Down on Main Street: Mason on Main

You don’t even have to enter Mason on Main to under­stand that this is no ordi­nary antique shop. It hits you as soon as you approach the beau­ti­ful­ly-dec­o­rat­ed build­ing at 70 South Main St. You’re like­ly to see one or both of the own­ers sit­ting out front on col­or­ful fur­ni­ture, chat­ting with vis­i­tors. You’ll hear music play­ing as you take in the beau­ti­ful façade of the his­toric build­ing hous­ing the shop. You’ll see ban­ners and whim­si­cal char­ac­ters atop the awning. It’s a feast for the senses.

And then you walk inside.

Experiencing Mason on Main for the first time can be over­whelm­ing. The shop is two floors brim­ming with the most unique items, includ­ing high-qual­i­ty antique fur­ni­ture, lamps, sculp­tures, and oth­er art, as well as home décor and much more. Some of the items are new, like Mason’s cus­tom socks and sig­na­ture bow ties. But most every­thing else is gen­tly used, from Victorian-era antiques to more mod­ern curiosi­ties. And brooches!

The own­ers are Mason Rhodus and his hus­band, Jeffery Hale, who have lived in Winchester for about 16 years, the last ten of which they have owned and oper­at­ed Mason on Main.

“The shop was some­thing that we always want­ed,” Mason told me dur­ing a recent inter­view. “That was some­thing we both had goals for, know­ing that we would have to both wait till we both retired. Until anoth­er great thing hap­pened and they rec­og­nized our gay mar­riage. And once that hap­pened, I was able to be on Jeffery’s insur­ance. And then we opened the shop.”

Jeffery is an artist who still works as a teacher in anoth­er town. So, Mason is usu­al­ly the one run­ning the shop. However, on Saturdays and dur­ing sum­mer break, you may also find Jeffery mind­ing the store.

Mason has recent­ly become some­thing of an Internet star. Last year, what start­ed as a dis­as­ter serendip­i­tous­ly led to a new project that has since boost­ed the store’s busi­ness. Mason had paid a fair­ly steep price to have his store adver­tised in a well-known trav­el guide. But the pub­lish­er list­ed the name of the store wrong, which Mason and Jeffery didn’t dis­cov­er until after the guide was mailed out.

It was then that Mason made a crit­i­cal deci­sion: he would start mak­ing videos and han­dle his own pro­mo­tion. If you’re on Facebook, Instagram, or more recent­ly, TikTok, you may have seen his wild­ly pop­u­lar dai­ly videos.

Mason says he has got­ten vis­i­tors to the shop from all over the coun­try who have seen his videos.

“Since November, we have had new shop­pers or new vis­i­tors at our doors every week, and they come in with their brooch first, walk­ing in so that I can see that they watched my video. Or they’ll just come and tell me, ‘I’ve start­ed fol­low­ing you, and you were close enough that I was going to make a trip to come and see you.’ I won’t be able to take any days off until the end of August because I have groups of ladies who have planned to vis­it. In six­es and eights. Buses. Vans. I have peo­ple who are alter­ing their sum­mer vaca­tion plans, or at least alter­ing their route so they can come through Winchester, KY—excuse me—Historic down­town Winchester.”

But Mason is no glo­ry hog. He ensures that his out-of-town vis­i­tors are aware of the oth­er great places to shop in our town.

“Yes, they shop at oth­er places too. I send them everywhere.”

I ask Mason if he is opti­mistic about the future of down­town Winchester.

“I am opti­mistic. Because I choose to be.”

He says he’s learned to rely on him­self to pro­mote his busi­ness and grow it, rather than depend­ing sole­ly on the city to do the heavy lifting.

“You have to have a great prod­uct for [shop­pers] to come and see. And it’s not the city’s respon­si­bil­i­ty to draw busi­ness to you.

“I greet every­one who comes through that door. I  make them feel wel­come. They can’t see me in a bad or hate­ful mood. And that’s hard, real­ly hard some­times. I will bend over back­wards to help my cus­tomers because I know they’re going to go tell some­one about it. Or they’re going to come back. Simply because I was so nice.”

Shifting gears a bit, I asked Mason how he and Jeffery man­aged to acquire all the won­der­ful and unique items in the store. I was sur­prised to learn that the ini­tial stock and much of what remains came from their per­son­al col­lec­tion, which they had been accu­mu­lat­ing for many years.

“Yes, but we had got­ten rid of a lot of things when we moved because we moved from a slight­ly big­ger place. But we had attic space, unfin­ished attic space that we put floors in, like two weeks after we moved in. And we just start­ed putting things in the attic. Glass. Silver. Porcelain. Just dif­fer­ent things.

“There are things I miss that I wish I hadn’t sold, but only because I thought they were fan­tas­tic. Not that they were antique or . . .  some­thing rare. But at this point, it’s eas­i­er for me to sell things and not wor­ry about that.”

They replen­ish their stock main­ly from peo­ple who come in want­i­ng to sell their stuff.

“Usually they come look­ing for me, and it is one of the hard­est parts of being an antique shop is I get a lot of phone calls [from peo­ple] want­i­ng me to come and look at their estate.

“And yes, we’re doing well, but I’m not wealthy, and I’m not going to have a ware­house. We will replen­ish when we feel like we’ve sold a sig­nif­i­cant amount of cer­tain items.”

Mason is very thought­ful about his cus­tomers’ needs and offers a range of pric­ing to suit any budget.

“People want to spend mon­ey to sup­port you, but they don’t always want to spend $100. They’ll buy a pair of $9 socks. They’ll buy a $25 bow tie. A $20 brooch. We have cer­tain things that I con­sid­er price points. And when those get low, we start look­ing. Go get some things. We go to flea mar­kets, we go to peddler’s malls, and take year­ly trips.

“It doesn’t have to be old. It doesn’t have to be [an authen­tic] item. It can be a repro­duc­tion because we do sell a lot of Bombay items that are only con­sid­ered vin­tage. But it’s the look. If I wouldn’t use it in my home, I cer­tain­ly can’t con­vince you to take it home and use it in yours either. And it’s worked for us for 10 years. We only buy what we like of what we know you can use in a dec­o­ra­tive situation.”

It’s obvi­ous Mason and Jeffery have good taste, so that sounds like a pret­ty good rule of thumb.

Mason on Main is open Tuesdays through Saturdays. If you’re look­ing for some­thing not found in any big box store, check out this unique shop. And if you’re strug­gling to find a gift for some­one who has every­thing, a gift cer­tifi­cate from Mason on Main would be a ter­rif­ic choice!

Photo gallery

Please enjoy the pho­to gallery tour of some of the amaz­ing spaces in Mason on Main. Makes you want to check it out, does­n’t it?