Dyed and Gone to Heaven – An Online Magazine and Needlework Resource  

Teri Lyn Richards and Tina Richards Herman
Of Shepherd's Bush

Shepherd's Hill

"Tender twisted threads plied of flax and silk
Stitch hearts that never grieve ­ blooms that never wilt."

These gentle words found on a softly faded sampler beckon you to the quiet world of Shepherd's Bush, a needlework haven located in Ogden, Utah and nestled between the shores of the Great Salt Lake and the beautiful snow-capped Wasatch Range of the Rocky Mountains. Tina Richards Herman and her sister Teri Lyn Richards opened their unique retail shop in 1984. This establishment, a needle and folk art store, was named for a district of London and is housed in a renovated 19th century blacksmith and carriage shop in the heart of Ogden's historic district.

Joyful Christmas

From the wildflowers and cranberries hanging from the heavy timber rafters, to the samplers and quilts adorning the worn brick walls, from shelves stacked with fine linens and homespun cottons, to the antique hutches brimming with hand-woven and dyed splint baskets, this store evokes a memory and nostalgia of a gentle life long past." By providing a complete and varied selection of merchandise from many parts of the world and by enhancing it with a warm, classical ambiance, we welcome each customer into our shop and offer her respite from the world outside," says Teri.

Better Not Pout

In 1987, with a thriving retail business and Tina's new baby in tow, Teri and her sister launched their design business under the name of Shepherd's Bush Printworks. As a student of German history and literature at the University of Heidelberg, Tina became inspired by the beautiful old tapestries and samplers she found in the castles and museums of Europe.

French Heart

She began to explore that particular art form, enchanted with the creative expression of color, fiber and design, eventually melding it with her literary love for the written word. Tina has refined her distinctive style even further in such recent pieces as Emmanuel's Song, Queen Bee and French Heart, which reflect her characteristic palette of muted and unusual combinations of colors, her pensive poetry and her charming "Earth People." "These little persons who wander along the spaces of my samplers are the gentle reapers of the earth. Once they may have been gypsies, but now they have found homes where they must become part of the settled world and its beautiful, yet mundane qualities," explains Tina.

Earth Gatherer

The Earth Gatherer and Wool Gatherer are two more patterns, which explore the soft and tender work of Tina's Earth People. They also demonstrate Shepherd's Bush's subtle and sophisticated incorporation of beads, ribbons, tiny pearl buttons and silver charms with the needlework.

My Earth

The Printwork's publications to date include a line of cross stitch leaflets and a series of stitching cards which evoke the natural splendor of the English countryside where Teri and Tina spent time as children with their grandmother. They also produce a series of samplers worked on linens, which Teri dyes, by hand in the yard at the rear of the shop.

Winter

Their offerings also include a delightful assortment of needleroll kits, reminiscent of those found in gentle sewing baskets of centuries past, as well as an exquisite group of larger samplers geared for the stitcher who is ready to venture beyond cross stitch. "We have tried to combine our quiet contemplative designs with antique stitches and needlework forms. We hope that we have created something unique and beautiful, awakening some old and forgotten stitching techniques, yet providing a finished sampler which is at once very modern and unpredictable," explains Teri.

Summer

All portions of this expanding business are located within the same building; the front half devoted to the retail store and the back half used primarily for the design business. "Little did we know eighteen years ago we could have ever filled up this big building," muses Tina.

Wandering Shepherd

A high-ceilinged sun-lit office space once made room for a crib, a wooden tricycle, and now, an Indian wool carpet is always sprinkled with Legos and Nintendo games/ A once spacious storeroom is now bursting with bolts of linen, cones of silks and cottons, boxes of books and shelves weighed down with kits. And a quiet elegant classroom now bustles on any given day with the hum of computers, kit assembly or new pattern designing All aspects of the busy retail and wholesale business are managed by the two sisters who are assisted by a "wonderful, loyal and untiring staff of women, without whom we would be lost," both Teri and Tina concur.

Santaberry Pudding

Teri believes she lives at Shepherd's Bush and Tina lives with her patient and supportive architect husband, Robert Herman, their fourteen year-old son, Peter, and nine year-old son, Christian. Both women enjoy spending their free moments traveling, puttering in the garden and kitchen, but mostly sitting on the Adirondack chairs on the front lawn, watching after a new puppy, talking and drawing or stitching new designs.

Wool Gatherer

For Teri and Tina, that gentle quiet world, which is just a remote nostalgic memory of times long past for many, is mostly how these two sisters choose to live their lives; concentrating on the ordinary but ultimately most rewarding pleasures of family and friendship, home and hearth and using their talents and imagination to create beautiful things that they still fashion by hand. It all just runs in their blood.

Winter Moon

Teri Richards and Tina Herman
Shepherd's Bush
220 24th Street
Ogden, Utah 84401
Phone: (801) 399- 4546
Fax: (801) 399- 5097
Website: http://www.shepherdsbush.com

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