The Inspiration
for Ysbrydoliaeth:

Your eccentric uncle…

The owner, Robert Jones, comes originally from Monroe County in northeastern Pennsylvania born of a Pennsylvania-German and Welsh family. He spent much of his formative years with his maiden aunts who were among the last of the Victorians and practiced Braucherei, Pennsylvania-German folk magic. He spent many years teaching French, German, Spanish, linguistics and literature at a small community college in Central New York before relocating to Lunenburg in the Northeast Kingdom with his spouse and three Cardigan Welsh Corgis (Marigold, Hibiscus and Wisteria).

During his previous career, he spent a great deal of time traveling, especially to Wales, and New Orleans where he went to collaborate with harpist, journalist and renowned inn-keeper Barbara Lefèvre Martin on matters of Welsh independence. It was there that he became acquainted with Kutani pottery while wandering through the French Quarter after getting buzzed on chicory coffee at the old Café de Paris next to the Cabildo on Jackson Square. Barbara and he had many adventures in and around New Orleans that included Voodoo practitioners, visiting haunted houses, journalism, plotting and tracking down the ever elusive Bedwyr ap Dafydd, a self-exiled Welsh immigré and descendant of one of the great bardic families of Wales, the last known location of whom was a bar in the Lower 9th Ward before Hurricane Katrina.

On his trips to Wales he became friends with Mary Jones (no relation) and her sister Olwen Thomas of Tai’n Lôn, a remote farming village in the foothills of the Snowdonia Mountains where English was rarely spoken. He made the region his base to travel elsewhere in Europe including Brittany, England, Catalonia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, France, and Spain.

Even his connection to Argentina comes through Wales. In the Chubut Province of Patagonia is Gwladfa, a Welsh colony from whence hails the former editor of the Welsh North-American newspaper Ninnau for which Robert wrote off-and-on for many years beginning in the 1980’s. In fact it was in the 1980’s that Robert first drew the unwanted attention of one of Britain’s military intelligence divisions, but that, as they say, is a story for another time.

It was his travels and the people he met over the years that inspire the selection of goods on offer at his store. Just like them, they’re a little off the beaten trail, quality, principle driven, and a little eccentric – shall we say, curious!