Comments (0) Best Eclectica - 2012
Ironwood
Alyson Two Eagles and Jeff Childress like to call their shop Ironwood a "things we love store," and that's exactly what it is: a place where you walk in and fall in love. It's perfectly unlike any other place, and resembles nothing so much as a strangely modern museum of Victoriana, with its antique shelves and dark walls artfully cluttered with shadowboxed butterflies, potted succulents, terrariums, raw rocks and crystals, wooden arrows and what seems like a million objects, old and new. A select range of beautiful books, many of them scientific in nature, nest all around them, and art by local artists fills in the walls, shelves and window front: a Ravi Zupa assemblage here, Elena Stonaker's hand-embroidered and beaded creatures there, and a mass of Brittany Gould's cave-like polyhedrons dripping from the ceiling. Though the owners are young, Ironwood has a delicious old soul — one young woman minding the counter told us that it's not unusual for the store's hipster clientele to come back with their parents in tow — and the steampunk vibe of oiled metal and grinding gears amid growing things.
