The ’pleasure of ruins’ at Artefact

Sonoma’s retail therapy options will soon be a bit slimmer, with Artefact Design and Salvage wrapping up operations this month. The unique shop, the original anchor tenant at Cornerstone Sonoma, is closing on July 19.

Owner Dave Allen was always something of an accidental retailer in any case, stumbling into the business on his way out of Silicon Valley. As Allen tells it, he “traded in his pathetically cheerful neckties for Patagonia stand-up shorts” in 1997, hit the road in search of architectural treasure, and never — not even once — looked back.

Those treasures, originally, were sourced in the U.S. and loaded into the back of a rented 24-foot truck. On his first 3,400 mile cross-country trek, Allen’s only plan for re-homing his wares was to host the mother-of-all-tag-sales from his front yard in Menlo Park.

It went so well that Allen did it again. He crisscrossed the country on the hunt for unique architectural salvage more than 30 times, in fact.

His arrival in Sonoma came at the behest of Chris Hougie, the St. Helena bon vivant who conceived the original iteration of Cornerstone’s gardens. “I was open before he even paved the parking lot,” Allen said.

Carved from a lonely stretch of fallow land along Highway 121, Cornerstone’s location took some time to catch on. For a while at the beginning, it was a ghost town. “It was so bleak and lonely out here,” Allen remembered. “That’s when I came up with the snowman idea.”

Cornerstone Gardens was modeled on the Garden Festival at Chaumont-Sur-Loire in France, with small plots designed by a host of illustrious landscape designers. But the portion of the property that fronted the highway on the south end of the lot was a wasteland of hardpan and undisciplined scrub, an ugly prelude to the lyric green spaces beyond.

And that gave Allen an idea. “I found the last remaining manufacturer of blowmold plastic figures in the U.S., and ordered a trailer load of these plastic snowmen,” Allen said. Then he sent fancy invitations out to his growing clientele, who gathered on a dark night before Christmas for the reveal.

“We were having a nice cocktail party, and then I led them out into the field and hit the switch,” Allen said. “I had to plug them in from the far side, and when I turned back I could see all their faces light up.” Allen felt he had witnessed the collective return of childhood wonder, as his well-heeled clients gasped and applauded.

The experience cemented his decision to make a tradition of the snowmen, as a kind of “thank you” to his customers, and his town.

Every year since, Cornerstone has played host to Allen’s irresistible platoon of jolly snowmen, arranged into some kind of timely vignette. They showed up on a diamond the year the Giants won the pennant, and scaled ladders hauling hoses after the 2017 fires. The snowmen, as much as anything, have defined Allen’s time at Cornerstone, and they’ll go with him wherever he goes next. “They’re going to appear somewhere around here,” Allen said, pinky-promising the snowmen’s return.

As Artefact evolved, the search for treasure led Allen overseas, to France, the Netherlands, and then Indonesia. His eclectic taste and sharp eye led him to collect beautiful things that defy categorization, like a passel of granite phalluses stacked in the shop’s yard, and gimlet-eyed clocks ticking on a table within. Everything at Artefact is beautiful, interesting, strange, or all three, and the experience of strolling through the shop always triggered delight.

But after 17 years, Allen feels ready to move on. “It’s just time for me to try something different. We’ll be online, and turn up locally again after the zombie apocalypse,” Allen said with trademark cheek, a funny man with a light heart and a slightly barbed tongue.

He’ll take his two valued employees along, too, people without whom his shop wouldn’t have thrived.

Lucia Mogelson has been with Allen for 16 years, and he swears he wouldn’t be in business without her. And Martin Garcia has been around for 14, a craftsman with the patience for old things. Of course the shop mascot -- Axel, the bulldog with the insatiable bucket fetish -- will come, too. Allen keeps his friends close, and his canines closer still. “We’re cranky old roommates, now,” Allen said of the dog.

On his business card, Allen’s executive title is “Finder of Objects,” and for 17 years, he’s shared his finds with Sonoma. A few of them, though, he’s kept for himself, partial especially to broken old things. “In every container or truckload I generally have an item or two that are my favorites. They tend to be little broken things. I love ruins. It’s all about the pleasure of ruins,” Allen said.

In its last week, shoppers will find Artefact wares deeply discounted. “We’re having a blowout sale like never before,” Allen said. As he closes the book on a remarkable run, Allen already sounds like a man ready for what’s next. “This is not a retirement,” he said, “it’s an evolution.”

Contact Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com.