We had taken a wrong turn out of Kennebunkport after watching black-clothed surfers riding and flipping on small tidal waves. They looked liked tiny seals against miles and miles of the ocean blue Atlantic behind them.
It was a gorgeous sight. Now my travel buddy and I were headed back to Portland, ME, where we were vacationing on my first real trip to New England, and we had gone right instead of left on Route 9 to get to I-95.
As we turned the car, I spied a chair and some wicker baskets at the end of a long driveway – the yard to its right hidden by rushes of tall grasses and to the left, long stalks that looked like bamboo.
Intrigued, I asked my travel buddy to stop, and I’m glad I did. In front of me was a shop with English teacups, Hummel figurines, prints, colored glassware, ceramics and other dainty wares that I would see in any other antiques and collectibles shop.
These, however, were in a two-car garage on the ground floor of someone’s home. One garage had been painted a neutral gray to show off the lovely items on tables, on walls, on the floor and on shelves, while the other garage had been draped in corresponding gray and maroon fabric.
What a surprise and a delight, I thought, and was immediately drawn toward one of the most utilitarian groupings in the shop: a 35-mm camera with several lens. I love old cameras, and this one, owner Marianna Spina told me, had belonged to her husband.
As I carefully walked among this assortment of collectibles in this unlikely of places, I was curious about Spina and her shop. I wondered if all of this stuff had come out of her house.
It had not. Spina had been a designer first in New York and then in Boston for 35 years, and decided it was time to retire. She and her husband, Ed, moved to Kennebunk, ME, four years ago to this house and yard that didn’t have a tree or a shrub.
They planted the tall grasses and other plants that change with the seasons to shield their space. Those stalked plants, she told me, were not bamboo, but most people got that wrong.
After three years, she’d had enough of retirement. Encouraged by her son-in-law (“Mama, you can do it,” he told her), she used her good eye for style and design, and opened up the first garage/shop in August.
“I thought I’d like to do something artsy, collectible,” she said. “I don’t know what I did. I just put it together.”
She named the shop “Splendor in the Grasses,” for all the grasses that she and her husband had planted. I also remembered that it was the name of a 1961 movie “Splendor in the Grass” with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty.
Looking around the shop, you could tell that it was not put together haphazardly. It showed imagination and composition, and everything seemed to have its own place. She apparently got it right because business got so “big” that she opened up the second garage. “I worked up to 1 o’clock in the morning to get it ready,” she said.
I’m always curious about where people get their antiques and collectibles. Did Spina have these items on shelves and tables around her house? Most of it, she said, was stored in her attic or in storage, much of it from her days as a designer. When a design house went out of business, she said, the owners would call designers like her to see what they’d like to buy.
“All of this stuff came out of my years of designing work and collecting,” she said. “I’m taken by shape, form, color. When something attracts you, you collect it.”
“It’s a passion. It’s very natural to me.”
And I could tell. On one shelf, she had re-thought the use of demitasse cups as tea-candle holders. On a table, she had a faux scoop of chocolate-covered ice cream in a lovely gold-leaf English teacup. It was surrounded by equally beautiful and not-all-matching cups and saucers with pink flowers.
She told me a story of trying to figure out how to keep ice cream from melting in the teacup display. A customer – a man who created props – suggested Crisco shortening, which wouldn’t melt. So, what looks like a scoop of ice cream with a pretzel stuck in it is actually shortening, and it worked.
Collectibles peak her interest, she said, because they make her wonder about the people who made and used them. “I’m fascinated by antique linens,” she said. “Who sat there and meticulously did all of this beautiful work?” She noted, however, that in some instances others did the work for those who actually used the linens.
I could identify with her feeling of trying to find a connectedness to the original owners. I wonder the same thing about the stuff I come across at auction.
As we walked around her shop, Spina pointed to several pieces of blown glass that hadn’t quite yet made it into the collectibles category. These were new pieces created by her granddaughter, an artist named Camille Brugnara (chbrugnara at gmail.com; 617-314-3401) who attends Temple University in Philadelphia.
She pointed to an orange glass pumpkin that she rightly said should be a hit for Halloween. “Her work is magnificent,” Spina said of Camille, who spends her summers in Italy.
Most of Spina’s customers are the locals. She rolls up the garage doors to welcome buyers who pass by and she offers appointments at the site on Western Avenue/Route 9 in Kennebunk (mariannaspina2012 at gmail.com; 781-820-6728).
Because the items are ones that she chose, selling them off hasn’t been so easy. Like that small print of a rabbi that she’d had for 30 years. She’s not Jewish, she said, but “I adored it. … It was a pleasurable feeling to see someone else go out and enjoy it.” Not to worry, she has a larger rabbi print still in the shop.
“I go through withdrawal big time,” Spina said. “I’d go in and tell Ed, ‘it was tough.'” But, she added, “It’s time to move on. I’ll be buying more.”
Read about the other stops on my New England trip: Boston, Portland, Brimfield and Martha’s Vineyard.
