Village Squire, 1976-05, Page 5THE SHADOW BOX- both a business and an
education for Rita Ryan.
Mrs. Ryan turned a personal hobby into a business and has
been enjoying the best of
both.
Rita Ryan is one of those people who don't think that learning
should stop when schooling stops.
One of the things she enjoys most about running her small
store The Shadowbox in Clinton, she says, is that she is still
learning. "The enjoyment of this shop is that you're learning
every day," she says. "There is no way you can be
knowledgeable on every antique but the people coming in to
browse bring in a wealth of information."
The Shadowbox sells antiques and handicrafts, the old and the
new. "I don't think you could be solely dependent on antiques,"
she said. Antique dealers in cities like Toronto can sustain
themselves, she says, not only because of the larger market but
because they work with interior decorators who buy antiques for
buildings they are decorating.
So, though antiques were the main reason she opened the store
nearly three years ago, Mrs. Ryan now has a wide selection of
hand-crafted items produced by local craftsmen.
The store was a real family affair at the beginning. All of her
family, she says, pitched in in the hectic job of getting the sore
open in time..Even if the store had dosed a couple of days after it
opened she says now, the effort would have been worth it for the
way it drew the family together during those days of preparation.
The family is still involved though in a lesser way, she says,
with members helping take the burden of the busy times now and
then and with several members contributing their own crafts to
the store.
People told her not to open the store, she recalls because they
didn't think such a business could flourish in Clinton. While it
may not be flourishing, she says, she shows pride in the fact the
store is still in business nearly three years later. She was told, she
said, that if she could last three years the business then might
begin to pay off. That goal has almost been reached.
She came to the business through personal interest rather than
expertise and she's been learning ever singe. Antique collecting,
particularly the collecting of old magic lanterns and of serviette
rings, had been her hobby for some time. She'd also worked for,
two seasons at the Huron County Pioneer Museum in Goderich
helping research and catalogue items and found that very
interesting. So when she set out to start her own business she
chose antiquity.
Written sources of information on antiques in Canada are
relatively few, she says. Most of the books on antiques are ,
American although more Canadian books are appearing every
day. Most of the cataloguing books (books that help dealers
establish a price for an antique) are also American. Generally the
price in Canada is cheaper than the price in the U.S.
Most of her business, she says, comes from outside the local
area. Local people, she says, already have their own antioves,.
many handed down over itie'generations through the family with
a lot of tradition as well as the beauty of antiques.
- But people from Toronto, Stratford and London have become
good customers because, she says, the prices locally are much_
VILLAGE SQUIRE/MAY 1976, 3