To Market, to Market

This coming weekend several friends of mine, three ladies who are clever and creative and fierce hunter-gatherers all, are launching a new endeavor, the Derby Square FLEA Salvage ART Market, a monthly pop-up venue featuring equally creative vendors of art, vintage and salvaged goods in both original and up-cycled form. The Market will be held every third Saturday from May through September in Salem’s venerable marketplace, Derby Square. For this first Market, there will be 23 vendors, all displaying their wares under perfect white tents, along with music and classic cars, befitting May’s launching theme of rev your engines. If you visit their wonderful website, you will see that each monthly market has its own theme, including July’s bicentennial in recognition of the anniversary of the Derby family’s donation to Salem of the land previously occupied by their majestic Bulfinch mansion (with the proviso that it remain commercial space). So this Market, like the weekly Farmer’s Market and all the enterprises along the adjacent Salem Marketplace across Front Street, honors the city’s past and present.

Derby Square FSA is an invitation-only venture: these ladies have been “shopping” for their vendors for a year! There will be no witch kitsch in Derby Square on these summer Saturdays: think Brimfield rather than Haunted Happenings. Their vendors are listed on the website and the Market’s Facebook page, and I picked out a few representative items for a preview. I was happy to hear that my friend and neighbor Racket Shreve, a noted marine artist, will be selling cards and prints on Saturday, from the back of his 1962 Willys Jeep (most appropriately).

Vintage handkerchiefs from Verve Design, Globe light from House of Champigny, Chair by 8 by Design (before it got a great seat), Soap from My Sweet Soap, Jewelry maker Ashley Procopio’s perfect packaging, Racket Shreve’s studio.

Like so many events and organizations in Salem (excluding all the witchcraft profiteers, of course), Derby Square FSA is a labor of love for the city and all it has to offer. Of course its organizers (who are again, full disclosure, my friends) are operating an enterprise, but they are also offering a service and a resource. Again, let me direct you to the amazing website which offers up a wealth of information not only about the Market but also about Salem: it should be bookmarked by visitors and residents alike. I’ll let them speak for themselves as they explain their vision for the transformation of Derby Square, the “heart of the city”, into a: a vital marketplace which showcases and connects what Salem is known for around the world–art and beautiful old things in a vintage American city.

Derby Square: 1855 (from Harper’s New Monthly Magazine), circa 1910, and this past weekend.

Derby Square FLEA salvage ART, a monthly pop-up market. Third Saturdays 10-5, May-September, Derby Square, Salem, Massachusetts, commencing MAY21!

http://www.derbysquarefleasalvageart.com/