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New gift shop focuses on quality, local and monastery-made goods |
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By Maria Wiering
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009 |
For a long time, customers at Loome Theological Booksellers in Stillwater have asked if the store might consider selling religious gifts in addition to the more than 250,000 books that already line the store’s shelves.
Loome Sacred Gifts co-owners Andrew Poole, left, and Christopher Hagen show off a Christmas ornament that is among the handcrafted items for sale in their new shop, which opened Nov. 15. - Photo by Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit
And for a long time, the answer had been no.
However, co-owners Christopher Hagen and Andrew Poole have changed that response. The duo opened Loome Sacred Gifts Nov. 15.
The new store focuses on higher quality, local or monastery-produced
goods, Poole said, including some goods “suited for sacramental
occasions,” such as baptismal gowns.
“There are a lot of sacramental celebrations that happen in the St.
Croix Valley here — weddings, baptisms. We want to be available to
people who come in for that,” Hagen said.
Quality, local goods
Currently, a small tree in the store holds ornaments, including
Ukrainian Easter eggs and glass orbs with icon-like scenes. Other gifts
include carved wooden boxes, handmade clingstone pit rosaries and
chocolate Trappistine Creamy Caramels from Our Lady of the Mississippi
Abbey in Dubuque, Iowa.
Loome Sacred Gifts also sells original art and art prints, including
reproductions of icons written by Brother Christopher of the Carmelite
Hermitage of the Blessed
Virgin Mary in Lake Elmo. The actual icons were on display at the gift store’s Nov. 15 grand opening.
The caramels are Poole’s favorite gift item, he said. Hagen’s are the
icon reproductions, which are also from The Printery House
of Conception Abbey, a Benedictine abbey in Missouri; and the St. Isaac
of Syria Skete, an Orthodox monastery in Wisconsin.
Loome Sacred Gifts shares retail space with Loome Theological
Booksellers, which is housed at 320 N. Fourth St. in a 1904 former
church originally built for Stillwater’s Swedish Covenant community.
Most of Loome Sacred Gifts’ wares are displayed on a long, wooden table
and hung throughout the back entrance room. They’re framed by cases of
books, which will continue to be the central focus of the Loome
venture, Hagen said.
He and Poole view the gift store as an “appendage” of sorts to Loome Theological Booksellers.
“I don’t see it as core to this business,” Poole said.
“No way,” Hagen interjected.
“What I see as core is books, and it always will be,” Poole added.
They wouldn’t mind if the gift store eventually grew into its own store in a separate location, they said.
‘Little doorways to God’
Loome Sacred Gifts is Hagen and Poole’s response to the bookseller’s
financial needs. Since October 2008, they’ve seen book sales fall,
which is indicative of the nation’s struggling economy. Additionally,
libraries that regularly purchase from them have smaller institutional
budgets, limiting the amount they would have otherwise bought.
“We wanted to put something else in place that would help serve the
Catholics this side of the Twin Cities, so they have a reason to come
into our store,” Hagen said of Loome Sacred Gifts.
Although their store has books of interest beyond the Catholic faith,
most of Loome’s customers are Catholic. That’s what makes Loome Sacred
Gifts a complementary shop.
Catholicism has a strong relationship with sacred objects, Hagen adds.
“As Catholics who start with the incarnation and creation [and who
believe] the physical world is a good that is loved and appreciated in
a way that leads us toward God, the physical world does become little
doorways to God,” Hagen said.
Art, fine craftsmanship and beautiful things can lead people to God, he
said. That’s why Loome Sacred Gifts focuses on high quality items, he
added.
There’s also something special about the production of their items,
Poole added, since many of their products are made by hand and not
mass-produced.
Although some of the merchandise overlaps with that of other area
Catholic gift stores, Loome Sacred Gifts does not intend to compete
with them, Poole said.
“We’re doing a gift shop the Loome way,” Hagen said.
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