The ENCORE booth at the Ashland Artisan Emporium repeats the best of the past and helps new dreams emerge for today’s young women. The booth features unique clocks remade from found treasures, beautiful repurposed vintage jewelry, and usable art from paintings made by high school students in Nakuru, Kenya. Proceeds help fund a scholarship program for girls in Kenya, a self-sustaining garden program at the Hopewell Schools in Nakuru, breast cancer support groups, and other charitable projects.
ENCORE is run by mother and daughter partners, Doris and Liz. Doris has been conducting jewelry workshops as fundraising events for over 10 years. In 2014, she started making a few clocks from leftover watch-faces too beautiful to discard. Friends started asking for particular themed clocks, and the clocks became more elaborate. Her primary requirement is that all materials used in the clocks come from thrift and charity shops that support the community and that proceeds are reinvested in charitable organizations helping to repair the world.
Liz is a college sophomore who has been working with schools in Kenya since the 2007 uprisings to help students rebuild their communities. As a young Girl Scout she started sending the students in Kenya art supplies, and she uses their amazing paintings to produce calendars and canvas bags sold in the ENCORE booth, with 100% of the proceeds sent back to the schools to buy seeds and fertilizer for community gardens. For Liz’s Girl Scout Gold Award project, she started “Reach the Sky,” a scholarship program that funds a girl’s entire high school education–one girl at a time. Many of the one-of-a-kind items in the ENCORE booth are amazing pieces supporters have donated to “Reach the Sky.”
The result of all this is that the ENCORE booth is exciting and eclectic. Doris has donated her mother’s, aunts’, and grandmother’s vintage buttons to the booth. A friend donated her entire cottages collection. There are Golden Books, mantle panthers, vintage suitcases, handbags, unique photographs and artwork. The collection changes monthly as new donations come in.
Finding the Emporium has given mother and daughter a way to reach a caring customer base in Ashland in a great creative space owned and operated by women with a vision.
And there are bargains at ENCORE! For the month of October, all pink jewelry and accessories are 20% off, with proceeds benefitting Project Pink, a breast cancer support group.
