut" of these connections. Rather, she wants to "create a community of outsources for good design."

Cabinetmaker Derek Preble, for instance, can design and make furniture to order.

Among the items now on the floor at Antiques & Interiors are a glove-soft vintage leather sofa ($800), a rosewood coffee table ($200), a red hot Chambers vintage stove ($2,500), chandeliers ranging from $300 to $12,000, and an inlaid mahogany sleigh bed ($5,000). Garden ornaments are integrated into the layered gardens of the courtyard in back. Among them are some fetching hand-made birdhouses by Claudia Arsenio ($150 to $175).

There is just no telling what you'll find at Antiques & Interiors: Among the few rules that Bernal observes is, "Everything functional -- no kitsch."

Antiques & Interiors, 65 Ashburton St., Providence. (401) 272-4441. Open Wed.-Sat. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. or by appointment.

-- KATHERINE IMBRIE