February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
By Patrick Markey
Take a stroll along Manhattan’s St. Mark’s Place, past the tattoo parlors and tarot card readers, the basement coffee shops and spit and sawdust bars, and you’ll find a touch of County Antrim. That’s not the popular Irish bar St. Dymphna’s, but rather The Scullery, a newly opened decor and art space run by the MacRory sisters from Ballymena, Northern Ireland.
Down the stairs, the customer enters a pantry-style room filled with a collection of household objects, hand-made candles, wrought iron, hand-crafted cushions and pillows. Hence the name, scullery.
Mary MacRory, who now part-owns and manages the store first came up with the idea with her sister Sheena and a mutual friend, Irish American, Elizabeth Burke, when they were taken to see a New Jersey warehouse filled with wrought iron objects going cheap.
"We were going to try and sell it at flea markets, but there was a lot of interest, and wrought iron is very popular now, so we thought ‘let’s open a shop,’" said Mary, who followed her sister to the United States in the early 1980s.
In choosing a location at 113 St. Mark’s Place between First Avenue and Avenue A, in New York’s East Village section, the Scullery seems to be in good company. In an area well known for its Bohemian tastes and alternative fashions, the Scullery is right opposite St. Dymphna’s, and on a street that has small alternative clothing and jewelry stores. That’s something the sisters hope to tap into, MacRory said.
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"St. Mark’s has a lot of little stores and funky things, we thought it would be a good location," she said.
In addition to the initial collection of decor, art, accents, iron chairs, lamps, and bed-stands — many of them from the 1940s and 1950s — the Scullery also takes orders for custom-designed ironwork. Customers design their own patterns in wrought iron, for example for a queen-sized bed or a lamp, and the Scullery will then have it produced at a workshop in New Jersey, MacRory said.
Elizabeth Burke, the third partner, also produces hand-crafted pillows and cushions and the store also produces hand-rolled beeswax candles. "We thought why should we pay for someone else to do it when we can do it ourselves," MacRory said.
Although the store only opened in April, the Scullery has already expanded as an idea. Soon after they opened the store, several customers asked if they could place their own art work there on consignment, with the Scullery taking a commission for any pieces sold.
Taking advantage of the area’s large artist population and the Scullery’s small back garden, MacRory said the Scullery also operates as a show space for local artists. Last Saturday they had their first show for Michael Brady, an Irish American abstract painter from New Jersey. In the finest East Village tradition, they also hope to expand that part of their business into regular poetry readings and exhibitions.
"It seems a lot of people out there don’t have an outlet for their work," MacRory said. The Scullery will next hold an art exhibit for Brooklyn painter Yvonne Grzenkowicz on Sunday, September 20.
While Sheena MacRory works as a general manager of a Lower Manhattan Irish bar restaurant, and Burke has experience in the retail business, Mary, who still works two days as a waitress, is still finding her feet in the new business. Although retail is not as easy it seemed at first, she said, there are enjoyable advantages: "It’s fun meeting different types of people." Details, call the Scullery at (212) 254-1264.