Main Street Highland Park Article

Centerpiece Owner: Retail is Alive and Well in Highland Park

Main Street Highland Park

Retail is not dead, especially in Highland Park. Sales along Raritan Avenue have been strong this holiday season, despite dire predictions.

Centerpiece owner Sheryl Magaziner has a message to convey: retail is not dead, especially in Highland Park.

Sales at Centerpiece, 312 Raritan Avenue, have been strong this holiday season, in spite of the dire sales predictions being made by financial pundits. Her Black Friday sales were among the best she’s had since she opened the store in 2003 and they’ve remained steady.

“It’s not like we haven’t had to make some adjustments because of the economy, but it’s not as bad as they make it seem when you turn on the news,” Sheryl said. “Retail is not dead; not in Highland Park. Happily, people are supporting us.”

One of the adjustments Sheryl made is stocking her shelves with lower-priced, high-quality items. Many of the gifts she stocks sell in the $10-$15 range, such as fashion accessories for women and men, accoutrements for coffee and tea and educational toys for children. Relief Bead bracelets that benefit humanitarian efforts in Darfur sell for $12.

Some other unique items Centerpiece carries include: dishware from Fire and Light, a glass company that uses 100 percent recycled glass with a special pigment that gives their products an iridescent sparkle, hand-blown glass pens and fair-trade Zulu Grass Necklaces.

The quintessential Centerpiece experience is strolling into the store and asking Sheryl, or another staff member, to help assemble a combination of gifts. Centerpiece helps customers mix and match merchandise, choose complementary accessories and then gift wraps everything, free of charge. The store has been known for its beautiful, free gift wrap service since it opened.

Centerpiece opened in September of 2003, when Sheryl and her business partner Steve Gabel realized their dream of opening up a craft shop in Highland Park. They envisioned a store that was part retail, part gathering place. They sold coffee in the back of the store and invited people to come relax and socialize. Their business model evolved to focus more on retail during the first few years. Now it is a place residents and shoppers from out of town come to for gifts appropriate for all types of budgets.

“When we first opened, we suffered from a perception that we were very expensive,” Sheryl said. “While we do have some expensive items, I think the perception comes from being something new in town. People thought our merchandise was more expensive than it really is. Even today, we still have people who come in and say ‘Oh, this isn’t as expensive as I thought it would be.’”

Centerpiece is offering a special deal for the month of December. Customers receive a $5 coupon for every $50 they spend during the month. The coupons are redeemable in January for every $15 spent. For more information, contact Centerpiece at (732) 418-2000 or visit www.centerpiecegifts.com.

Holiday Promotion

Spotlight: Elaine Coyne Galleries

Elaine Coyne, designer, is known for her sculptures and her experimental finishes, sculptural earth and verdigris patinas.

Here is Elaine, describing her creative process:

"Prior to creating a new design, I read art historians, visit museums and galleries throughout the world. Then I spend hours in my art library. These extensive studies allow me to assimilate the place, manner and feel the artist explored at the time of creation. I allow those feelings to wash over me. At that point, my creations are those of my inner being and my assimilation.

"Every detail is critical after the flow of ideas give the creation a sense of calm. Our production department insures that the creativity and minute details are reborn in every creation."

New This Fall

BODUM is back! At your request we have brought BODUM tea and coffee presses back. Come in and see what's new in design and function!



New this Fall: best selection of CANDLES in town. Hand-dipped - everything from tapers to column candles. Plain & Scented.

And be sure not to miss this fall's sensational JEWELRY collection

There is still some Hobo on sale as well as the new line. Great new colors not to be missed! You'll want to be carrying these

Spotlight: Fire & Light

Fire & Light hand-poured colored glass tableware has a way of drawing the eye, enchanting the viewer with the unique play of light that filters through its rich spectrum of colors and textures. This enchantment is not simply a quality of the glass or its pigmentation, but of the very way in which it is made, the very hands that pour and press it, the beliefs and spirit that drive the people who craft the product, and the community from which it originates.

Fire & Light Originals has a noteworthy heritage, formed in 1995 as a partnership between the Arcata Community Recycling Center in Humboldt County, California, and a group of local investors who wanted to develop an innovative plan for using crushed, recycled glass. Our founders decided to turn their recycled glass into a raw material, manufacturing distinctive products for sale in and out of the immediate area. After careful consideration, the group decided upon a distinctive line of colored glass dinnerware which would be created by melting crushed glass in furnaces, adding pigment, and pressing the molten glass into bowls, plates, and glasses. In December, 1995, the first glass products were poured and pressed from the Fire & Light furnaces, and the world became a bit more luminous, slightly more colorful.

John and Natali McClurg purchased the company in 1999. Together with a team of 20 people, Fire & Light Originals is handcrafting the beautiful giftware and colored glass dinnerware that is now shipped to specialty stores and galleries throughout the country. The enlightened practices that gave rise to the company continue to inform everything we do. Fire & Light still strives to find new ways to incorporate recycling into our production process, like using recycled beer kegs from local microbreweries as vats to cool our ladles.

Fire & Light colored glassware is a product whose history is a kind of future, where age-old craftsmanship meets innovative manufacturing, utilizing post consumer glass as a resource. But it's the beauty that will get you, the twinkle of light on the surface of a watery blue bowl, and the knowledge that we get as much happiness out of making the colored glass bowl as you will from having it on your table.

Spotlight: Hardwear by Renee: Renee Christopher

Launched in 2001, Hardwear By Renee is a handbag line specializing in contemporary handbags. The handbags are designed with atypical items such as hardware and recycled materials. The collection features a range of modern colors with a clean urban style.

Based in Oregon City, Oregon, the company is owned and operated by Renee Christopher, an artist and designer. She strives to create a line of strong, sexy, and smart handbags that easily transition from day to evenings. Inspired by her vision of today's woman, the line of handbags proves durability need not be dowdy, nor femininity fussy and fragile, hardwear, and that's you.

Mary Jane Bags: Tom and Suzanne Coffey

Makers of Fine Oilcloth Bags

For over 6 years, Mary Jane Bags has been one of the premier suppliers of unique oilcloth products. Owned by Tom and Suzanne Coffey, our warehouse facility is located in Dalton, Georgia. But we are not just a designer and marketer of oilcloth accessories.

Mary Jane Bags has sew shops in Mexico which produce all of our oilcloth products. This assures that our customers will receive the consistency in quality that they have become accustomed to. Having our own manufacturing also allows us to move quickly towards fashion trends using the most recent oilcloth patterns.

Spotlight: Michael Aram

Michael Aram is an American born artist who works primarily in metal. After studying fine art and living as an artist in New York in the late 1980’s, Aram took what would later be a life-altering trip to India where he discovered rich metalworking traditions. Inspired to work with craftsmen whose skills he felt were greatly untapped, Aram turned his creative energies towards craft based design, setting up a home and workshop in New Delhi.

Aram’s work reflects humanity through the directness of the handmade process, as each piece is lovingly made using age old traditional techniques. The artisan nature of the work imbues it with a soulful quality and an energy, which Aram feels is only possible with work, which reflects the hand of the maker. This energy is further enhanced by the tension of line, form, and meaning that is characteristic of Aram’s work. As extraordinary objects, they cause us to pause and consider them, and therefore create a sense of ritual and ceremony in their day to day use.

The objects range from tableware to furniture, both are sold in galleries and specialty stores worldwide. This broad diversity embodies Aram’s versatility as an artist who is comfortable working on private commissions, one of a kind pieces for gallery shows, or pieces that are affordable to a wider audience.

Bridging the gap between the artist and artisan is a hallmark of Michael Aram’s work. Whether in his narrative and figurative “signature” collection, or in his more contemporary ‘studio’ line, each piece is entirely handmade with no two examples ever exactly the same. The handmade quality of the work allows it to shift beautifully between the realm of fine and decorative art. This enduring melange of quality and originality sits comfortably at home in contemporary as well as in more classical interiors.

Appropriately, in Hindi, “aram” means “gently, with peace, with love and care”. Repeating this direction mantra-like to the craftsmen, Aram succeeds in making high quality work, which is as much a personal statement, as it’s appeal, is universal.

Spotlight: Randi Chervitz

Randi Chervitz has been making jewelry since 1987. She began exploring forms in metal at Parsons School of Design, New York City, as part of her studies there. From Parsons, Chervitz transferred to Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, the "Harvard" of metalsmithing, to study with internationally-known jeweler, Richard Mawdsley.

Since graduating in 1991 with a Cum Laude double major in Metal and Fiber, Chervitz has been hard at work keeping her artwork at the center of her life. In 1991, she began selling her work, jewelry pieces that explore fiber techniques in metal. Her influences include couture fashion, its history, expressiveness, and relationship to everyday life. Also important are the transformation of the role of women in the past fifty years, and the emergence of the self as one grows through life.

While building a following on the retail art fair circuit, Chervitz continued her personal and professional development by working in leadership roles in national and local retail stores. These experiences taught her to respect the consumer, as well as created an understanding of how high-end, one-of-a-kind objects influence the mass market. Developing this knowledge has given her a unique perspective and understanding of how various market segments influence each other, and the impact that can have on artists choosing to make their livings through their art.

Chervitz feels privileged to make her own living through her art-making, and is constantly exploring new ways to create texture through metal. Her crocheted surfaces are her trademark, and hammered and soldered linear techniques reveal new directions.

Chervitz lives in Saint Louis, MO with her family.