How do you ward off evil? In the Middle East, they swear by the evil eye. A jewel of a store just opened in Montclair, where you can load up on protective evil-eye talismans, as well as tons of beautiful exotic art, jewelry, and home goods. Art & Culture Designs celebrates its grand opening, today, Saturday and Sunday, 2 – 9 p.m. welcoming customers with complimentary Turkish coffee and mouth-watering crunchy baklava.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
Chock-full of eye candy, the turkish delights you’ll find at this new Bloomfield Avenue boutique are the non-caloric kind. Fran Liscio and I wandered in this week and met the hospitable newcomer on the block, Dean Qudah. Dean brought his store to Montclair from the Hudson River town of Piermont after sizing up the action in Baristaville.

Fran went for the evil-eye soap, for full body protection. I got a beady-eyed bracelet (and no bad karma has come our way yet). The small space is packed with interesting ethnic items reasonably priced – from $10 – $150 – in most cases. We’re happy to find another store in Baristaville with unusual cool gifts and another reason to stay out of the malls.
Drop by and plan to spend some time looking over Turkish and Israeli-designed jewelry, and treasures from Morocco, Syria, Turkey, Italy: dozens of hanging glass and mosaic lanterns, Aladdin lamps, belly-dancing scarves, music, and bangles, Morrocan goat-skin lamps, beautiful handmade marquetry backgammon/chess game boards ($60) and jewelry boxes ($13-$59), hookas and fruit-flavored tobacco, kilim and leather purses, crockery, candles, ottomans, Adova Dead Sea Mineral skin products. There’s also a four-foot hand-hammered brass incense burner ($1,200) which we envisioned full of food or flowers. Soon there’ll be furniture added to the inventory. It’s one of those stores where new stuff is always coming in, so I’ll check back often. Art & Culture Designs, 547 Bloomfield Ave, Montclair; 210-783-3241.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts Found