Longtime friends Ann Pastore and Nellie Denison will open a store together.
By Jim Smedley
Staff Writer

NORWAY – Nellie Denison couldn’t believe her ears when Anne Pastore told her she was opening an antique business with a friend.

The Otisfield women had been friends for 19 years. They had been to numerous antique shops, agreeing after they left that they could do a better job if they only had their own shop.

They had talked many, many times about having their own shop.

And now, Denison learned Pastore was opening a shop with a friend.

“You should have seen her,” Pastore said. “She had that cute look on her face, tucked her head down, lifted her eyes and said, ‘Who?'”

“You,” was Pastore’s reply.

The friends began creating plans last summer for a one-of-a-kind shop in Oxford Hills.

And on Dec. 1, The Vintage Pantry, an eclectic and funky antique shop opened on Fair Street.

“We trash-to-treasurize things,” Pastore said.

A patent leather pocketbook that serves as a dry-flower vase seems to demonstrate her point as do footstools made from suitcases circa 1950 on which they put legs and a pillow-like top.

“What’s neat about these is that you can also store stuff inside,” Denison said.

The pair turned an old mirror, separated from its dresser, into a coat rack by putting glass doorknobs on it.

“We use our creative license to be able to do our own thing,” Pastore said. “That’s why we’re here.”

The store does have some antiques – items more than 100 years old – and vintage items, which Pastore said were from the 1920s to the 1950s that displayed an art-deco style.

They have rotary phones, an early 1900s typewriter, linens, skin care products, hand painted trays, mosaic mirrors and Depression glass, to touch on some of their inventory.

Pastore said they also have new handcrafted items that portray a vintage style.

The shop’s prize item is a petal pink, 1958 refrigerator that hangs on a wall.

“It was the first thing we bought,” Pastore said. “We had to go to Brunswick and use a car jack to get it off the wall.

“My husband also had to get some of his really tall friends to help,” she said.

The store has four rooms, each with a theme. Pastore said it wasn’t by plan; it just worked out that way.

Denison said the response to the store has been good in the first week.

“When people come in they walk around and you can hear them giggle, ‘Oh, I remember that,’ or ‘I had that as a kid,'” Denison said.

The store is open during the Christmas season from 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday to Thursday. It will be open from 9:30 to 8 a.m. Friday.

“Christmas will be our next day off,” Pastore said.

jsmedley@sunjournal.com

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