Village Squire, 1978-02, Page 151 Pulling style
inthe
/€itchen
Colleen Stephenson and Leigh Dennison
think you don't have to sacrifice beauty for price
When you're artistic you just naturally want beautiful things
around you. even when you're at work in your kitchen. The basic
belief that you might as well have a cheap beautiful glass as a
cheap ugly one is what led Leigh Dennison and Colleen
Stephenson to open Stephenson's in Stratford last April.
Leigh is a graphic artist by training. Colleen is stage manager
at the Stratford Festival. Both have artistic tastes and it shows in
their shop. the displays and the goods sold. The main feature of
the store is stylish kitchenware with a modern contemporary look
so foreign to most of the humdrum utensils in the average
Canadian kitchen.
The two women have been friends for the past four years and
used to talk about the possibility of opening a shop. They were
interested in well-designed things, and they noticed that no one
in Stratford was selling that kind of product so they decided if
they were going to open a shop it would be in that area. They
found a vacant building on Ontario street and, Leigh says,
everything just sort of fit into place.
For Colleen the shop was a way of having something to do in
the winter when the theatre wasn't in operation (though this year
with its earliest ever start on rehearsals, that gap has been
small). For Leigh it was a chance to do something that combined
her interests. A Toronto native, she studied at the London
(England) College of Design and at the University of Waterloo in
fine arts. While there, she took a job in the summer running
Gallery Pascal in Stratford. She liked the town and decided to
stay. She commuted to college in Waterloo and taught art classes
at The Gallen, Stratford and worked at a local bookstore and at
the Festival. Nov:, however, her full attention is given to the
store.
Colleen, who came to the city eight years ago, makes the pair a
good team because her experience as a stage manager makes her
a good business woman, Leigh says.
One of the most trying things for them when they opened was
coming up with a name for the shop, Leigh recalls. They spent a
good deal of time going through dictionaries looking for just the
right name. They thought of many campy, boutiquey names but
rejected them all. They saw that most of the businesses in the
city were named after the people who ran them so eventually
came up with a good name: Stephenson's. The name is apt
because not only is it Colleen's name, but Leigh's name was
Stevenson before she was married.
The couple opened the show in a redecorated law office last
April stocking it with, Leigh says, "the kind of thing I collect
around me in my own house".
She likes things well designed and functional she says and the
items on sale bear that out. One of the frustrations for the couple
has been trying to find that kind of thing manufactured in
Canada. They have looked desperately, Leigh says, and have
found a few Canadian things that meet their standards not
enough. The result is that most of their merchandise is imported
from Germany or particularly Scandanavia.
The lack of well-designed Canadian goods is frustrating, Leigh
says. There is no reason why items can't be well designed and
manufactured here in Canada. We have the resources here but
manufacturers don't get into good design because they don't feel
that's where the market is. The store just hasn't been able to gel
things that correspond with the quality of the Scandanavian
design made here, she says.
The manufacturers may not feel there is a market for
VILLAGE SQUIRE/FEBRUARY 1978, 13. '