The last place in the universe you might expect to find last-minute gifts with designer panache is in downtown Thorndike.
Clustered along the railroad tracks, the small town is one of those forlornly picturesque rural neighborhoods where time blew the whistle on change, decades ago, with the demise of the train era.
But there, perched between timeworn, unpainted dwellings and a rusting Bangor & Aroostook railroad car, is a cheerful little curiosity shop called Garden Variety, owned and operated by Diana Prizio, of Knox.
The gift store, with its orangey-red trim, olive-green faux shutters and large silhouette of a leaping rabbit painted above the door, is one of the brighter spots in the area.
“It’s the site of the town’s former United States Post Office, built about the 1880s,” Prizio said of the building that is set a stone’s throw from the tracks, on Gordon Hill Road (Route 139), just off Route 220.
She calls her enterprise “something between an art gallery and a garage,” a place artfully crammed with nostalgic, recycled collectibles, from mint-vintage to new designer items. About 60 percent of her shop is stuffed with a fascinating array of carefully selected, found inventory.
“It’s the only way things make sense — to use things already created rather than go out and buy new things. Clearly … we’ve got too much stuff covering the face of the planet,” she said of her creative participation in the reuse-recycle economy.
Her shop is an aesthetic experience, like wandering a walk-in
collage. Close browsing will uncover the practical to the peculiar — from a box full of real brass tacks to framed original art; from last-century china and glassware to a bucket full of natural twig hooks; from decorative feather hair clips to jars of dried lavender flowers.
New items include an assortment of organic products and locally produced food. Visitors will find fresh-baked cookies, breads, biscotti — and pies and wheat-free products on order — in a tiny nook by the front door. Fresh-baked goods arrive on Fridays, made by Angelina’s Bakery, of Knox, a bread-and-butter business Prizio owns with her daughter Shaughnessy Corrigan, of Dixmont.
“Local people come in here for the bread,” Prizio said. Their speciality line of cookies, artfully packaged in brown designer bags, flies off the bakery display rack.
“Recently, someone came in and grabbed seven bags of double chocolate and ginger cookies, to give as gifts,” she said.
Customer volume is small but loyal. This holiday season, local shoppers, and those from surprisingly distant towns, drift by until the last possible moment, certain they’ll find the right curio to make someone a merry, recycled Christmas.
Prizio expects the usual small stampede of last-minute buyers on Christmas Eve day. The store is closed on Christmas, until early April.
Her bargain-basement chic seems timely and apropos, what with record unemployment and dwindling disposable incomes.
“People are going for more functional than decorative,” she said of this season’s buying trends. “Good wooden utensils. Food containers that are not plastic. Lip balms, teas and tinctures.”
Hand-crank coffee grinders, small hand tools and retro ’50s-’70s lamps are popular larger items, she said. Local craftspeople drop off handmade items on consignment, such as wooden and felted children’s toys and custom-sewn cotton tablecloths.
One unexpected curiosity is a metal microscope, in working condition.
“I sold hundreds of educational slides of tiny creatures — bits of flowers and insects. People give them as stocking stuffers. Kids are really into microscopes,” Prizio said.
Michelle Palumbo, 35, of Thorndike, is a regular at the shop.
“I love her [Prizio’s] taste — and all the useful things — like the natural cleaners and organic foods — cheese, eggs, milk and ricotta. It feels like a general store. Everything is local. It’s a rare place,” she said.
Palumbo, 35, had just purchased from Prizio a big hanging scale to weigh out the vegetables and grains she feeds to her farm animals, for $11, she said.
“I get one-of-a-kind toys for my little boy, Jonah, age 2½. For Christmas, I got some of her Letterpress cards; those are really beautiful. Breads and cookies are really good, too,” she said.
The store’s laid-back, no-hype style seems to be Prizio’s answer to mass commercialism and the big-box store. Yet, the shop offers amenities you’d expect to find in chichi boutiques — gift boxes, gift wrapping, paper shopping bags and free cups of fresh-brewed, organic coffee and teas.
“I am thoroughly a believer that local needs to be the base of a strong economy,” she said, even as she tipped her hat to the Internet, a tool she believes can strengthen local businesses. Her newly launched Web site is gardenvariety.me.
What makes the store unique is Prizio herself, a transplant from Stamford, Conn., who has lived in Maine since 1979. Her keen designer’s eye springs from her late mother, an interior designer and collector of antiques.
“I thank my mother for that; my dad was color blind,” she said. But she is also grateful for her late father’s earthy love of gardening and agriculture.
“He was in the poultry business. He always used the chicken manure for his big vegetable garden.”
She studied French at three colleges on the East Coast, but her career took a different turn when she moved to Maine, she said.
The shop is only one aspect of Prizio’s multifaceted enterprise. Besides jobbing out custom framing, she also runs Little Letterpress of Knox, a business she co-owns and operates with her partner of 27 years, Kip Penney, who manages the flower bulbs department at FEDCO Seeds, of Waterville.
Browsers will find an assortment of their original cards, gift tags and cookbook markers that feature authentic, 19th century images, newly printed with die-cast metal type on an 1892 Chandler & Price letterpress.
“A letterpress impresses the image into the paper, unlike modern photo offset and digital printing. Letterpress is not like the raised [plastic] thermography we have come to think of as elegant. Letterpress uses a metal engraving and has inherent irregularities, because the ink is being mashed as it prints she explained.
Many people appreciate the printing inconsistencies, she said, “because a human, not a computer, made the decision about the ink, pressure and speed.”
Letterpress is enjoying a revival, she said.
“It is the most ecological form of printing we have today, aside from a paper and pencil. It allows me to use scraps; I hand-feed each piece of paper. I save scraps left over from doing bigger [print] jobs. Big presses … can produce a substantial overrun,” she said.
Recyled inks are used in printing and a lot of the cover stock she uses is made from recycled paper.
“I call it recycled without remanufacturing,” she said of her letterpress printing process.
Lynn Ascrizzi is a poet, gardener and freelance writer who lives in Freedom.