Terrace Oaks Antique Mall's 20th Anniversary

(Click on any image to enlarge. Above: The twentieth anniversary sale at Terrace Oaks Antique Mall....an image of several dealers! From left to right, standing in rear: ME!, Marcia Martin, Trisha Greenburg, Camille Wish (Owner with her "shop dog" Daisy), Maria Schendzelous, Gloria Lombard, Patty Hildreth, and Mary Bisset. In front, Grace Wish (Camille's mother....and about the nicest lady on earth!) with Thomas "Jefferson"...another "shop dog" who goes home with Mary!

(Above: The Mouse House area! View of the staircase....18th c. shell engravings, reproduction Audubon prints (the only non-antiques we sell!), late 19th c. Denton Fish, and assorted 19th c. images.)

(Above: Another view of the Mouse House staircase!)

(Above: The upstairs, former bathroom that has been "Mouse House" in Charleston for nearly 18 years! Stacked full of framed antique prints....my "day job"!)

Today was an anniversary. Terrace Oaks Antique Mall turned twenty years old. Of course I was there. I wouldn't have missed it for anything in the world. My life, my income, my education in artistic presentation, and my knowledge of past printing processes are all completely tied up with the history of this marvelous shopping mecca in South Carolina.

Mouse House, Inc. (my business) hasn 't been part of Terrace Oaks Antique Mall since the beginning...but nearly from the start. Steve and I moved into our staircase area while I was pregnant with Alex (July 1990).

Shortly after we started displaying our custom framed, antiquarian prints on the staircase walls we also rented a small room on the second floor. Originally the room had been a bathroom. Now it is wall-to-wall engravings and chromolithographs. Twenty years ago the mall was owned by JoAnn Parker. She sold the mall to one of her managers, Linda Leatherwood. Linda sold the mall to another manager, the amazingly kind and wonderful Camille Wish....who had been a dealer in the mall from the beginning.

Today I walked around the enormous place fingering vintage buttons, considering yards of designer fabrics, and admiring furniture, china, jewelry, leather bound books, silverware, pewter plates, military empherma, first day cover stamps, cigar boxes, fabric wrapped lampshades, kilim carpet bags, majolica, Indian artifacts, and vintage toys. I walked under prisms hanging from gorgeous chandeliers and over finely knotted carpets. I thought back through the years and realized how utterly tangled my artistic inclinations are with the very notion of time and history. I love all this "stuff". Time and history figure predominantly in my personal, artistic pursuit.

Yesterday was also a great day. I set up a table full of work at Garvin Design...part of a one-night only, holiday sales opportunity. It was a fabulous evening among friends. Garvin Designs owns one of my In Box Series....and hangs it in the most promenient place in the building! Their lead interior designer, Kim Bendillo also owns several of my pieces and took my contemporary fibers class at the art museum this summer. We had such a great time selling our work....but we all forgot to snap a photo!