Thank you!
Your support is sustaining the future of local news in our communities.

Fresh finds at artisan market

Fresh finds at artisan market

Chloe Crofut-Brittingham, left, and Dana Rohn at the Montage antique sale.

Patrick L. Sullivan

Those in search of the rare, the beautiful and the funky had several options in Salisbury on Saturday, May 11.

The Salisbury Handmade group of artisans had 21 vendors set up on the lawn in front of the White Hart Inn.

One newcomer to the group, Cheryl Markin, a graphic designer from Long Island by day, offered her “Upcycled Earrings,” made from bits of Super-8 movie film, floppy disk components, and 45 RPM record adapters.

One set, made from Schaefer beer bottle caps, stood out. The caps had a cork ring inside them.

Markin said she figured they were probably the only extant bottle caps of their kind anywhere.

She said the earrings started as a hobby and a fun gift for friends. During the COVID-19 pandemic, it became a business.

Another newcomer, Sara Collazo Romay, who hails from Spain and currently operates out of Kingston, N.Y., offered colorful handwoven pillows, towel and placemats.

Romay said she has been in the artisan business for about four years. This is her first market season.

She has also worked as a fashion designer and for the TJ Maxx discount clothing chain.

A veteran of these shows, Roger McKee, had his wooden keepsake boxes for sale, along with cutting boards shaped like fish and his own nature-themed artworks.

“No canoes this time?” he was asked.

He shook his head, adjusted his kilt and attended to a curious customer.

Meanwhile at the Salisbury Marketplace building on Academy Street (TK Need to doublecheck that name), the proprietors of Montage Antiques in Millerton were having a big sale of recently arrived pieces.

Chloe Crofut-Brittingham said the sale was the contents of a 40-foot container full of items purchased recently in Europe.

Her parents, Dana and Fritz Rohn, are the people behind Montage. Mother and daughter huddled briefly over the fate of a large table before returning to chat about the antiques.

Dana Rohn said the impetus behind the sale, which they do several times per year, was simple.

“When you get a container, it’s a lot of stuff. We’ve got 6000 soiree feet in Millerton but…”

And the customers get a break on the prices.

Latest News

Millerton wine shop owner organizes charity wine tasting for local child

Millerton Wine & Spirits owner Chris Jeans has organized a charity wine tasting to benefit the family of Crew Slater, a Millerton native with congenital kidney disease. The wine tasting is set for Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Pasture Kitchen on Route 44 just east of the Village of Millerton.

Illustration provided

MILLERTON — Two local business owners have joined forces to put on a charity wine tasting benefitting Millerton's Slater family.

Crew Slater, a 5-year-old Millerton native, needs a kidney transplant to survive congenital kidney disease. Millerton Wine & Spirits owner Chris Jeans and Pasture Kitchen founder Austin Cornell have organized a charity wine tasting at Pasture Kitchen on Route 44 next Thursday, Oct. 29, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Keep ReadingShow less
Cornwall Historical Society celebrates Connecticut’s Black patriots

On Saturday, Oct. 24, at the Cornwall Historical Society, author and genealogist John Mills will breathe new life into the stories of some of Connecticut’s more underappreciated patriots. The reason these heroes were forgotten? They were Black.

At a time when white colonists were fighting for their own liberty and political independence, many Black men who fought alongside them remained enslaved. Some risked their lives only to return to bondage. Though enslaved people were promised freedom from both sides of the Revolutionary War in exchange for their service, Great Britain, too, was still deeply dependent on slavery. For Black people in America, the war presented both extraordinary risks and uncertain paths to the freedom that white colonists were demanding for themselves.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

A sanctuary for second chances

A sanctuary for second chances

Stephanie Saetta runs Charlie Chicken Bones, a sanctuary in Salisbury.

Madi Long
You only get one or two of these soul connection dogs, so I do this in his honor.
— Stephanie Saetta

Stephanie Saetta has spent much of her life caring for others. A physician at White Plains Hospital, she has another calling at home in Salisbury — one that has four legs and a wagging tail. She runs Charlie Chicken Bone Sanctuary, a nonprofit dog rescue that brings dogs from overcrowded pounds and the streets of Texas to foster homes in northwestern Connecticut, where they can begin again.

The sanctuary is named for Charlie, the dog who taught her how special a bond between a person and rescue animal can be.

Keep ReadingShow less
Big ideas come to Lenox for inaugural field festival

Hunter Runnette, founder and board chair of field, has spent years fostering arts and cultural programming in the Berkshires.

Provided

What do joy, gardening, artificial intelligence, the American experiment and the creative process have in common? Quite a lot, as it turns out, at least when some of the world’s most compelling thinkers get together to talk about them.

From Friday, Oct. 23, through Sunday, Oct. 25, Lenox, Massachusetts, will host the inaugural field festival, a three-day gathering of writers, artists, scholars and cultural figures at Shakespeare & Company. Billed as a festival of ideas, entertainment, learning and discovery, field brings together an impressive roster of voices to explore everything from the deeply personal to the profoundly political.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Pink House AM is serving up community

Mare Rubin and Maggie Levine of the Pink House AM.

Madi Long

It all started with a yoga class. Mare Rubin was working on her second act after leaving the Upper West Side, where she’d raised a family and worked in corporate marketing. Newly empty nesters, she and her husband decided to move to the wilds of northwestern Connecticut, where they had spent 15 years as weekenders, to see what life in the woods had in store for them.

Rubin started teaching yoga classes at the Union in West Cornwall, a space designated by the town of Cornwall as a community hub with couches, Wi-Fi, occasional events and a growing yoga class schedule. She was adjusting well but missed one important thing about city life: a casual coffee shop.

Keep ReadingShow less
google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.

google preferred source

Want more of our stories on Google? Click here to make us a Preferred Source.