“It’s not often that I know the location right off the bat, but that’s a detail from the distinctive doorway at 313 S. State,” writes Dave Bicknell. “Those flowers (I always think of them as asparagus) flanked the door next to a long gone and lamented bookshop on State St.,” says Spencer Thomas. “I really like that doorway design,” writes David Karl, adding that it always makes him smile remembering the late Karl Pohrt’s “amazing” Shaman Drum Bookshop.
Our picture showed a sliver of the carving above the door that led to the second-floor space where the Drum opened in 1980. It “was created by John Morey and commissioned by George Wild,” whose clothing store was downstairs, writes Gerri Barr. One of only four entrants last month, Barr found the artwork’s origin story in a 1988 Observer Marketplace Changes article describing Morey’s “fantastical Tolkeinish arch of handmade mauve cement stone around the doorway.” Shaman Drum expanded downstairs in 1994 but closed in 2009.
Dave Bicknell won our drawing and is donating his $25 gift certificate to the Humane Society of Huron Valley, “in honor of my new cat Mingo (formerly known as Malachite) that I just got from there,” he explains.
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