July 7, 2005

Ed Dietz packed up the Calumet Molladoor’s glass cups, vases and antique wares two weeks ago as the shop prepared to close its doors after nearly 30 years of consignment business. He owned the business with Patty Maneri and Evelyn Sikes.

By Lauren Heaton

A storeload of pink glassware, old wooden furniture, estate jewelry, toys, faded clothes and other odd decoratives was hauled away in a truck on Monday, June 27, a week after Calumet Molladoor closed up shop. The look on the faces of visitors who over the past few weeks have come to peruse the store’s wares and found it closed, speaks to the appeal of the unique offerings of the village’s only general consignment shop.

Molladoor and Calumet began sharing a space next door to the Yellow Springs News office on Xenia Avenue in 1998. Molladoor owners Patty Maneri and Evelyn Sikes have sold their “trash with class” for 30 years in Yellow Springs, and Calumet owner Ed Dietz has sold antiques and collectibles in the village nearly as long.

Maneri first opened a store, then called the Mollading, on Dayton Street in early 1974 with local resident Toni Holm. A natural collector with a penchant for anything circa 1930, Maneri frequented estate sales, auctions and consignment shops and had amassed so much stuff she had to open a shop to get rid of it, she said.

Meanwhile, Sikes had opened a local artisans’ shop, then called the Blue Door, with Fran Gifford in the brick building behind the current location of Sam and Eddie’s. She sold handmade items, such as Corinne Whitesell’s weavings, Pam Hogarty’s glass ornaments and art by local youth. When the village bakery closed in late 1974, freeing the space where Dunphy Real Estate is now, the two women joined forces and names, said Maneri, calling their store the Molladoor.

The two continued to go to the Springfield auction every Wednesday, looking for things they liked and things they thought might be useful for college students who needed inexpensive, practical items such as pots and pans, lamps, bedding and some clothing. “We sold funky stuff,” Maneri said.

Dietz, who both he and Maneri agree is more of an antique dealer, came on the scene in the late 70s and worked with the Molladoor until 1980 when he opened his own shop, Calumet, in the space now occupied by Greentree Weaving.

Dietz, also a born collector, fell in love with antiques through a high school friend, whose Kettering house, an early 1800s Pennsylvania stone home, was furnished in the colonial Ethan Allen style. After he got his first job and had saved a little money, he bought his first big piece, a Dutch marketry blanket chest for $150.

Since then, nothing post-1870, when mass production first became popular, has interested him much. The craftsmanship of earlier times, anything with a good patina or worn wood suggesting age, appeals to him, he said.

“People turn their nose up at anything with a little damage or chip, even if it’s beautiful,” he said. “A chip, that’s never bothered me.”

“Why would I want a new vase that just doesn’t have any substance to it or any history?” he said. “There’s enough stuff in the world without our importing all that other stuff from China.”

In 1983, Calumet moved in with the Molladoor in the current Wind’s space, where the two stayed for seven years before moving upstairs and then over to their most recent location next to the News.

Molladoor and Calumet always kept their merchandise separate, but Dietz helped Sikes and Maneri recognize quality and helped them to know when they had something really good, Maneri said. “He’s a real antique dealer and a good businessman,” she said. “We’re sort of junk ladies who want to sit in the shop and play Scrabble.”

But Maneri is also nostalgic for the bygone era and loves the detail and attention that used to go into everyday items such as the perfume and nail polish bottles from her childhood. She liked the wave hairstyle of the 1920s and the grace of the Art Deco lady lamps of the 30s.

“There was a flare and a style that you just don’t see anymore,” she said.

That flare may still be in danger. According to Dietz, business at the shop began to decrease around 1999, shortly after the Fairfield Commons mall was built. People came less often or stopped coming to Yellow Springs, he said, and soon the Calumet Molladoor had difficulty paying the rent.

Other, more natural forces of change also affected the business. After 30 years of collecting, recycling, and selling, Sikes began travelling more with her husband, Walter, and Maneri didn’t want to run the shop without her other half. When they made the choice to sell, Dietz decided to do the same, focusing on the three antique booths he runs at the Jeffreys Mall in Findlay, the Heritage Square mall in Columbus and the Springfield Antiques Center.

The shop’s owners were all hoping someone would buy the business and keep it going, but no one surfaced in time. All of the items in the shop were sold to Tremont City Auction and taken away at the beginning of the week.

Maneri said the best thing that came out of the business was the friendship she and Sikes started. They are inseparable now and will continue to play Scrabble at least once a week, she said. Sikes also said she would miss the regulars such as Bob Baldwin, who came looking for things for the bar and the apartments he rented, and Marcia Walgren and Huey Livingston, who came by just to chat.

“Patty said she went to a yard sale last week with friends and was really sad because she saw all these deals and she couldn’t get any of them,” Sikes said.

“We’ve identified ourselves as being the Molladoor ladies, and I think we’ll die with that title,” Maneri said. “It’s a bittersweet end, but after 30 years, it’s time.”

* * *

Beginning in August, Basho Apparel will occupy the former Calumet Molladoor space.