I'm a fourth generation schmatta dealer. My father was a well-respected and pioneering manufacturer of women's ready-to-wear clothing. His company, The Luky Lynn Manufacturing Company, had its headquarters in New York City's garment district. Dad followed in the footsteps of my grandfather, The King of Slacks (yes, that was his company's name), best known for putting the pants on Rosie the Riveter during WWII. My grandfather followed in the footsteps of my great-grandfather, whose company, The Great American Coat Company, was one of the first wholesale coat manufacturers in America. When I was a young girl, I spent school vacations working for my father in the city. We frequented the huge fabric mills and trim suppliers in Manhattan and Brooklyn and we also haunted Macy's women's department looking for design trends. My father and his designers collected vintage salesman sample books filled with fine European fabrics, buttons and trimmings. As a child, I made fashion dolls with the trim and fabric swatches to the pitter-patter and clicking sounds from the numerous sewing machines working away in my father's sample room on Broadway.
I grew up in New Jersey, seventeen miles outside of New York City. As a child, I spent my summers running through fields of brilliantly colored wildflowers at my grandparent's bungalow colony in the Catskills in New York State. All the folks who rented bungalows there were from the old country and only spoke Russian or Yiddish. The men spent their days playing poker and roulette in the dark, smoke-filled casino (that's what we called the old barn out back,) while their wives sun-bathed and caught up on daily gossip at Lake Monroe. As a pre-teen and teenager, those idyllic childhood days in upstate New York were replaced with hot and humid summers spent at iconic Jewish camps in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania; mythic American summer camps during a time when kids painted their names and dates of attendance on the inside walls of their bunks; where you were forced to swim at 6:30 am in a freezing, brown-colored lake with fish, seaweed and water snakes brushing up against your legs; when the typical weekend started with Friday evening services after dinner, followed by a party with the boys camp at the canteen; and when, to your horror, your first kiss on the basketball court is announced by bullhorn to the entire camp at lunch the following afternoon. It was the typical daily life of a child of the Baby Boomer generation with a big dollop of chicken fat on it.
After graduating from high school, receiving degrees in business marketing and English, and completing some graduate school, I shifted gears completely and moved to scenic Laguna Beach, California, with the intention of opening an art gallery in the well-known artist colony. I met Johnny at a very cool Halloween party soon after. He was dressed as the Pope in full regalia. Any man who can wear vestments and a pontiff hat so effortlessly, while keeping his composure at a party, was someone I just had to know! Johnny was plugged into the Southern California art scene. At the time I was sculpting in marble and alabaster at an art college in Laguna Canyon and quickly recruited Johnny to carry my somewhat heavier pieces. That didn't last too long. Johnny was an artist as well and living in the canyon in Laguna Beach, an artist's enclave since the early 1900's. In addition, he was a Vietnam Veteran and an avid surfer. I had never met a surfer before. My idea of surfing came from watching the old movies from the 1960's starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. That didn't count; because, according to Johnny, those movies' depictions of the southern California surf culture was all wrong. I am an East Coast girl, what did I know? Funny thing, I only got to see Johnny surf one time in Cabo San Lucas, soon after we met, and he had been a surfer for over thirty years. Years of surfing permanently injured his shoulder and sadly, Johnny had to retire from the sport.
From the beginning, Johnny and I spent our weekends together at art galleries, museums, flea markets and at antique shows across California and the U.S. Aside from our shared interest in modern art and folk art, we shared an appreciation for antique hand-wrought iron and architectural salvage, Spanish Colonial antiques, antique religious iconography and antique European tapestries, textiles and trims. We became business partners before we married, and we opened our first antique store, Calliope Court, in Laguna Beach in 1991, about a year or so after meeting each other.
Over a span of twelve years, Johnny and I owned and operated two antique stores in Laguna Beach and West LA, and a warehouse open to the trade, under the names of Calliope Court and RUINS. We specialized in French and American architectural and garden antiques. We had incredible pickers who searched for rare items for us across America, France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Romania and India. We were also fortunate to work with top American and French demolition companies. Additionally, we traveled domestically and abroad, attending estate sales, auctions and antique fairs. We also were well known for our antique Romanian and Hungarian hand-painted peasant furniture that was hand-picked in villages throughout the Transylvanian countryside and shipped to our stores. In addition, we started refinishing antique Romanian and Hungarian furniture in Transylvania and created The RUINS Collection which was wholesaled to designers and decorators from our website and warehouse. Lastly, we delved into the wholesaling of reproduction garden statuary, which we sold to garden centers across Southern California. We had to terminate that business after all our molds were stolen in Mexico.
RUINS was always a favorite stop when visiting the beach or spending the day shopping in Beverly Hills. Our stores, warehouse and home were featured in numerous magazine and newspaper articles over the years as a result, including: Art & Antiques; LA Times and LA Times Magazine; W (Women's Wear Daily); California Homes; Coast Magazine; Antique Trader; Collector; Orange County Register and the Orange County Weekly. Our clients were everyone from interior designers and architects, to Hollywood set decorators and costume designers. We also enjoyed catering to the neighborhood locals looking for unusual items to decorate their homes and gardens with. Johnny and I have so many sweet memories of our stores and of the friends that we made. We re-visit that time in our lives often, now that nostalgia waxes poetic, with great fondness and regard. Our son Adam still speaks of watching Wallace and Gromit videos after school in the rear of our Laguna Beach, Coast Highway shop.
Our lives were full and very busy by the summer of 2001, only a short ten years after starting our business. We journeyed to Brimfield, New England for its popular summer antique and textile shows. Immediately upon our return, I had a freak accident at our home and broke my neck, which in turn caused a partial spinal cord injury. I was totally derailed. To entertain myself during those early months of recovery, while Johnny handled the retail and wholesale businesses, I sat in bed alongside my poodles, hand-stitching decorative purses using antique Aubusson and Beauvais tapestry fragments and Napoleon III trims that I eventually sold at local community trunk shows in Laguna Beach. Unfortunately, the accident prevented me from lifting and carrying objects over five pounds, which was about everything that we sold at RUINS. Coupled with raising an autistic child and dealing with my unstable auto-immune disease, Johnny and I knew things were going to have to change, and fast.
After some tearful deliberation and with great sadness, Johnny and I closed our Laguna Beach store to concentrate our efforts on the internet, as it was the dawn of e-commerce. While Johnny was still operating our L.A. shop and Orange County warehouse, I started to sell online my extensive collection of rare antique French textiles, fabrics and trims (that I collected along the way at European and American antique fairs.) I was also fortunate to hook up with some amazing purveyors of rare antique French, Spanish and Italian textiles. On the internet, I sold on the RUINS website, on eBay for nearly ten years and on Ruby Lane for over five years. When I discovered Etsy in 2008, it was a brand new e-commerce platform focusing on handmade crafts and goods. I telephoned the owners/creators of Etsy in their Brooklyn office soon after they launched and spoke to them about my idea to introduce antique and vintage items to their sales platform. At that time, Etsy only catered to shops featuring handmade items by crafters and artists. I got the green light from Etsy and took a chance, opening a shop. Basically, I wanted to offer vintage and antique sewing and design supplies for costumers, artists and crafters on the fledgling e-commerce website. I also wanted to have an outlet for my passion of collecting and selling antique folk art. I only sold one thing the first year. Then slowly, my business evolved over time when more people discovered the sales platform. I have been selling exclusively on Etsy as RuinsCa ever since. I haven't deviated much from my original offerings fifteen years ago; although, I have added more antique folk art and decorative arts to my stock and less antique fabrics in recent years. I am truly amazed at how huge Etsy has grown over the years, and I am so pleased to know that I was a pioneer in its evolution.
In our spare time, when not buying or selling, both Johnny and I are multi-media artists. We recently moved to the Mojave Desert; one mile from Joshua Tree National Park, the place where Johnny and I had our first formal date thirty years before. Inspired by all the natural beauty that surrounds us, we have dedicated allot of time to our individual art pursuits. The desert has always attracted artists and we have a thriving art community in Joshua Tree and environs. I cast and fabricate silver and other metals in the Brutalist genre, am an illustrator, and I am a novice abstract painter. I have also sculpted stone, worked in ceramics, fiber, wood and glass. When I was in my late twenties, I apprenticed at a commercial bronze foundry, constructing molds, pouring/casting, welding, chasing and finishing other artist's bronze pieces. It is my goal to work in as many artistic mediums as I possibly can during my lifetime. I love working with my hands and I'm miserable if not creating art. For me, it is the process that I enjoy the most: working with all the materials and tools. It is a form of meditation for me. As a result of my endeavors, my work has been included in a museum show and was also exhibited at art shows, in shops, and in galleries throughout Southern California. Johnny, now retired from RUINS, has also had his ceramics, paintings, photography and mixed-media sculptures displayed in museums and museum stores, galleries, and at art shows throughout Southern California, with his work bordering on the abstract and surreal.
Additionally and most importantly, for the past twelve years, Johnny and I have volunteered at an amazing weekly pottery class for developmentally disabled adults at Old Town Artisan Studios in La Quinta, Ca; and we also volunteer at Guide Dogs of the Desert in Palm Springs, where we teach ceramics to the visually impaired. Lastly, we volunteer for a weekly Adaptive Sports program up where we live. Helping the developmentally disabled and visually impaired persons in our community lead creative and fulfilling lives has become the most inspiring and rewarding activities that we do as a couple.
So, thank you for taking the time to read about the evolution of RUINS (I know it was long..heck, I had over three decades to cover;) who we are and and how I ended up selling my goods on Etsy. It's been a long and eventful journey that I have been fortunate to share with Johnny (now retired,) my husband, best friend and business partner. I never dreamt in a million years that I'd end up selling schmatta, like my father and grandfathers before him; but, I figure with some degree of certainty that it's simply encoded deep in my DNA. Besides, trims and textiles are allot lighter to handle than three-hundred pound iron urns.
Happy collecting!
- Lisa Genesta - September, 2023 - updated
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To read more about us, please visit:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-aug-15-hm-13212-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-29-ls-33741-story.html
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-dec-20-hm-651-story.html
c. 2001 at Ruins, West LA on Beverly Blvd.
c. 2001 at Ruins, West LA on Beverly Blvd.
c.2000 at Ruins, Pacific Coast Hwy., Laguna Beach
c.1995 at Calliope Court, Laguna Beach
c.1994 at Calliope Court, Laguna Beach
