It’s been a year!
2024 has been a year of transition, as most of you are aware. Last January we made the decision to “ride out” the lease on our store building and not renew it for another three years. We have been using our website to “reach beyond the walls of our store” since 1996 and this felt like the right time to devote our energy to developing the website business further and move away from being tied down by retail store hours. This transition would hopefully enable us to have a bit more personal time, among other changes.
We announced the upcoming transition in April and the response was overwhelming. So many of our customers reached out and visited and were so supportive-for which we are eternally grateful.
The store closed June 16th, leaving us just two weeks to clear out 38 years of having the business in that wonderful old building. We had a few “angels”-friends and family who pitched in to help. We are still sorting out boxes and finding things in random places.
The future is bright! We plan to expand the offerings on the website and include a few of the gift lines that made the store unique. We will continue to travel in search of Native American art and jewelry that “sings” to us so that we can make it available to our customers. The website itself will be upgraded as the Winter/Spring evolves.
This has been a big year for us. We want to thank all of our customers, artistic creators, friends and family for their support and send all of you every good wish for a wonderful year in 2025!
Honoring the First Nations
October 11, 2024
Greetings from Vermont in all of its natural splendor. We would like to take a moment to honor the first people of this land at the beginning of this Indigenous Peoples’ Day Weekend. It is a time to express our gratitude and acknowledgement that this is their home and the home of their ancestors and that they are still here. We encourage our customers and friends to expose themselves to Native American cultures. Travel the country, go to gatherings, art shows and powwows and learn from their culture. All our lives are certainly much richer for those experiences.
We're plugging away at uploading new pieces onto this website, and we are making progress, with a lot left to do. Slow and steady is our new mode!
It must also be mentioned that this foliage season is one of the best we have ever seen. Of course, we've all seen those annual photos of foliage in Vermont but it is just hard to express it any other way - and the photos only get so much of the vibe (see my phone shot above as an example - I totally missed the jaw-dropping essence of that moment). We locals don't want to miss the season either, so we've taken a couple of afternoons of our newfound “personal time” to go for drives around the back roads of Vermont, and it has really delivered. If you have the opportunity to travel to the area soon, do it! It’s magical!
Happy Indigenous Peoples Day!
Grant and Betsy
802-362-3435
email: longago@sover.net
More info? Call 802-362-3435 or email us
October 2, 2024.
When you live in a place you love, it can seem like you're part of a perpetual event just playing itself out. The time behind is memorable, and all those wonderful moments portend an even more promising future. Now, dear reader, it's time for Fall Foliage!
And here are a few new pieces of Jasper jewelry from Artie Yellowhorse that fit the mood perfectly:
We closed our Bricks-and-Mortar store in June. Some have wondered if we're moving somewhere - and miss this? Not a chance. We're as committed to our home as ever, just shifting gears a bit to gain more personal time and to concentrate on so many parts of our commercial life that we have had to put off for far too long. So watch our website and social media and get on our email lists - lots to come!
In the meantime, here are a few shots from the day today - Betsy's daybreak hike and my favorite Birch tree in our yard. And the colors in these pieces of jewelry from Artie Yellowhorse shown above match the mood of the moment - earthy Jasper in all its glory. If you're lucky enough to live in a valley surrounded by hardwood-covered mountains, we hope you get a moment to catch the migration of colors as they move through your area. And then we all get to hunker down and enjoy stick season, with backyard fires and cranking up the woodstove. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings us.
Grant
September 2, 2024
It has been several months since our last email announcing the closure of our retail store and the transition of our business to be entirely online - we just sent out a new one today (and please subscribe if you want to see those in the future). We are so grateful to have seen or heard from so many of our customers as we moved out of our long-time retail location during May and June - we are feeling the overwhelming love and support from this amazing community of collectors, creators, admirers, and dear friends that we have established in our 38 years of business. After closing the doors in the middle of June, we managed to completely move out of the building in just two short weeks. Needless to say, we have been recovering and getting our bearings ever since! We are also happy to report that we got to go on a vacation together in the middle of July - the first time that has happened in many years.
Now that we are back in Vermont and settling into a new pace of business, our website will be growing and evolving over the next six weeks. From small, adorable Inuit Sculptures that can fit in the palm of your hand to baby gifts, Navajo Jewelry, and an assortment of new Zuni Fetish Carvings, we have already made dozens of new products available online. And with an incoming collection of vintage jewelry and our next New Mexico buying trip just around the corner, there is a lot more to come! Thank you all for bearing with us as we get everything “up to speed.”
Please don’t hesitate to call or text us if you are in search of something that you cannot find on the website. Our phone number hasn’t changed and you can still reach us at 802-362-3435. We are happy to text or email photos of the things we have in stock that might not be on the website yet. We are here and ready to help in any way we can.
Our emails will likely be more regular in the coming months, the goal being to send something out once monthly. We would love feedback on what you all like to see! Please watch our Facebook or Instagram pages for weekly updates as well. Thank you for your support and for your patience with our transition!
Warm Regards,
Grant and Betsy
802-362-3435
email: longago@sover.net
Updated April 27, 2024
We have had an eventful Winter and Spring. In the past three weeks alone we've had two major snowstorms, rain, sleet, sunshine, an earthquake and an eclipse! Now the daffodils have emerged from the snow and are just about to bloom. This is springtime in Vermont!
Our big news is that in June we will be completely transitioning our business to our website and so we will be closing the retail store here in Manchester. We love our Vermont home and aren't moving, but we're going to change our daily business routines. For some time we've been wrestling with our ability to feature all of our favorite things on the website and still run the bricks-and-mortar store, so we’re luckily now able to make this transition - watch for a website redesign and much more additional inventory available there. We will also hold “Pop Up” shows and events here in Manchester a couple of times a year. In the meantime, we’ll be sorting out 38 years of being in this big building and finding all sorts of odds and ends to sell - we've already turned up some interesting treasures from the attic(!). Please follow along on our social media accounts as we document this new journey.
It is difficult for us to express the gratitude we have for all the amazing experiences we've had while here. We tease about it, but every once in a while a Mom or Dad will bring their kids in and note how they remember when their own parents brought them in for the first time - how cool is that? We've met people from all over the world, seen girls and boys grow into women and men, laughed when meeting new babies and cried over those dear friends and clients we've lost. Our own children grew up here, just a short walk from school (that's them above in a 25 year old photo - they're now 31 and 27!!!). We've gotten to work with thousands of clients and hundreds of creative artists and craftspeople. In the 38 years since we opened we have become very close to many, many people whom we first met because they walked through this door. While it will be sad to close our physical doors, we are really excited to open new ones by expanding our online business.
We hope that you will visit if you are in the area in the next two months and celebrate this transition with us. We have endless gratitude for all of you for your friendship and support.
* An additional thought. We are not closing our business, just changing the venue. Accordingly, any outstanding gift certificates, store credits, etc., will continue to be valid. If you have a concern about a situation like that, please get in touch and we'll take care of it right away.
We've been running our business out of this building since 1986. It was originally a house which was built in the mid-1800's and located on the streetscape. Moved a few hundred feet back in the early 60's, it has been home to four different businesses, and will no doubt be a great home to the business that follows us. There are a series of old bedrooms upstairs that we've been using as storage for 38 years - lots of crazy things stashed away that we've been digging out.
So, what do we mean when we say we're moving everything online? Well, mostly it means we will extend the reach of our business to a larger, national audience. And it also means we'll spend more of our time traveling and seeking out new pieces to offer on our website. Of course, the quiet secret is that in our personal lives we will have the time to access scenery like this:
We hope that you will visit if you are in the area in the next two months and celebrate this transition with us. We have endless gratitude for all of you for your friendship and support.
Warmest Regards and with our deepest gratitude,
Betsy and Grant
