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Posted: 07/02/05 - 11:29:29 pm EDT
Chicken Coop built on authenticity, diversity
By Mike James - The Independent
GRAYSON - Glendal Plummer estimates the saw he's holding is maybe 40, 50 years old. It's a long crosscut saw with wicked-looking teeth a good inch long. In Plummer's gnarled hands it looks capable of taking a mature tree down in a few minutes.
Plummer has come to add the saw to the accumulation of antiques and collectibles he sells at the Chicken Coop, an artisans' mall 11 miles north of Grayson on the A-A Highway.
He carries it back to his booth and sets it on a shelf that already holds another saw, an ancient bee smoker, some crocks, tools and other venerable items.
Plummer also sells grapevine trees, cone-shaped arrangements of vine that he makes from materials he collects from his Carter County farm. His wife, Betty, makes and sells pouting babies - life-sized effigies resembling sulky infants - and several are propped against the wall of another booth.
The Plummers are among about 150 vendors who sell their wares at the Chicken Coop. To get to Plummer's booth, you walk past booth after booth of handmade furniture, patchwork quilts, quaint dolls and collectibles.
Browsers can depend on one thing, said owners Dennie and Helen Crum. Every craft item in the mall is made by the artisans themselves. "There are no imports. If they bring them in, we make them take it out," Dennie Crum said.
The Crums and the artisans at the mall are swimming against a tide of cheap imported crafts, which pop up in discount stores at rock-bottom prices.
Devoting the mall to goods that are locally produced assures quality, Helen Crum said.
"The materials are better, even the furniture. It's made of better quality wood."
The Crums have insisted on locally made crafts since opening the mall in 1995 with about 40 artisans. Helen had opened a fabric store in one section of the 7,000-square-foot, corrugated metal building stretched along the highway.
A number of artisans asked if they could sell on consignment. There was plenty of room in the building, which actually had been a chicken coop until about 1988.
In fact, there's a snapshot on the front counter of the interior and some of the 32,500 chickens it once held; heavy metal straps from which the cages were suspended still protrude through the ceiling.
Crum remodeled a section of the building to accommodate the initial group of artisans, lining the walls and floors with rough-sawn lumber that captures the rustic nature of the crafts sold there.
Soon more artisans came looking for sales space and Crum remodeled another section, then another and then still another. "It just sort of evolved," he said.
The Crums are picky about the vendors they bring into the mall, wanting to keep up their standards and maintain a diversity of merchandise.
"We don't want to be a flea market," Crum said.
Over the years they've attracted craftsmen like Byron Powers and his wife, Doris, who make wall decorations of aged barnwood, tobacco sticks and other rustic materials in the Lewis County barn they've converted to a workshop.
Powers, a retired elementary schoolteacher, takes pride in selling creations he's made. "What's homemade is going away," he said.
It also is important to him to sell in a place where authenticity is prized, he said. "Other places call themselves craft malls, but they're really catalog places."
Former home builder Roger McClintic of South Webster, Ohio, turned his hand to building furniture a few years ago and the resulting chairs, tables and cabinets are on display at the Chicken Coop.
"I used to build houses and then I started building furniture. I had to pick the one that's the most fun," he said.
Furniture won and it's been his full-time job for 10 years. He specializes in painted and distressed finishes on his pieces. Some he makes of salvaged wood, like a small table with a top made of the scarred seat of an old church pew.
He and his wife, Kimberly, have frequented other craft malls over the years and have seen most of them fall by the wayside.
"This is the only one that's survived. They've put their heart and soul into it," he said.
The Chicken Coop has an annual open house the third Saturday in October, with most all of the artisans attending. It usually draws 500 or more attendees, Crum said.
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