Farm Chic: A Shopping Party to Benefit Berkshire Grown
Dai Ban's sterling charms ($65) designed exclusively for Berkshire Grown
“Farm Chic” may sound like an oxymoron, but the organizers of Sunday’s jewelry party at Allium restaurant for Berkshire Grown are very serious—and stylish— fundraisers. “The title is tongue in cheek,” says Barbara Zheutlin, the executive director of Berkshire Grown, the not-for-profit that champions local agriculture and cooking, which recently lost significant state funding. “Our board thought we could have some fun by selling jewelry and accessories to raise the $3,500 we need to publish our annual Farm to Table Directory, which brings together farmers and chefs, making it possible for restaurants to serve as much local food as possible and helping to keep small farmers in business.”
Laurily Epstein, vice president of the Berkshire Grown board, got the idea for Farm Chic when she discovered a bag of costume jewelry that she no longer wore in the back of her closet, and she envisioned a charity swap meet. “I figured every woman has a bag like that, and we could have a sale to raise money,” says Epstein (modeling jewelry near right with Robin Ban and Hester Velmans), who notes that the donated items come in every imaginable style and range in price from $2 to $50. Her fellow committee members were so enthusiastic about the concept that they decided to add new jewelry and accessories to the mix, including work by local artisans such as Stephanie Iverson. Saskia Laraz, Stephanie Gravalese, Crispina ffrench, and Sonya Mackintosh of smARTWORKS (who will donate 20 percent of their sales on Sunday to BG.) Allium owner Nancy Thomas is not only donating her restaurant but also nibbles to nosh while shopping.
The organizers are especially excited about the line of sterling silver charms ($65 each) that Great Barrington sculptor Dai Ban (left) has designed exclusively for Berkshire Grown, which will be sold on an ongoing basis. “He’s designed five to start and he plans to create a new one for us each year so you can add to your charm bracelet,” says Epstein,. The charms include an apple, a pig, a wedge of cheese, and a pitch fork. “You could wear one or two on a cord around your neck,” says Epstein. Now, that’s what we call Farm Chic.
Farm Chic Jewelry & Accessories Sale
February 28; 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Allium
42 Railroad Street, Great Barrington.
Free admission
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/24/10 at 12:31 PM • Permalink
Everybody’s All American: Paul Rich & Sons
Tom and Pam Rich at Paul Rich & Sons in Pittsfield.
Tom Rich has been betting on North Street’s renaissance for 27 years. When he and his parents, Paul and Betty Rich, opened their furniture store, Paul Rich & Sons, in 1983, “Pittsfield was still a GE town,” recalls Rich. “The England Brothers department store was still open down the street.” The home furnishings industry was still dominated by full-service department stores and independent retailers that sold dining room tables and club chairs manufactured mostly in Michigan and North Carolina. (It wasn’t until 1989, for instance, that specialty retailers like Crate & Barrel started selling furniture.) “There are very few full-service, family-run stores like ours left,” says Rich.
Improbably, Paul Rich & Sons has prospered in Pittsfield even when the city hasn’t. “Just as GE was shutting down, the second home boom was happening and that saved us,” says Rich, who notes he has seven full-time designers on staff to help customers with space planning and choosing fabrics. “We have a lot of customers from beyond the Berkshires, especially in Columbia County. The second-home customers like doing business with us so much that they started asking if we would deliver to Manhattan, New Jersey and Long Island. Now, we send a truck down to the New York City area a couple of times a month.”
To keep customers coming back, Paul Rich & Sons has increased its offerings. “As everyone else was grading down, we were grading up,” says Rich. “We still have furniture for the solid middle-class customers,” he says, pointing to a $999 sofa by Lee Industries, “but we also became higher end.” As the store expanded from 10,000 square feet to 30,000 square feet (and finally added air conditioning a few years ago), Paul Rich & Sons started selling room-sized Oriental rugs as well as outdoor furniture by prestige companies like Brown Jordan and Barlow Tyrie. “For five months of the year, we devote nearly one-third of the store to outdoor furniture,” he says. “It’s become one of our biggest categories.” Ekornes recliners from Norway are also a top-seller, but Rich is especially proud of the high-end Shifman mattresses that have a large display on the store’s lower level. “Would you believe they’re handmade in Newark, New Jersey?” he says.
Although it’s a challenge, Paul Rich & Sons makes a concerted effort to find American made products such as the tiger maples dining room tables made by D.R. Dimes in Northwood, New Hampshire. “He still delivers the tables to us personally, and I write him a check on the spot,” says Rich. “We do business the old fashioned way.”
Tom and his wife, Pam, who both grew up in Pittsfield, are heartened by the North Street revival. “We’re so happy that we can recommend many places within walking distance for our customers to have lunch,” says Pam. Indeed, when the couple went to have lunch across the street at Spice when it opened nearly four years ago, they sat at a window table looking at their own store and realized the exterior was looking tired. “That’s when we decided to make an investment in all the new awnings,” says Tom.
Even as they add classic modern pieces by Bertoia and Saarinen for Knoll, they remain traditionalists who take pride in selling American-made furniture. As Pam was getting ready for the annual Presidents’ Day Weekend sale, she did an inventory and made a pleasant discovery. “We still have 18 lines that are Made in America which gave us our sale’s theme,” she says. “What could be more appropriate for President’s Day?”
MADE IN THE USA
Brown Street Whitefield, NH
Bucks County Telford, PA
Charleston Forge Boone, NC
D.R. Dimes Northwood, NH
Flat Rock Waldron, IN
Hancock & Moore Highpoint, NC
Harden McConnesville, NY
Hickory Chair Hickory, NC
Lee Industries Newton, NC
MacKenzie-Dow Huntington, WV
Pearson High Point, NC
Sherill Hickory, NC
Shifman Mattress Newark, NJ
Stanley Stanleytown, VA
Vermont Woodcraft Whiting, VT
Vermont Tubbs Whitefield, NH
Zimmerman Chair Lebanon, PA
Paul Rich & Sons
242 North Street, Pittsfield, MA; 800-723-7424
Monday - Saturday: 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Sunday: noon - 4 p.m.
Presidents’ Day Sale: February 11 - 15
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 02/10/10 at 08:37 AM • Permalink
RI Selects: Bye-Bye USBluesware, a Retirement Celebration Sale
USBluesware, the women’s clothing store on North Street in downtown Pittsfield, will be closing for good on Saturday, February 27th. Owners Giora Witkowski and Linda Mitchell will be retiring from the retail store, which has provided a unique shopping destination in Pittsfield for gently used clothing and accessories from top designers.
A Retirement Celebration Sale, with discounts of up to 75% off, is now in full swing and will continue until closing day at the end of next month. When Mitchell spoke to Rural Intelligence on Wednesday after closing, she said they had, in the pre-owned clothing category, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Armani, Escada, St. John Knits, and Dolce & Gabanna for up to 50% off their already deeply discounted prices, compared to new. All shoes, new and pre-owned (by Stuart Weitzman, Escada, Furla, Farragamo, and Prada) are 75% off. And there are many new clothes, handbags, scarves & shawls by designers whose names are not household words. Most jewelry is new, though there are a few vintage things—all 25% off.
“We hadn’t really planned on this,” says Mitchell. “But I read that Persnickety Toys in North Adams was expanding, so I called them, and within a week, we had a signed lease.”
USBluesware
141 North Street
Pittsfield, MA 413.442.5533
Monday - Friday 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10:30 a.m. - 4 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 01/13/10 at 05:53 PM • Permalink
RI Selects: Gift Giving with Charity in Mind
There’s nothing more wonderful than wandering around one of the three Hammertown Barn stores looking for the right gift, but owner Joan Osofsky has recognized that her customers often don’t have the luxury of time for old-fashioned shopping trips. As she ventures into e-commerce, she has partnered with other local businesses to sell gift cards online with 10% being donated to the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, So if you’re out of time or out of ideas, you can buy gift cards singly or in bundles from Hammertown, Stissing House, Pine Plains Fine Wines, No. 9 Restaurant, and The Moviehouse
If you do want to do some sidewalk strolling for a good cause, the merchants of Upper North Street in Pittsfield have created Berkshire Museum Appreciation Week. Shop & dine at participating stores and restaurants on Upper North Street (including Ferrin Gallery and Museum Facsimiles) and 10% of your purchase goes to the Museum when you show your membership card or Festival of Trees admission receipt.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 12/17/09 at 08:50 AM • Permalink
RI Selects: Special Shopping Opportunities
Friday, December 18 - Sunday, December 20 @ 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
The late, lamented Red Hook store Basic French, closed last summer, it’s owner Carol Neiley heeding an inner voice that whispered, “Move to France.” Fortunately, for those addicted to Basic French’s products of la vie quotidienne (everyday life), they are still available through the Basic French website. Now Carol is returning briefly to host a holiday sale in a pop-up store in her old neighborhood. She writes, “There are going to be some antiques and vintage linens but mostly new things that I have found this Fall and then of course all the old standbys—soap and toiletries, linens, linen water, etc. We are setting up a real store, right behind the Village Hall (lovely brick building) and directly across from the village parking lot (free!!). I will be there with all your favorite soaps from Savonnerie de Bormes, body lotions, linen waters and hundreds of new things I have shipped back over the last few months. Exquisite gift wrapping by Barb, naturally. So come and celebrate with us. I can’t wait to catch up with everyone! A bientot, Carol.”
Basic French Holiday Sale
6 Prince Street, Red Hook, NY
Saturday, December 19 @ 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
“Scarf” seems a woefully inadequate word: Knitted neckgear by SmARTWORKS is too exuberant for such a tame word, having a similar face-framing, uplifting effect on an ensemble that an Elizabethan ruff once did. These and other delightful knitted gift items will be available for sale on Saturday at this wholesaler’s open house at The Annex, adjacent to their Sheffield workrooms.
SmARTWORKS Open House
The Annex
534 South Main Street,
Sheffield, MA; 413.229.2130
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 12/13/09 at 09:38 PM • Permalink
A New Attitude and New Stores in New Preston
The village of New Preston, CT, looks like a movie set with its 18th and 19th century storefronts decorated with evergreen garlands and little white lights—the kind of village where you imagine it always snows on Christmas Eve. It’s long been a stylish mecca with residents like the late Bill Blass whose chic chums included Conde Nast creative director Alexander Lieberman, and the fashion designers Diane Von Furstenberg and Oscar de la Renta. For many years, New Preston was dominated by the sort of antique shops favored by Social Register types, but as country style has evolved so has the New Preston retail scene. In the past two months, three new shops have opened, which has given tradition-minded New Preston a fresh, fun sensibility.
Loam
Beth Fowler, a former fashion stylist from the West Cost whose clients included Eastern Mountain Sports, and her husband, Ryan, a contractor and stone mason, had an epiphany when their house in Washington, CT, burned down a year and a half ago, and they had to replace everything they owned. “We decided we wanted to be much more green and buy recycled and vintage stuff or things that were hand made,” she says. “We did not want to buy things that were mass produced.” Her new store reflects a hipster spin on eco-friendly style: vintage dresses from the 1960s, carpet bags made from recycled tarps and decorated with crewelwork, a papier-mâché bull’s head from the 1909 Danbury Fair, a vintage Royal manual typewriter, Chinoiserie objets d’art, hand-knit sweaters and the jewelry that Fowler started making as therapy after the fire. “Whether it’s new or old, I can tell you the story behind every thing in this store,” she says.
13 East Shore Road; 860.619.0707
Wednesday - Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
New Preston Dry Goods
John Paparazzi hadn’t planned on opening a shop when he bought and renovated 13 East Shore Road. “But I didn’t want this storefront to stay empty all winter so I decided to open my own place,” says Paparazzi, a private art dealer, who used to run a gallery down the street, and opened New Preston Dry Goods on November 7. “I want this to be a store where you will be entertained and pick up something that will amuse you,” he says. Paparazzi is making a very good case for recreational retail, He has a fascination with industrial modernism and vintage futurism, which includes toy robots and chrome-and-aluminum World War II aircraft chairs. His shop is truly eclectic: He sells handknit children’s sweaters, Silly Puppets (“I thought they’d look great in the window”), rugelach baked in Brooklyn by Margaret Palca, and Farm Dog artisan, grain-free biscuits for your pet. “I want this store to to make shopping fun.”
13 East Shore Road; 646.319.8557
Sunday - Wednesday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Thursday - Sunday 10:30 - 5 p.m.
Sweets
Joan Adler and Dana Schulman understand the crossover between special occasions and everyday luxuries. As the respective owners of Personal Best Monogram Shoppe in Washington Depot and D.K. Schulman stationers in Marble Dale, they are experts in the Litchfield County retail scene and they realized that a high-end candy boutique was just what New Preston needed. “I’ve always had beautiful boxes of candy in my windows for the holidays and it always sells well,” says Adler, who says they put the store together in just three weeks, opening on Thanksgiving weekend. “The response has been phenomenal. We sold out of handmade marshmallows the first day!” she says. The store carries fancy chocolates from Italy and France and also sells old-fashioned penny candy. She expects the store to be busy all year long. “Thank God there are so many holidays and special occasions,” she says. “Candy is always a happy gift.”
13 East Shore Road; 860.868.3388
Holiday Hours through December 24:
Wednesday - Sunday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Oldies But Goodies: Other New Preston Shops
Dawn Hill Antiques
11 Main Street; 860.868.0066
Swedish and French antiques as well as ceramics by Frances Palmer.
Firehouse
15 East Shore Road; 860.868.6838
Fashionable things for women, men, children and the house.
J. Seitz & Co.
9 East Shore Road; 860.868.0119
Home furnishings and men’s and women’s country clothing with an urbane flair.
New Preston Kitchen Goods
11 East Shore Road; 860.868.1264
A local alternative to Williams-Sonoma.
Pergola
7 East Shore Raod; 860.868.4769
A house-and-garden store for any season.
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Posted by Dan Shaw on 12/07/09 at 12:52 PM • Permalink
RI Selects: Ladies Night at Hammertown
Friday, December 11 @ 5 - 8 p.m.
We’re ardent feminists, of course, but we’re willing to overlook inequality when it comes to preferential discounts. On Friday, December 11, Joan Osofsky is having a hen party in her barn—Hammertown Barn, that is, her wonderful home furnishings store in Pine Plains. For the occasion, she has invited Annie Walwyn-Jones to add her beautiful bespoke dresses, skirts, scarves, pants, and hats to the profusion, and everything is 10 - 15% off. To make it all especially festive, Joan will be serving prosecco and hors d’ouvres. So grab a gaggle of girlfriends and go!
Hammertown Barn
3201 Route 199
Pine Plains, NY 12567
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 12/06/09 at 08:15 AM • Permalink
RI Selects: Rich, Creamy Cashmere Sample Sale
Now - December 24
Non-fat and delicious: a cash-‘n’-carry, high-end cashmere sample sale at a Hudson pop-up store. It takes 24 goats a year to grow enough cashmere to make a coat, eight to make a sweater. Little wonder the real deal costs so much. But not here. This 60-year-old, family-owned, high-end cashmere firm (not Laura Piana, but close) buys cashmere and camel hair directly from Mongolian herdsman and turns it into woven fabrics and knitted accessories that end up at the likes of Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. On opening day of this not-be-be-missed event, actress Parker Posey and ABC news anchor Deborah Roberts were spotted with armloads of sweaters, $75 - $125; coats, $50; cashmere-lined deerskin gloves, $35; scarfs, $30 - $45; shawls, $7 - $150; oversized throws, $150; even doggie coats, $20. Stock will be renewed this Thursday. —Kate Cohen
Cashmere Sample Sale
533 Warren Street
Hudson, NY
Open daily; minimal stock until Friday, December 4
11 a.m. - 6 p.m. (Open until 8:30 p.m. on Saturday for Winter Walk)
518.965.4412
Cash only.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/25/09 at 03:36 PM • Permalink
Chris Lehrecke: A Design Star Shines on Warren Street
Knowing shoppers watch Warren Street with all the urgency that baseball fans bring to the World Series. Something exciting seems to happen there nearly every day, but no day outshines the recent one when designer Chris Lehrecke opened his eponymous shop. Lehrecke’s work, which normally is available only to-the-trade through the prestigious Ralph Pucci showrooms, is art historical. His name will go down in the annals of furniture-and-lighting design alongside the giants who inspired him—George Nakashima, Hans Wagner and Jean Prouve. He shares his space with two no-less outstanding talents, jewelry-and-decorative-object designer Ted Muehling and Muehling’s former pupil (and Lehrecke’s wife) jewelry designer Gabriella Kiss. All three artisans’ work is inspired by
nature, so, despite the disparity in scale, everything in the store seems to be of a piece—a refined forest of trees, stumps, rocks, shells, insects, and eggs. Their presence on Warren only cements the improbable notion that this 2-mile thoroughfare in the seat of a rural county in upstate New York has become a world-class destination for connoisseurs.
Apart from the evident influence of the mid-20th-century modernists, Lehrecke work reflects African, Japanese, and Shaker design traditions. “All the woods I use are collected from within a 50-mile radius of here,” he says.
Gabriella Kiss studied sculpture at Pratt Institute, where she learned the wax-model casting technique that makes her jewelry so distinctive.
Ted Muehling’s oxidized bronze candlesticks offer 17 variations on three basic shapes—an egg, an attenuated rod, and a trumpet. The darkened bronze accentuates the silhouette.
Lehrecke’s shop is filled with spare, well-made things, such as his lamps with translucent shades made from wood veneers 1⁄42-inch thick, that appear to be neither the product of this moment nor any particular one in the past. The handmade mirrors by Old Chatham resident Maureen Fullam, for example, are spartan and frameless, yet their silvering is cloudy and mottled, making them appear at once poetic and antique yet modern.
Lehrecke and Kiss live and work in the Dutchess County hamlet of Bangall, and the shop is part of the couple’s recent effort to be more connected to the area. Red Devon, a locavore restaurant in Bangall, commissioned Lehrecke to design lighting fixtures for its dining room, a project he found particularly satisfying. “I’d like the store to turn into a lab, where I can try new things,” he says. “Even now, there are a lot of one-of-a-kind pieces there.”
Chris Lehrecke
428 Warren Street, Hudson; 845.802.6187
Thursday - Sunday, noon - 5 p.m.
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Posted by Marilyn Bethany on 11/10/09 at 07:46 AM • Permalink
Germain: Great Barrington’s New House of Style
Albert, Letteron & Baier photographed by Martin Albert
You wouldn’t be surprised to find a loft-like store with a rural-zen aesthetic on Warren Street in Hudson, but in Great Barrington it feels like a world of wonder. “A woman came in this weekend and said, I feel like I’m in Brooklyn,” says Elena Letteron, who opened Germain a few weeks ago with Julia Baier and Anne Johnston Albert. (And in case you somehow missed the status update, “Brooklyn” now signifies edgy, alternative style in every imaginable discipline, so Letteron took the remark as a compliment.)
Germain is a multidisciplinary retail experience. It has antiques, upholstered furniture, glassware, fashion and art. It started with Elena Letteron wanting to expand beyond Metropolitain, her antiques shop on Route 7 (across from Ward’s Nursery) that specializes in the sort of French flea market finds that look appropriate in an American farmhouse. “When the building behind us became available, I was worried about what type of tenant might move in,” she says. But Letteron did not want to take on a big rent by herself, so she asked Julia Baier, who knits wearable and functional art, if she would like to share studio-and-retail space in the barn-like building. When Anne Johnston Albert, a fashion designer who once had her own boutique in New York’s East Village, heard that the two stylish women would be sharing space, she approached Letteron about joining them. “I kind of butted my way in,” Albert says.
Letteron, who’s an interior designer as well as an antiques dealer, has painted the cement floors and some of the walls a green-gray that looks like the bark of trees; it’s the perfect backdrop for mid-century and industrial-style furniture as well as one-of-a-kind pottery by Frances Palmer and cryptic painted signs—Zero Rejects, Redundant Sea, Of the Beholder ($895 each)—by Housatonic artist Carol Gingles. It’s also an ideal environment for Albert’s blouses, dresses and blue jeans that carry the “Martin” label which she chose in homage to her husband, Martin Albert, a cinematographer and graphic designer (who took the photographs here.) Though she was best known in New York for her slim jeans (“I like a good fit,” she says), her most popular jeans in the Berkshires are the wide-leg indigo at $195. “You can wear them everyday or wear them to a dinner party,” she says. A flirty wrap dress is $195 and a cotton blouse is $70. “I was hoping I could have everything made in the Berkshires but for now it’s being made in New York City,” says Albert, who keeps a sewing machine in her studio that overlooks the old Barrington Fairgrounds.
Julia Baier’s knitting studio also overlooks the fairgrounds and she has some art pieces hanging on the wall. Outside in the main store, there are cable-knit pillows made of local organic wool and backed with antique linen ($225.) “A lot of things that are ‘hand-made’ are knit on machines and then assembled by hand, but I knit these myself and I think you can really feel and see the difference,” she says. The pillows are displayed on top of the organic W J Southard mattresses that Germain is selling. “It’s the most comfortable mattress ever!” she says. The synergy at Germain suggests a sorority house of style, where women (and men) can find clothing and home furnishings for contemporary country life. “We inspire each other and give each other ideas,” says Letteron. “We want to share that.”
Germain
635 Main Street, Great Barrington; 413.644.8688
Friday & Saturday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Sunday 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Or by appointment
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