Frosted Mushroom Lamp

For six years, part of everything we sold went to the animal shelter in Stowe. To the dogs and cats waiting there for a home.

We never put it on a sign. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you put on a sign.

We’re saying it now because this shop is closing, and we want the last thing it does to help those animals more than anything we’ve done before.

We spent thirty years telling people the truth in small rooms. That’s what nursing is, mostly. You sit on the edge of a bed and you say the true thing kindly. Thirty-one years for Nancy, thirty-three for Susan.

You learn something in that job. The ones who need you most usually can’t tell you what’s wrong. You just have to show up and pay attention. Animals are no different. They can’t ask for help. Someone has to give it anyway.

We met when we were seven. One desk over, second grade. At sixty we finally bought the little shop in Stowe we’d been saving fifteen years for. The overhead light was terrible, so we brought in lamps. A fox by the register. An owl in the fitting room. People asked about them more than anything else on the shelves.

Six years later, we’re closing. Not because business is bad. The stairs to the stockroom are steeper than they were, and we spent thirty years telling patients not to argue with their own bodies. It would be poor form to start now.

So this is the last collection. Animal lamps, chosen one at a time, the way we did our rounds. Every bit of profit goes straight to the animals at the shelter. Not a percentage. All of it.

Here’s what your lamp does. It feeds an animal at the shelter. It helps pay for the vet visit, the vaccines, the warm bed through a Vermont winter. It keeps a dog or a cat healthy and cared for until the day someone walks in and takes them home.

That’s what we’re asking for. A lamp for you, a full bowl for them.

Take your time. Find the one that looks back at you.

Nancy & Susan
Stowe, Vermont