York Corner
As sunny as it was last Sunday afternoon, it was also cold, so when we saw Mary and Michael Shipp's car parked outside their business (their license plate reads "ShippsIn"), we welcomed the chance to duck in and linger a while for a warm update.
Mary and Michael own and run the York Village Marketplace, the multi-dealer antiques, crafts and collectibles shop housed in what was the old Methodist church in the center of York Village.
They'll have been there three years come March, Mary reminded us as she took us under her wing for a tour, and we eventually remembered some of the details about how they got there.
Michael, from Boston, had worked in sales and marketing for companies like Xerox, Kraft Foods and FedEx, and had become a senior business manager involved in economic development for the city of Boston.
Mary was an accountant from Webster, Mass., who'd taken up antiquing in a big way on the side.
Married, now, for five years, they lived first in Boston, where Michael owned property, then moved to this area when he sold a condo and reinvested the proceeds in an antique colonial on Route 1 in Wells. With the move, Mary gave up accounting, and the pair bought, from former owner Betty Overlock, the business formerly known as Village Crafts and Antiques.
Interest in crafts has since waned, having been supplanted by enthusiasm for "more practical items," Mary said on our tour, and she cited recent runs on ironing boards and cigarette stands as examples - though she also said that such enthusiasms change unpredictably all the time, and the shop maintains, as a result, "a big mix of items."
Between 50 and 55 dealers sell there, she reported, from three floors, with most (30) located in booths on the middle floor, but some also below and above.
Downstairs, in the spot once occupied by local crafters, York resident Ellie Cronin rents half the space to sell used but usable (and fashionable) dishware, houseware, small furniture and vintage clothing and jewelry from the shop she calls, revealingly, Cozy Cottage Chic. (Ellie no longer runs the shop of the same name that she ran for a time last year in the Village by the fire station.)
The other half of the first floor, Mary pointed out, is occupied by dealers selling antiques, collectibles and gift items in what she termed (borrowing a phrase she said was Michael's) "a kaleidoscopic hodgepodge."
On the second floor, Mary cited booths to reveal the variety of items available: Marie Solli's and Anne Solli's Folklore Dolls, carefully and artfully and imaginatively handcrafted (and in York) to represent what their card calls "a variety of trolls, witches, wizards and elves;" Byers Choice collectible dolls made in Pennsylvania, dubbed "the ooh-ah dolls" by Mary because each represents some variation of an open-mouthed chorister; used books offered by the Ben Franklin Bookstore of Worcester, Mass., and by the Friends of the York Public Library; wood and gift items presented by the nonprofit Community Partners of Dover, N.H., to help support developmentally disabled people over age 21; antiques by Beverly Daoust, of Charlton, Mass., the wife of a former boss of Mary's in her accounting days, she became a friend who introduced Mary to antiquing, and art - watercolors by Joanne Campbell of York and oils by Mike England of South Berwick.
Among the more unusual offerings: marine scenes in bright, primary colors by Stonington, Maine, artist Alice A. Spencer. These may be painted on canvas but are more likely to be found on such unlikely items as a brick, the back of an old shovel or the underside of a frypan, an LP record or a kid's tiny sneaker. They also incorporate, amid the colors, items from the scenes of which they are a part: scraps of real wood, for example, representing the side of a bait shack, or bits of pebble and sand, seaweed, lobster claws and sand dollars.
Upstairs, however, on the top floor, are what have become the York Village Marketplace's most unique offerings: model trains numbering in what must be the scores if not the hundreds, and slot cars in what seem like the thousands.
These are passions of Michael's, we learned, and have been since his parents set him up with a set of Lionel trains when he was nine or ten. He's had similar sets, and slot car sets, he told us, continuously ever since - and now the modeling makes great business sense because it draws men and children.
As Mary put it to us, "Women who want to get rid of their husbands and kids send them over here!"
And often, she said, visitors spend so much time gawking at the displays that when they leave they ask, "How much do we owe you?"
What they get to see (for free) includes, for starters, a giant train layout set up at eye level on a table eight feet wide and 20 long, with five trains running on it at two levels, three on top and two below. And, of course, all that one can imagine of modern life is recreated in miniature there - billboards, banks, gas stations, tunnels, trees, suburban homes, you name it.
At one end of this display is another set up to represent snowy life at Christmastime, and Mary reported that, while it attracts a lot of people at the time of York's Festival of Lights, it's also left that way year-round.
On the same floor, Mary pointed out a miniature three-ring circus tent assembled by, and bought from, a Portsmouth, N.H., priest she identified as Father Burns. In it, hundreds of tiny spectators, each painted individually by the priest (and including six nuns in the second and third rows), sit on bleacher seats made of coffee-stirrers; performing before them are miniscule dancing horses and elephants.
On the subject of the trains, Mary said, "We have all scales from N to G," and we didn't press her when she added, simply, "People who know model trains will know what that means."
At another sizable train display, created by Gene Sowards of Epping, N.H., that included a roundhouse amid its amazing miniature intricacies, we could see that "N scale" meant "smaller."
Except where an item has no price on it (as with some slot cars Michael has had since he was a kid himself) everything here, some new, some old, is for sale, and much can be ordered. Used books and magazines about trains and model trains are also available for sale - a 1966 Lionel catalog, for example - and they help round out the collection.
"It's him, inside and out," Mary said of Michael and the model-train passion.
We've neglected, thus far, to report three other new developments at the Marketplace: a year-old yarn shop, with a "knitting circle" that meets on Friday mornings that would welcome, Mary said, new members; and clinics for those model-train enthusiasts that will be held on Sunday afternoons starting on Feb. 25.
The Shipps would be glad to have you stop in at the shop for more details.
The Shipps also wanted us to credit Ellie Cronin and Janet Knox for being steadfast employees who'd been "very good at helping out, and very good with customers."
Additionally, we should report, the Shipps have shrunk their hours for this month and the next to 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. for just four days a week, from Thursday through Sunday. Come March, however, they'll go back to seven days a week.
Michael told us that his interest in model trains and slot cars had introduced him and Mary to many new friends in the area, and by way of illustration, the couple reported that, come closing time on the day we talked, they'd be heading off to dine with another couple in Buxton: she teaches doll-making and he's a fellow model-train enthusiast ("G-gauge," said Mary, inscrutably for us).
We wished them godspeed before heading out back into the cold ourselves.
