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A Love of Lighthouses
Story ran on: August 1, 1994
From the: Traveler's Journal
Author: Michael Kimball
In 1989 Kathy Finnegan and Tim Harrison came east from Chicago and set out to see the lighthouses of Maine. "It wasn't until we got started," Tim recalls, "that we realized Maine has 68 lighthouses. And Kathy wanted to touch every single one."
The more lighthouses they visited, the more they wanted to learn. "Someone ought to write a book," Tim said. So they did, followed by a monthly newspaper, Lighthouse Digest, and then a small mail order business selling lighthouse souvenirs. When the couple found they were devoting too much time to tracking down the hundreds of companies that made lighthouse products, they decided to open a store to house them allžLighthouse Gifts in Wells.
"There's no other place like it," Kathy says. "We know, because we spent years looking for one."
Time and Kathy stock over 7,000 lighthouse items from both coasts, the Great Lakes, Canada's Maritimes, and overseas. The gifts range from .99 cents trinkets to handsome collectibles such as the Harbor Lights series of lighthouse replicas, each signed and numbered.
"This isn't a place where you'll find many generic lighthouses," adds Tim. "We're here to educate. Almost everything we stock is a replica of a real lighthouse."
A tourist trap this is not. Part curators and part merchants, Tim and Kathy are inventing this unique business day by day. When they came across a pre-1939 Lighthouse Service badge (worth $1,800 to collectors), they commissioned a company to make an identical brass replica that they sell for $50. Likewise, they have found people to make reproductions of the Lighthouse Service flag and put the old insignia on baseball caps.
Some of the lighthouses sold there are made by local craftspeople. A five-foot-three, completely operational "lawn lighthouse," make by two brothers just outside of town, is so realistic that three of them leave the store each week, $695 a piece. You'd have to look twice at a scale-model wooden replica of Portland Head Light to see that it's actually a bluebird house. The store also stocks one-of-a-kind works of art, such as an exquisite lighthouse dollhouse, complete with furniture and electric lights (and a $275 price tag).
Less expensive, but every bit as ingenious, are "recycled" lighthouses made by one crafty New Englander from Slurpee cups, straws, baby-food jars, and baby-bottle nipples, all glued and painted to look absolutely authentic.
"If someone has a lighthouse product," Tim says, "we want to know about it." The couple have found lighthouses painted on Chesapeake Bay driftwood, lighthouses painted on slate, lighthouse postcards from England, lighthouse lamps, mailboxes, bookends, clothes hooks, cookie jars, needlework kits, lighthouse collector cards, cookie cutters, 75 different lighthouse magnets, lighthouse jellies and jams, lighthouse puzzles, beer steins, trivets, lighthouse doorstops, bells, Christmas ornaments, and the most complete collection of lighthouse videos and books anywhere.
"People love lighthouses," Kathy says. "Lighthouses are romantic, they're strong, they're nonpolitical. It's a fact of life that people who like lighthouses are nice people."
Date Entered into online database: March 23, 2001
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