Ramble for Riches

Antiques shops are spread far and wide over the country, but there may be no other spot more gilt-edged for antiquing than Cape Cod’s Route 6A. The road itself—also called the Old King’s Highway—is a treasure, lined with historic houses, ancient cemeteries, stone walls, views of salt marshes—and antique shops. Almost all of these shops are open year-round, but particularly in the off-season, it’s wise to call ahead.

Your day starts in Sagamore at Just Like Home Antiques & Gifts (Route 6A and Westdale Park, 508-888-2033), where owner Peg Wilson has filled her charming shop with collections of antiques and gifts with a vintage look, such as a line of Emma Bridgewater tableware. In a back room is a stunning example of Wilson’s specialty, vintage beds in brass and iron: a lovely 1920s restored iron bed ($600), made up with vintage linens.

Traveling east, Route 6A reveals more of classic Cape Cod, including a historic graveyard and grand houses. As you enter Sandwich, turn left on Tupper Road for the Sandwich Auction House (15 Tupper Road, 508-888-1926, www.sandwichauction.com). Sandwich Auction House holds several auctions a month; the monthly oriental rug auction is a highlight. One summer auction featured a stunning Tabriz carpet measuring just over 8 feet by 12 feet. Owner Duncan Gray opens the house for viewing.

Route 6A through Sandwich is a beautiful drive even if antiques aren’t on your mind. Watch for a glimpse of Sandy Neck Beach as you meander through this stretch of Cape Cod’s oldest town, founded in 1639. At Seaside Antiques (124 Route 6A, 508-888-1912), owner Sandra Tompkins considers her wares—antiques and treasures that are not old enough for the antique label—as one way to go green. Why buy a new blanket chest when you can purchase a gorgeous 1800s lift-top chest ($450)? Amble by the back door, where you’ll see a pretty view of two white church steeples rising above the treetops.

Further into Sandwich is the multifaceted Sandwich Antiques Center (131 Route 6A, 508-833-3600, www.sandwichantiquescenter.com). With 110 dealers represented, the goods here cover a wide swath of culture and history. Customers often ask to see the primitive furniture and Sandwich glass. But owner Peter Smith has charming décor items as well, including a charming 1800s portrait of a plump baby ($875). If you’re there on the hour, you’ll be treated to a chorus of chimes from the more than 50 grandfather clocks spread throughout the shop.

Further down the road in Sandwich is Maypop Antiques (161 Route 6A, 508-888-1230). Owner Paul Opacki has operated this shop—a converted gas station washed in white, plumped with banks of flowers, and worth a look on its own merits—for 25 years. Opacki’s spacious store is lined with tables of glass, china, jewelry, and furniture, including a late-18th century two-drawer tavern table in gorgeous cherry ($1,800).

Sandwich is the perfect home for a lovely shop operated by Toni Rencricca, her husband Nicholas, and daughter Nicole, who started out as collectors. Today they operate Antoinette’s Antiques & Collectibles in East Sandwich (350 Route 6A, 774-413-9799), which features several elegant rooms full of items, including ephemera, glass, jewelry, and coins. Many people stop in to see their collection of cameos, some carved from shell ($40-$850). One entire room is devoted to books and paper.

Edythe Davinis has set up her shop, Edythe & Co. Antiques (433 Route 6A, 508-888-8843) in stylish vignettes, so that customers can better picture how her pieces will fit in their own homes. She loves decorative goods and garden antiques with a little quirkiness. One show-stopper is a shell-encrusted art deco table with a floral design she found at a Paris flea market ($1,950). The store has a sister shop, Trade Secret Antiques, in Osterville.

Look carefully, or you may miss Horsefeathers Antiques (454 Route 6A, 508-888-5298; call first), and that would be a shame. Owner Jeanne Gresham’s confection is filled with antique and vintage baby clothing and handkerchiefs. One adorable example is a peach-colored cotton netting dress with stunning embroidery, circa 1930s ($110). Parents and grandparents will be utterly charmed.

The towns along Route 6A slip from one to the next and before you know it, you’re in West Barnstable. West Barnstable Antiques (625 Route 6A, 508-362-2047) is operated by Walter Munday, a font of knowledge for his fascinating collection of antiques. The eye goes immediately to shelves of navigation and surveying instruments. Before you leave, be sure to ask Walter to demonstrate the Polyphon Euphonion, a German-made music box that is almost four feet high and plays music in outstanding fashion.

At famous West Barnstable Table, just of Route 6A on Meetinghouse Way, the work of more than 14 craftspersons is represented in galleries full of newly crafted antique-style furniture and folk art items, housed in a large barn and an antique cranberry sorting building. This Cape Cod gem (2454 Meetinghouse Way, 508-362-2676) of a shop has been in business since 1970, providing custom order, beautifully designed tables, chairs, and other furniture that are sure to become treasured antiques for generations.

Route 6A takes a jog left at the intersection with Route 132 and continues its stretch of historic homes, bed-and-breakfast inns, and galleries. It’s the perfect time to pause, because the center of Barnstable Village is just ahead, an excellent place to stop for lunch or coffee. When you continue on your way east, notice the flower-banked stone walls, many of them pieces of Cape Cod history.

At Route 149, turn right for a one-of-a-kind antiques shop. The Barnstable Stove Shop (2481 Route 149, 508-362-9913), situated between the ancient cemetery and the old train depot, is owner Doug Pacheco’s incredible collection of stoves. Among the stoves are other antiques for sale, including tools, tiles, and stained glass windows. His must-see collection of restored antique kitchen ranges and parlor stoves includes a restored 1891 coal/wood stove embellished with a figurine of a Greco-Roman woman, angel heads, cherubs, and serpents, and set on a nickel claw-foot base stand ($8,500).

Eldred’s Auction House (1483 Route 6A, East Dennis, 508-385-3116, www.eldreds.com), set behind an antique sea captain’s house, is a Cape Cod tradition operated for over 60 years by the Eldred family. Almost all the art auctions feature antique artworks. Josh Eldred mentioned an auction last summer that featured a Ralph Cahoon painting, “A Shocking Incident at The Boston Public Garden” (total price: $207,000), which set a world record auction price for Cahoon’s work. Auction items may be previewed the day before every auction.

East Dennis Antiques (1514 Route 6A, 508-385-7651, www.eastdennisantiques.com) is situated in one of the many antique homes that line Route 6A. The shop is filled with fine furniture, paintings, and specialties such as antique frames and nautical items. One beauty is a “sailor’s silk,” a Japanese embroidered silk piece that commemorates a young sailor’s tour with the U.S. Navy ($2,500).

Set in a 1780s half-Cape, Spyglass Antiques (2257 Main Street, Brewster, 508-896-4423), focuses on 18th and 19th century maritime antiques and nautical instruments, such as antique barometers, telescopes, sailor-made folk art, and early American furniture and paintings. One item near and dear to owner Brad Finch is a turn-of- the-century ship’s figurehead of a mermaid set on a custom-made base ($10,500). As one of the oldest nautical shops on the Cape, Spyglass is a perfect place to cap your day.

Capturing Nature’s Music

The natural world dwells in Kathy Hallam, tuning her instincts and sharpening her eye. Where most people see a barn swallow in a nest of twigs, Hallam, an artisan in Gray Gables, sees a beautiful harbinger of potential. Hallam’s rendering of the little brown bird, painted in pastel and watercolor and set against onion cloth paper, is a captivating balance of realism and artful impression, from the fine twigs poking out of the textured nest to a dab of deep blue over the bird’s eye for depth. Anyone who sees it will feel her attachment to nature, especially to its animals. Read more…

• Posted in Art, Arts & Culture, Interiors

Sweet Jellin’ in Sandwich

More than 100 years ago, the Green Briar Jam Kitchen began as a tea room. After her mother died, Ida Putnam returned from New York to her family’s home on Discovery Hill Road in Sandwich, portions of which date as far back as 1780. Ida opened the tea room in a renovated woodshed off of the house, relying on word of mouth and a wooden sign at the end of the road to entice travelers on Old Kings Highway (now Route 6A).

The tea room lasted a few summer seasons, but one element quickly outshone the rest of the establishment’s offerings: Ida’s fresh jams and jellies. Once Putnam focused on preserves, her business grew quickly. While she had previously chosen native berries and beach plums picked from her immediate woodland and beach surroundings for the jams and jellies, she soon began purchasing additional fruits and vegetables from a network of family, friends, and neighbors. The smells of warm pears, plums, grapes, crabapples, quince, and tomatoes wafted through the air around the kitchen and changed with the seasons.

My grandmother, Mae Foster, began working at the jam kitchen in the 1940s. She spent happy days cooking jams, relishes, and preserves alongside good friends like Martha Blake and Mizue Murphy. Mae continues to share stories about those times with her great-great grandchildren today.

When I was six years old, I used to spend entire days working with my grandmother in the Green Briar kitchen. I used to help stir the humongous pots full of blueberries, with a ladle longer than my arms. I also ate a good number of those blueberries! When the jars were filled and carefully wiped of sticky drips, I would climb a step-stool and stare into early “sun-cookers”—the kitchen began utilizing wide, glass-covered shelves for solar cooking in 1920—to see if I could watch fruit transform before my eyes. It didn’t, but I always seemed to try again the next day.

The grounds outside are just as I remember. In 1980, the Thornton W. Burgess Society assumed management of the Green Briar Jam Kitchen and the surrounding woodlands where Burgess found inspiration for his popular animal adventure stories featuring Peter Rabbit and friends. The nature center’s focus is a great complement to the jam kitchen as a “living museum.”

On a visit to Green Briar in August, this special place looks very much the same, with many of the same contented workers turning out delicious jams and jellies. The day I stopped in, Mizue Murphy was stirring those same pots on the same row of stove tops and she and her colleagues diced up peaches by hand at the window stools. The kitchen crew use the same recipes, cooked in traditional ways, obeying the cadence of the seasons to determine what to preserve next. “It’s such a pleasant place,” says Mizue, who has spent more than 30 years on the job. “People can visit any time of day, and they can’t help but relax while they’re here.” Doreen Brackett of East Sandwich, who has been with Green Briar for three years, says that the strenuous work is satisfying. “It’s actually quite hard work doing everything by hand,” Brackett says, “but when you look at the beautiful view and feel the serenity of stepping back in time, you just can’t beat it.”

Today, a beautiful new outbuilding houses the Thornton Burgess Museum’s Animal Room where kids can come explore and interact with nature. There are weekly activities for children and families, classes like “Froggy Frolic,” “Off the Trail with Map & Compass,” wild nature crafts, and, of course, a variety of jam workshops in the kitchen. I recall many museum explorations from my own childhood. We spent many happy hours searching for famous Burgess characters like Grandfather Frog and Jerry Muskrat.

Green Briar also hosts seasonal festivals for the public. On October 2, the annual Cape Cod Cranberry Day will be held. The festival brings together local volunteers, who help cook chowder and chili as well as warm cranberry crisps for all to try using Green Briar recipes. In the Jam Kitchen there are many seasonal cooking demonstrations, offering a great inside look at the traditions that have made this little place so special for generations.

The Thornton Burgess Society’s Green Briar Jam Kitchen has deep roots in Cape Cod’s history. Interested in some Jam Kitchen fun facts?

• The society has at least 10 antique cherry pitters
in its collection.
• It takes 30 days for melon rind pickles to ripen.
• Each year, the museum’s kitchen staff fills more
than 27,000 jars.
• Strawberry jam is the number-one seller.
• Favorite Jam Kitchen job: Sampling the products!
• Least favorite Jam Kitchen job: De-stemming
gooseberries.
• A horseshoe hung by the Jam Kitchen’s founder,
Ida Putnam, still dangles over the Jam Kitchen door.
• Sugar for the jams and jellies is stored in
a 300-pound barrel.

Cranberry Apple Jam
(Yields four to six eight-ounce jars)

6 cups whole cranberries (fresh or frozen)
3 cups apples
4 cups sugar
4 tablespoons lemon juice

Pick through cranberries to remove stems and debris. Wash cranberries. Peel and chop apples into small chunks. Add sugar and lemon juice. Cook over low heat until sugar is dissolved. Increase heat to a rolling boil. Cook until thickened and pour into sterilized jars.

For more information, visit the website of the Thornton W. Burgess Society at www.thorntonburgess.org.

• Posted in Arts & Culture, Family Fun, Food, Recipes, Traditions

A Natural Heritage

“I grew up spending summers in a little Cape cottage my parents bought in 1956,” says Sue Sargent. Her mother, an avid gardener, planted perennials the family could enjoy during their Orleans vacation days. “My mother always gardened, she was a very natural gardener, and a great fan of Rachel Carson’s,” says Sargent, referring to the early environmentalist and author of Silent Spring. “I would watch her work. Later, when I married, I would come to visit the Cape with my husband and our daughters. After my parents died, my family continued to come to the cottage and in 1999, a fabulous gardener friend of ours designed and helped in planting the first meadow garden along our driveway.”

Today, the original cottage’s meadow garden is filled to overflowing with huge grasses—Miscanthus “Adagio” and Pennisetum “Hameln.” “I’ve divided them an awful lot over the years, I’ve even had to take some out,” says Sargent. She has under planted the grasses with multiple layers of Sedum “Autumn Joy” and Sedum “Matrona.” The Sedums’ succulent erect stems and fleshy leaves provide a great contrast to the billowing mounds and linear spikes of the ornamental grasses. When the Sedum come into bloom, the meadow is transformed with flushes of pink.

Pink accents show up again in a stunning Marsh Mallow (Hibiscus) with large ornamental flowers, planted near the house. “I love Marsh Mallows, they remind me of my mother; in fact, two of her Mallows survive to this day,” says Sargent. Her mother’s Mallows sit on a rise above the home Sue and her husband, John, built in 2001 on the same site as the original cottage. “John and I knew we wanted to retire here and realized our summer home, filled with memories, was not sufficient to meet our year-round needs,” Sargent explains. “We couldn’t bear the thought of tearing the house down and were fortunate to find someone willing to take the cottage and move it. For awhile we had what we called Tippy Village, a shanty town in our backyard—our old summer home cut into quarters—waiting for the movers to take it to a new site in North Eastham.”

Before the original cottage was moved from its foundation, Sargent dug up her mother’s garden and healed in roses, Hydrangeas, Phlox, and “Black-Eyed Susan” (Rudbeckia) in a safe place far from the construction. The plants have all found their way into the many beds and borders surrounding the new home. Soft pink “Fairy” roses her mother had planted now edge a pull-in place off the crushed shell driveway. “After the house was built, meadow number two was planted and then I kept expanding,” says Sargent.

Meadow “two” lines the other side of the drive. Birds flutter in and out of the grasses—Panicum “Shenandoah”, the reed grass Calamagrostis “Karl Foerster,” and the graceful Japanese silver grass Miscanthus sinensis “Morning Light.” She added a punch of color to the mix when she replanted original red “Knockout” shrub roses.

Both meadows are anchored by a blue spruce, adding structure and color. There are also blueberry bushes and colorful butterfly bushes. Sargent has planted various coneflowers (Echinacea) a great meadow plant; also, native goldenrod has snuck in and been allowed to stay. “Russian Sage” (Perovskia) adds dashes of purple as does the Nepeta “Six Hills Giant” (catmint). Adding a whimsical touch, Gaura lindheimeri “Belleza” weaves its way through grasses with small dancing blossoms, brightened by yellow splashes of “Black-eyed Susan.” A Kousa dogwood adds grace when four-petaled, white blossoms open out in late spring. “May Queen” Shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum) bounce in the breeze. American native “Joe Pye” (Eupatorium purpurea) has done very well and is a little too happy, says Sargent, who has no qualms about ripping out any plants that become invasive.

“I have lots of ‘Stella d’ Oro’ daylilies (Hemerocallis) and I like another daylily called ‘Hemero Pink,’” Sargent notes. When she needs new plants, she never buys just one—rarely three—but usually five to seven of the same variety—the bigger the pot size, the better. “I’m impatient and I’m what I’d call a frothing gardener,” says Sargent. “There are very few empty spaces, the plants run into each other. It is very informal. I like a natural look.”

Spring is spent tidying up the garden as most plants are left for winter interest. “We leave the leaves in the garden as a winter mulch,” Sargent explains. “In the spring, John weed-whacks the meadow gardens back almost to the ground.” The Sargents do bring in outside help when getting the gardens ready in the spring for a day of weeding, edging the garden, moving John’s cuttings to the compost heap, and laying down 20 yards of mulch.

“Our biggest work time is in April, May, and June,” says Sargent. “I spend a lot of time in the garden, certainly every day, sometimes for five hours, sometimes for two. Then it eases off. In the hot weather, I’m not totally anxious to be out there, but will head out a couple times a week to deadhead.”

Beyond the meadow gardens, graceful borders swing round the house. Sargent has filled the beds with pink “Gumpo” Azalea, the compact Japanese holly Ilex crenata, various Rhododendron, blue Ageratum, autumn-bright Leucothoe fontanesiana shrubs, “Cranesbill” perennial geranium, delicate “Lace Cap” Hydrangea, more Sedum, and lots of “Lady’s Mantle” (Alchemilla mollis) that Sargent cuts for house bouquets. “I love its fragrance and as a cut flower the ‘Lady’s Mantle’ is beautiful,” she says.

The oldest survivors in the garden are the huge Rhododendron. “My mother and father planted those back in the early 60s,” says Sargent, noting that she looks forward to the display of blossoms each spring. New additions to the garden have been added by her son-in-law, David Hawk, president of the landscape architecture firm, Hawk Design. “He is really talented and the nicest guy in the world,” says the proud mother-in-law. “His sense of design is unbelievable. He designed a beautiful rock wall for us and a circle garden filled with annuals.” Sargent is also partial to a planting David created with matching beds of Hydrangea paniculata, under planted with round balls of boxwood and a feathery pink Coreopsis perennial.

Although a bad back has slowed her down a bit, this gardener says she still finds time in the summer to swim and swing golf clubs or a tennis racket. There is no stopping this busy, multi-talented woman.

• Posted in Arts & Culture, Gardens

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