Eclectic Old Town Shopping at Verdigris

I got an e-mail last month from Ursula Baukol, who had found this blog and wanted to introduce me to her store in Old Town Alexandria — Verdigris Antiques and Interiors. She didn’t know that I do a lot of my Christmas shopping in Old Town, or that I had been a docent at Robert E. Lee’s boyhood home before it went into private hands, or that I prefer walking the streets of Old Town to the crowded sidewalks of Georgetown, so I had to disagree with her assessment that Old Town is “the ugly stepsister of Georgetown.” But maybe we should keep people thinking that way, so we can keep gems like Verdigris all to ourselves.

Verdigris mainly sells furniture, art, and accessories, but Ursula keeps a little room upstairs devoted to vintage clothing.

Verdigris is one of those stores where you have to spend a  lot of time standing still, because the converted row house on King Street is packed from floor to ceiling with all manner of items, both locally acquired and brought back from her world travels.

Her items make an appearance in at least two rooms of the DC Design House — in the form of lamps in the Sally Steponkus’ master bedroom and framed intaglios in Barbara Franceski’s master sitting room.

What I love most about the store is that Ursula rips out pages from shelter magazines that feature products that can be found in her store, which is a great way to bring attention them:

This clipping hangs on the wall next to the lamp below.

Call me crazy, but I'm immediately more interested in this lamp because a magazine has featured it -- I guess it's the old editor in me!

First, I just can't get over how well this mid-century chair works with the Colonial-era sign behind it, and then I see another magazine clipping showing the chair...

The clippings also offer great suggestions about the setting in which you can use these items. We need all the help we can get, right?

“I sell what I love,” Ursula says. Indeed, she’s DOING what she loves, too. Seven years ago, she left her job as a technology consultant to go back to school at the Corcoran, returning to a genre she loved since she did a teenage internship at the Pratt Institute in New York. Ursula then did an unpaid internship at the Washington Design Center, and a 9-month stint at J. Robert Scott, before opening her store in Old Town — first on Patrick Street, and now at her current location at 1215 King Street.

She is particularly interested in art, which can be found throughout the rooms in the two-story shop.

Roanoke artist Bridget DeCicco painted on reclaimed wood.

Landscape painting by Fairfax artist Kay Egyhazy

A Hopper-esque painting by "E. Burke '71-'72"

“I love art so much, and I sell quite a bit of it,” Ursula says. “[Customers] don’t care if it’s a name or not – they feel it really moves them.”

Ursula travels the world with her husband, whose job at the Treasury Department takes him everywhere. Customers are the lucky ones when they see the objects she brings back from markets in Moscow, Estonia, Finland, Austria, Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and after this month, Morocco.

This antique abacus came from Estonia.

She also gets leads on items from local estate sales, such as these vintage-but-trendy foo dogs from the estate of a customer’s mother:

“Now, I have an inventory, so as I sell stuff, I can pull more from storage,” she says. That means the store is always changing from one week to the next. It’s definitely worth a visit.