It used to be Rockefeller’s, a–what else?–rock shop on Jackson Rd., near the I-94 Fletcher Rd. exit, right on the border of Dexter and Chelsea. Then, the nineteenth-century brick farmhouse sat vacant for a while, flora encroaching.
But suddenly it no longer looks abandoned. Matthew Millar’s Vintage Village, which opened this spring, could be a satellite of Greenfield Village. Most days Millar is his own craftsman-in-residence: out back is his companion business, Renovatio Woodworks, where he builds custom furniture from found materials and plans to teach classes in furniture restoration and refinishing.
Vintage Village is on the bottom floor of the house (the top is a private apartment). It’s both a salesroom for Millar’s furniture and a gift shop for an eclectic array of his favorite local arts, crafts, and comestibles. The farm house’s oak woodwork is extravagantly decorated with museum-worthy carved swags and fluted columns–particularly unusual in a house of this scale. Millar doesn’t know much about the history of the house or the property yet. It’s one of a scattering of nineteenth-century buildings near Lima Center Rd., once a stop on the Michigan Interurban Railway, though Millar doesn’t yet know how or if this house was related to the tiny whistle-stop down the road.
Looking like a right hipster with his cardigan, owlish spectacles, and slow walk, he hands out glossy postcards announcing Renovatio’s grand opening for “artisin goods … comming” this spring (the postcard’s old–he’s already open). “My wife says I should proofread,” he says absentmindedly. Despite the haphazard punctuation and misspellings, it turns out Renovatio isn’t a typo: “Ren-o-VAHT-ee-oh,” as it’s pronounced, is “Latin for renewal.” (And would a spell-check help anyway? His word choices sometimes seem creatively off-kilter. Asked to describe his wife, Sarah, Matt calls her “stout,” eventually clarifying “of mind, of mind!” as if amazed that it could mean anything else.)
An early false start in the navy from 1979 to 1983 drove Millar to work for himself: “I was so glad to get out of there, I was counting the days,” he says. But the navy did give him a love for islands–after his discharge, he ran a handyman business in the Virgin Islands for years–and its ports of call also introduced him to the best coffees and chocolates of the world. He says he would put locally made Mindo chocolates and RoosRoast coffee up against any of them, which is why he sells them here.
More recently, he’s been an estate handyman at a rural historic home, which led him to the barn wood and old metal machinery and implements he likes to use as raw materials. Millar typically brings them back to life as usable pieces of furniture or home goods, like the table whose base looks like a hot water heater–it’s actually an old acetylene generator, he explains. Though his materials are rustic, his projects are executed with Mid-Century Modern precision, often with non-ninety-degree angles and fine finishes. His furniture makes a good backdrop for Westware, made by Margo West, a Chelsea potter whose asymmetrical, rounded geometric shapes and bright glazes with contrasting black-and-white checkerboards also have a folk-art-meets-Mid-Century-Modern look.
He’s still ramping up his inventory of things that strike the right aesthetic chord with him, like Laurie McDowell’s handmade soaps covered with handmade felt: soap with its own washcloth. Each bar comes with its own unique vintage soap dish. McDowell also needle-felts life-size acorns topped with actual acorn caps. Another find is Lois Shutte’s baskets handmade with locally gathered grapevines.
Vintage Village, 12290 Jackson Rd., Chelsea. 545-0505. Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Sat. 10 a.m-1 p.m. (Renovatio open by appointment.) renovatiowoodwork.weebly.com
