From its street-level storefront inside a historic downtown Spokane building, Petunia & Loomis simultaneously projects an aura of nostalgia — and mystery.
Everything inside the shop, from floor to ceiling, catches the eye: a tabletop display of vintage and antique glassware intermixed with sepia photographs of unknown subjects and clothbound books; a midcentury era children's toy stroller stuffed with antique porcelain dolls; the soulless stares of taxidermied animals; colorful retro-style posters high upon the walls.
It simultaneously evokes an eerie, Victorian mansion from its original, wood-paneled walls and architectural columns, and a rural roadside "museum" of weird displays — or even a quirky grandmother's knickknack-filled home.
This aesthetic encapsulates exactly what Petunia & Loomis' owner Samantha Fetters wants shoppers to feel.
"I have just been saying it's like the stuff you'd find in The Addams Family house: taxidermy, bones, antiques — things I've collected for a long time," Fetters says. "The thing I like about it is that people are reminded about something their grandmother or a family member had in their house."
Petunia & Loomis marked its grand opening on Feb. 14, although a soft opening phase lasted for a couple of weeks in January before the birth of Fetters' now 1-month-old daughter. Also helping run the shop is general manager Jesse McCauley, Fetters' fiance.
Among the shop's more unusual artifacts for sale are an embalming machine and jars of wet specimens. The latter are animal remains preserved in jars of alcohol, supplied by a local venture called Freyja's Forest. Fetters and McCauley explain that all of the animals (mostly domestic species) used for the specimens died of natural causes, and are legally allowed to be sold as display pieces.
"[Freyja's Forest] works with wildlife rescues and farms," Fetters says, "and their goal is to preserve and honor animals after they pass."
For its Valentine's Day grand opening event, Petunia & Loomis had a supply of preserved chicken hearts in small jars that Fetters says sold almost instantly, with customers lining up at the door before the shop opened.
While most of its inventory consists of antique or vintage items, Petunia & Loomis also offers a small selection of new goods, like tarot cards, candles and jewelry. It's also exclusively licensed in the region as a retailer of prints and wall hangings from Madame Talbot, an artist based in Oregon who creates pen-and-ink art inspired by antique medicinal labels, advertising and signage.
"I want to be more of a destination, and mostly antiques and oddities with a splash of new stuff," Fetters says.
Besides the wet specimens, furniture and books have been top sellers so far.
"We go through books really fast — vintage, new, it's not really any specific books," Fetters says. "People really want books, and they also say they feel comfortable here, and that there's not something else like this in Spokane, a place they can come and be accepted."
Fetters has been collecting — for lack of a better term — weird, old stuff for more than a decade, with dreams of someday opening a shop to share her passion with fellow appreciators of the curious and creepy.
"When we found this space, it all fell together," she says.
After signing the lease for the storefront that last housed a local optical shop, her and McCauley's home began to quickly fill up with boxes and bins of their hand-curated inventory — in spare rooms, lining hallways and packing the garage. Traveling to estate sales, auctions, flea markets and off-the-beaten-path thrift stores has been a long-time hobby for the couple, and is how they found most pieces now in the store.
Fetters acknowledges that the vintage and antique market locally and elsewhere has become pretty saturated, but she hopes to take Petunia & Loomis a step further by catering to what she refers to as the "alternative crowd."
"When I was growing up, you had Boo Radley's," she says. "Outside of that, there weren't any destination stores that were odd."
Petunia & Loomis also holds several tributes to — and pieces created by — Fetters' late mother, who died in 2020. Three life-size monsters in the front window were made by her mom and used as festive Halloween decor when Fetters was a kid. Other not-for-sale pieces passed down from her mother include a retro, animatronic fortune teller cabinet, Madame Morbida, and hand-painted mobiles of characters from Disney's Peter Pan hung above a nook of vintage kids' toys and books.
"Our home looks like this too," McCauley says. "We bought art for here and brought it in, and Sam was like, 'Tell me I'm not taking it home and this is going on our wall,' and I said, 'It's going on our wall.' So she brought it home, and we swapped it out."
"That's the kind of fun part," he continues. "We can find stuff and sell it, or take it home and bring stuff from our house to sell. It's an ever-revolving thing." ♦
Petunia & Loomis • 421 W. Riverside Ave. • Open Wed-Sat 11 am-7 pm, Sun 11 am-5 pm • facebook.com/PetuniaLoomis • 509-498-0259
