Kettle & Quill opens on Main Street

The curi­ous crowd­ed into Kettle & Quill Bookery on open­ing day to browse and buy books, gifts, and novelties. 

It had been a long wait — two years of restor­ing the ele­gant Victorian-era build­ing at 56–58 S. Main St., and vis­i­tors came from as far away as Richmond and Lexington to get a look at what is no ordi­nary bookstore. 

“It’s gor­geous!” Jadie Balser said as she looked around. “It’s real­ly nice to have a big­ger book­store in town so you don’t have to dri­ve over to Lexington. I’m a big read­er, so I just came to check it out with my friends.” 

“The loca­tion is per­fect, and the way they’ve redone the build­ing — this space is big­ger than I thought, and the décor is beau­ti­ful,” said Mary Beth Keffer, who was there with her 14-year-old daugh­ter, Susan. 

Robert Mitchell and Randy Huff came from Lexington because they knew the own­ers, Jen and Scott Daugherty, and want­ed to show their sup­port as well as see the shop. 

The Daughertys invit­ed three area authors to the grand open­ing to talk about their books and auto­graph copies. Artemisia Clare of Lexington was pro­mot­ing her nov­el, Doctor & Duelist, a his­tor­i­cal romance mys­tery set in Renaissance France. A.M. Swink, a pro­fes­sor of read­ing and writ­ing at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, talked about Venator, the sec­ond in her series of nov­els set in ancient Roman Britain. And William Swanson of Winchester had copies of The Practitioner’s Notes, a dark­ly humor­ous fan­ta­sy about a wiz­ard bat­tling a witch and oth­er dark forces in mod­ern-day Lexington, Kentucky. 

The authors were thrilled by the oppor­tu­ni­ty to share their sto­ries with guests. 

“I’m so hap­py to be here,” said Clare. “I like the aes­thet­ic of the place.” 

The authors’ books are reflec­tive of the kind of lit­er­a­ture the shop spe­cial­izes in. 

“We do have a focus on spec­u­la­tive fic­tion,” Jen Daugherty said. 

She defined it as “a genre that includes any­thing out of the ordi­nary or unexpected.” 

“That could be any­thing from time trav­el to aliens to mon­sters to post-apoc­a­lyp­tic, to folk­lore and fairy tales,” she said. “It’s real­ly, real­ly broad, and it’s fun because in almost any oth­er genre, you can find a spec­u­la­tive fic­tion version.” 

That can mean sci-fi or romance or what­ev­er includes “that kind fla­vor . . . the improb­a­ble or impos­si­ble,” she added. 

There is also a sec­tion on the clas­sics, a Kentucky sec­tion, cook­books, and a curios­i­ty sec­tion. There isn’t a lot of non­fic­tion or gen­er­al fiction. 

“I can’t com­pete with a place that car­ries every­thing,” Daugherty said. “The right direc­tion for me was to go with what I love and the kinds of books I like to read, and the genre that I’m pas­sion­ate about and that I real­ly want to share with people.” 

The store sells used as well as new books. 

“Just because they’ve been read doesn’t mean they’re no good any­more,” she said. 

Although the shop just opened July 17, the Daughertys are already look­ing ahead to how they can improve it. 

“In the next year to two years, we plan to expand the Kettle side of the store to be an actu­al tea room,” Daugherty said. 

Many book­stores sell cof­fee, but “It’s hard to get a good cup of tea,” she explained, and there will be baked goods to go with the tea. 

The store will also even­tu­al­ly include an event venue. For now, it offers com­fort­able seat­ing, a Wi-Fi work­space, gifts, nov­el­ties, and a clas­sic, lux­u­ri­ous atmos­phere that harkens back to the late 19^th century. 

In the future, the fam­i­ly may branch out into online sales to expand the business. 

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy,” Daugherty said. 

For many years, book­sellers have been strug­gling, but more recent­ly, there has been a resur­gence of book­stores, espe­cial­ly local, inde­pen­dent ones. Those stores offer a “third space” that isn’t home or work, where peo­ple can feel com­fort­able hang­ing around. 

“Especially dur­ing covid, it seems like every­body retract­ed clos­er to their own com­mu­ni­ties, and I think that was a part of it,” Daugherty said. “And it’s trendy to return to the ana­log, and I think it’s part of that too.” 

The fam­i­ly-owned store will be oper­at­ed by Jen and Scott as well as their son, Jacob, and daugh­ter, Lauren. 

After a suc­cess­ful open­ing day, Jacob, who han­dles pub­lic­i­ty and mar­ket­ing for the busi­ness, post­ed a mes­sage on Facebook express­ing his gratitude. 

“I want to mes­sage every sin­gle one of you indi­vid­u­al­ly, but if I did, we’d be here all night,” he said. “Instead, I want to tell each and every one of you the same thing: Thank you for mak­ing my family’s dream a real­i­ty, I love you all.” 

Hours of oper­a­tion are 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 11 to 9 Friday and Saturday, and noon to 8 Sunday. 

More infor­ma­tion is avail­able on Facebook and Instagram or by email­ing kettleandquillbookery@gmail.com