Jacqueline Thomas founded home and garden store Found and Fabulous in a 1910 bungalow in Multnomah Village. // Photos by Alexandra Shyshkina |
Jacqueline Thomas wanted her home store to feel homey.
“I wanted it to feel like you were walking into your grandmother’s house,” says Thomas. “You know that feeling of when you are a little girl and walk in and look around and think, oh my gosh, there is so much to look at.”
Jacqueline’s Found and Fabulous shop housed in a 1910 bungalow in Multnomah Village does feel a bit like the home of a storybook grandma with a rather refined hoarding habit.
“I decorate to inspire ideas,” says Thomas.
Each room is loosely themed with a nod to its domestic past. The artfully arranged clutter of lamps, candles, garlands and chandeliers in the living room, the French tea towels, dishes and spoon rests in the kitchen; the pillows, throws and pictures in the bedroom all have a romantic nostalgic look.
Big-box stores offer customers volume so Thomas aims to “give them an experience.”
The backdoor opens onto a romantic garden where every plant, pot and garden statuary also happens to be for sale. The garden bears the signature of Portland landscaper Margaret de Haas van Dorsser of Margaret’s Enchanted Gardens, and feels less like a retail space than a sanctuary of garden vignettes.
The house and garden had been long abandoned when Thomas bought it eight years ago. While remodeling, they pulled out an old furnace to find several glass marbles in its vents. One day, the youngest of five boys who’d grown up in the house came to see the transformation.
“I said, ‘These must be yours,’” Thomas recalls, giving him the marbles. “He was floored. He said his mother would have loved that we made the house into something sweet.”
Jacqueline’s Found & Fabulous; 7763 SW Capitol Highway, Portland; 503-244-1560