DISCOVERIES FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE THAT HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS.
Coin Maison Espace Pepin, a ‘discovery store,’ is the latest project of Lysanne Pepin, who stocks it with her own designs and unusual items from Quebec and beyond.
Wander into Lysanne Pepin’s home furnishing, housewares and lifestyle shop and you may well feel like settling into one of the pair of loveseats at the front of the Old Montreal establishment, near one of the windows facing St-Paul St. W.
Her design is an updated take on a traditional Queen Anne piece — with cleaner, simpler lines. Upholstered in simple taupe linen, it beckons.
Or perhaps you’ll be drawn to the nearby bed, and the texture of Montreal textile artist Annie Legault’s cream-coloured alpaca throw, knitted with giant needles and super-thick yarn. Or to the armoire stacked with lambswool blankets from the Swedish company Klippan.
You might want to pull up one of the vintage rustic wooden chairs placed around the square, glass-topped Italian table, which has a base carved by Italian woodworking artisans and is set with dishes handcrafted by a Japanese artisan placed on rustic linens from the Ontario-based company Linen Way.
Crossing over the threshold of Coin Maison Espace Pepin, which opened in November as the latest project from the talented 46-year-old Montreal designer, artist and retailer, is like being invited into the home of a really cool friend — one with great style and endless imagination.
“You truly feel at home here,” said Sylvie Peronne, manager of the shop.
“The place just wraps itself around you.”
The space itself, with stone and exposed brick on the walls, high, beamed ceilings and a muted palette of soft grey, is lovely. The lighting is inspired: different shapes and sizes of fixtures, all on dimmers, shining at varying intensities. Without proper lighting, Pepin has said, it is as if objects don’t exist.
Plus, the place has what must be one of the coolest lunch counters in town. Pepin knew she wanted for food to be served at Coin Maison Espace Pepin because, to her, food makes a place more inviting. La récréation, as the lunch counter is known, is a venture of Chez Victoire restaurateur Edward Zaki, chef Alexandre Gosselin and sommelière Sindie Goineau. They rent space at the back “and the project is our own entity,” as Zaki put it.
“The philosophy is easygoing healthy lunch snacks and especially juices,” he said. Think soups and salads made with local and seasonal products and fresh juices like the Detox, made with pineapple, mango, lemon, date, vanilla and arugula. “We do a lot of juices for people who want to replace one or more meals per day.”
The juices and soups are served in glass Mason jars: Customers leave a deposit, which is returned when they bring the jars back. Jars just like them are sold at the store.
There’s seating at the front of the shop for about 12 — Pepin chose actual lab chairs as seating for one of the tables; they’re for sale — or customers can get food to go. The menu changes every six weeks, but the Sept-Îles, made with Nordic shrimp, horseradish mayo, avocado, cucumber, bacon and arugula and the most popular of the sandwiches, is a constant. The sandwich was included in a Tourism Montreal blog post in February about the 10 best sandwiches in Montreal.
Music, too, contributes to the ambience. Pepin’s boyfriend, DJ and composer Zo Rakotomalala, created the playlist. At dusk on a recent frigid Saturday, with the interior lighting warming the space and illuminating the objects on display, St-Paul St. appearing indigo through the windows in front, the track Run to You by The Rocket Summer sounded exactly right. It made me want to stay longer.
Larger pieces like sofas, tables and coffee tables anchor the space, but in what she calls “a discovery store,” Pepin has curated unusual and enticing items from Quebec and beyond — from foodstuffs to rolling pins, rustic, artisan-wrought glass lanterns from Morocco to handcrafted brooms from France and ostrich feather dusters, fine knives from an Italian company in business since the 1500s and bamboo bowls made in a fair-trade cooperative in Vietnam for Bibol, a French company supporting sustainable development.
“I want to be a store where you can find anything for your house,” said the animated, and outgoing Pepin, who moves easily between French and English — sometimes mid-sentence — as if there were two trains of thought in her head. “I want to be a store where my heart goes.”
A made-in-Quebec pepper mill of rough-hewn maple or cedar ($90 to $150, depending on size and shape) looks like a segment of a tree branch. Woven hemp baskets by Montrealer Monique Ste-Marie of Sainte Marie Design Textile are attractive and practical. From Isabelle Auger of Atelier Cocotte, there are sculptural hanging lamps of Canadian veneers including birch, oak, walnut and maple; the lamps are designed and produced in Quebec.
There is a line of aprons designed by Pepin in sizes for children and adults. There are lovely thick linen napkins from Ontario-based company Linen Way, and pieces of vin- tage flatware, trays, cut-glass bowls and old jars picked up around the province.
Items are displayed on rustic pieces, including reclaimed wood, industrial pallets and even wooden childsizeoutdoorpicnictables.One such display features sturdy mixing bowls by Mason Cash, a British company established in 1800, and glass storage jars by Kilner, a company founded 49 years later. From Kilner, there’s also a stylish jam thermometer and a jam spoon, its handle looped so it can be clipped to a jar of jam. Another display is dominated by food products from such Montreal-based food companies as Société Orignal and the Preservation Society.
Pepin is a dog owner — and clearly she thought of dogs when stocking Coin Mason Espace Pepin: There are dog baskets in three sizes, made for her by the company that manufactures the sofas and other upholstered pieces she designs. There are handsome concrete food bowls. And there are collars, rope dog leashes and collapsible water bowls from Found My Animal, a Brooklyn-based company that supports animal adoption.
Pepin brings her own philosophy to objects — in the way she re-imagined the Queen Anne style for the collection she has labelled Lauren, for instance, and had leather-topped hassocks and pillows upholstered in wool from vintage army blankets she found in Switzerland.
In addition to the Lauren collection, a kind of homage to Ralph Lauren, there is her mid-century-inspired Speakeasy line: Looking at the sofa, upholstered in leather and fabric, I could just picture Mad Men’s Don Draper sitting back on the sofa, drink in hand, eyes giving no clue of what he was thinking.
What Pepin has chosen to stock the store with is part of what makes the place such a delight to visit again and again, but part of it is also how she displays objects — the way in which she combines vintage and modern, rough-hewn and polished, quiet and flyé.
I visited four times in a fiveweek period — and observed each time that objects had been rearranged so that they looked entirely different, so that it felt as if I were seeing them for the first time.
“We move things around nearly every week, as new items arrive,” manager Peronne said. “There’s no time to get bored.”
Artist Legault observed: “It is a kind of work in progress — for me, a stimulating environment for creativity. It is not static. There are always new things, new needs, new ideas.
“Because I know Lysanne so well and I know her home and I know her philosophy, I feel like I am in her home. I feel at home in the store.”
In ways, Coin Maison Espace Pepin shop is an extension of the airy Old Montreal loft Pepin calls home: It’s a stone’s throw from Espace Pepin, the fashion boutique on St-Paul she has run for several years. Early on, she stocked Espace Pepin with her own artwork, fluid paintings done mostly in acrylic, and with clothing and fashion accessories; over time, though, kitchen accessories and home furnishing items began to turn up in the mix: These have now found a home in the new store.
The loft Pepin and Rakotomalala share is furnished with furniture of her own design, pieces Pepin commissioned and prototypes of objects that would eventually appear at Espace Pepin or The Pepin Shop, the online store she runs with her brother, Patrick, a photographer, graphic designer and owner of NumérArt, a mural business.
Legault, a graduate of Concordia University’s studio arts program and now the manager of Espace Pepin, supplies the new store with wonderfully creative pieces, including the alpaca throws, flexible pendant lamps of twisted kraft paper that has been looped, crochet-style, and crocheted round wool area rugs. She calls her company Amulette; it’s French for amulet, or something that protects against illness or bad luck, and she says she views the pieces she creates as protecting people from the dark and the cold.
In what is perhaps another indication that Coin Maison Espace Pepin is more than simply a shopping destination, Legault will give a workshop there on making the wool throws in April. Those attending will get thick wool and a pair of thick needles in addition to instruction. “Because the wool is thick and the needles are big, the progression is quick,” she said. “It’s perfect for beginners.” Coin Maison Espace Pepin, 378 St-Paul St. W. in Old Montreal, open Monday to Saturday. La récréation open 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
Espace Pepin, 350 St-Paul St. W., open daily. Call 514844-0114. To register for the knitting workshop, contact Annie Legault at Espace Pepin.