Tag sales make Fallston a shopping destination
worth the drive.
“Because it’s monthly, it’s more appealing,” Ross said. “It’s good to compare and get ideas.” “We both love it,” Zderko agreed. The stores are a spectacle in their own right. Rustic filament-bulb lamps sit atop reclaimed furniture. Sprigs of cotton, vines and dried flowers wind around wall fixtures and sprout from vintage milk jugs. Overhead, twinkling chandeliers of wood, chrome and crystal illuminate carefully crafted displays. Visitors to the three stores can find items like reclaimed barn wood, old magazines and weathered antlers.
And then there’s the furniture. Full dining room tables, elegant kitchen hutches and even a desk made from reclaimed airplane metal stand out as single pieces or prop up other unusual finds.
In Farmhouse Design District, Melanie Harris, Melissa Neery and Emma Hood looked over a rust-colored chest of drawers with crab-leg handles during a recent monthly sale.
“It’s gorgeous,” said Hood, a Pasadena resident and tag sale first-timer. “I want everything.”
There are more than 70 vendors offering vintage goods among the three stores. The sellers find their items at auctions, estate sales and thrift stores. Sherri Dowell, a Farmhouse Design District vendor, and her partner, Kim Young, snagged some pieces from a 100-year-old home in Jarrettsville and use old leather-bound books, some belonging to Dowell’s late father, as accent pieces. Every piece has a story, Dowell said, and so do most of the customers.
”A lot of people will come in and say, ‘I had one of these growing up,’ ” said Dowell, who sold one of her father’s books, though it wasn’t originally a ticketed item. “When someone buys something they love as much as you, you feel really good about it.”
The sales have become a destination for patrons nationwide. Painted Mill vendor Jennifer Lane has helped patrons from as far away as Hawaii. Sabrina Barney, owner of The Vintage Tin Can, recalled selling to a mother from Ohio who planned visits with her family around the sales. Half the fun is seeing where shoppers come from, Lane said.
“We try to keep it themed,” she said of her section of The Painted Mill. “It definitely keeps people coming back.”
Jenny Koppenhaver, co-owner of Farmhouse Design District, held the store’s grand opening in January after working as a vendor in The Painted Mill. Koppenhaver and her partner, Sandy Schmitt, are inspired by the past, she said, and looked to old buildings and old movies when designing their store.
Farmhouse Design District found its home in a former station of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad, which ran in Maryland until the late 1950s. The store is designed to look like one “well-designed building,” Koppenhaver said. The large rooms offer carefully curated displays that flow from room to room.
The Painted Mill, true to its name, set up shop in the former warehouse for animal feed produced at the Reckord Mill, now called the Mill of Bel Air. The Painted Mill offers three floors of rustic nooks to explore, decorated by anywhere from 40 to 60 vendors. A newly added porch and selection of trendy clothing allow shoppers to expand their search, and a hand-cranked grain elevator helps move heavier pieces from floor to floor. The store usually features a different theme each month, said owner Jennings-Janson, and the fall and winter seasons see the most dramatic changes.
“Christmas is insane,” she said. “There’s no parking anywhere.”
At The Vintage Tin Can, Barney, who grew up going to auctions and estate sales with her father, has put her lifelong experience with secondhand treasures to work.
“That’s what our roots are,” Barney said. “I look for people who actually go out and find things versus buying them.”
At Barney’s warehouse space, patrons can wander through an array of unusual knickknacks and accent pieces, and purchase fresh produce and wildflowers.
In the space between the three stores are shoppers cradling their purchases, showing off special finds and swapping strategies with one another.
“I’m always looking for something unique and interesting,” said Sara Wyatt of Nottingham while waiting for a black hutch to be brought down from the upper levels of the Painted Mill.
“This is my third or fourth time here,” said Wyatt, who uses the sales to get ideas for her own furniture projects. “We had to circle around twice before we could get a parking space, but it was worth the wait.”