Historic Window of TNW’s Source Recovered

24 June 2019

TNW Australia’s proprietors Chris and Jane Noel were recently able to recover a shopfront window from the 1930’s that is closely associated with the birth of their business.

Chris’s grandfather, Antonio Faiella was born in Naples and grew up becoming a craftsman in “intarsia” the art of making patterns and images in wood. This was mainly used in furniture such as tables, bedheads and in decorative objects like storage boxes.

Tony originally migrated to New Zealand and then to Australia where he sought out some known contacts in Brisbane at Breakfast Creek, eventually meeting and marrying Chris’s grandmother Giuseppina (Josephine) Castagnola, who was born in Brisbane from an Italian family that had emigrated to Australia in the 1880’s.

Tony Faiella engaged in several businesses in Brisbane in the period 1914-1930 including selling his wares at local shows around South East Queensland. Chris’s grandmother tells the story of Tony returning from one such regional show and bemoaning that the public could not afford the larger works of “intarsia” he had made while people selling novelties and dolls on sticks at the show were doing a great trade.

Within a short period, Tony was importing show supplies and set up Faiella Enterprises as a wholesaler to the carnival and show trade. In a short period, his business was the number one supplier in this industry.

Tony was always ambitious and in the early 1930’s felt there were better business opportunities in Sydney – he and his wife packed up their family of five children and their business from Hutcheson Ave in Breakfast Creek in Brisbane, purchased a house in Kensington in Sydney and moved to Sydney in 1932.

Tony figured an auspicious opening day for the new business would be the day of the Opening of The Harbour Bridge. Accordingly, on 19th March 1932 as the Harbour Bridge was opened, “The Novelty Supply Store” opened its doors at 480 Pitt St, Sydney – in a small and sooty shop under the arches of Central Station just a stone’s throw from Railway Square. The same day his third child, Josephine (Chris’s mother) turned 10 years old.

The business grew in a larger city but unfortunately Tony died after about four or five years in Sydney and his wife Giuseppina looked after the business and her family through the late 1930’s, World War II and its aftermath.

In the later 1940’s Chris’s uncles Joe and Pat Faiella finished their war service in the Air Force and Army respectively and took over the business of The Novelty Supply Store – supplying the carnival trade all over Australia and with the family running many novelty stalls at The Royal Easter Show and the Brisbane Ekka. Their sister Rosa Driscoll joined the business in 1956 and she expanded into toy wholesaling and supply to social clubs.

By this time the store at 480 Pitt St was getting far too small and the family moved the business to 188 Goulburn Street renaming the main business Carnival and Toy Wholesalers Pty Ltd and over the next six years taking over three floors of that building. In about 1966 the family purchased a larger warehouse and moved the business to 4 Bridge Rd, Glebe – eventually renting and later buying 6 Bridge Rd.

Chris Noel, one the owners of TNW worked at Carnival and Toy Wholesalers through holidays from the age of 12 and during his time at university. After working locally and overseas for a major accounting firm and some banks Chris returned to Australia and worked as a partner in Carnival and Toy for 10 years.

In 1983 Chris left and set up a business to service retailers with novelty gifts, accessories and toys (The Novelty Warehouse – TNW Australia Pty Ltd) in conjunction with his second cousin from Brisbane, Ian Stanislao. Ian and Chris imported their products together and serviced different states through TNW and Ian’s company, Jack in the Box Toys and Novelties. The importing venture finished in 1989 and Ian and Chris decided that they had grown enough to each do their own thing.

Chris at work at the TNW office in 2019

While the original business started by Chris’s grandfather in the 1920’s and moved to Sydney in 1932 no longer exists, its offshoots, TNW Australia Pty Ltd and Jack in The Box Toys and Novelties Pty Ltd continue the tradition started by Tony Faiella nearly 100 years ago.