Preserving a piece of island history

“It’s very important that we honor the history of this place,” said Wade Campbell.

Similar feelings were expressed more 30 years ago, but then the speakers were Catherine Pederson and her late husband Dale. They uttered such words when they purchased Darvill’s Rare Print Shop from the late Fred Darvill. Darvill, interestingly, established this extraordinary shop approximately 30 years earlier, in 1942, when shops of this kind were virtually unheard of in places like Orcas Island.

When the Pedersons bought the shop from Fred Darvill in 1971, they made a commitment to “preserve” what he had created, Catherine said, pointing out that it contains one of the most extensive collections of engravings, prints and lithographs to be found anywhere.

After more than three decades at the store, Catherine is now ready to pass the torch to Wade and his partner, Chris Bressat. “I think it’s time for some new creative ideas and energy,” she said. The director of the Orcas Choral Society then added with a laugh, “I’m a musician, not a business person.”

Wade and Chris are elated to accept the torch. In fact, they can’t believe their good fortune.

The pair were living in San Diego last year when they came up to Washington in September to attend an art workshop on Bainbridge Island, and decided to take a side trip to the San Juans. They came up to Orcas, then just happened to walk into the rare print shop. Almost immediately, Chris said to himself,

“This would be the perfect place to run,” describing his discovery as “a lot like finding an out-of-the-way shop off a main road in London.” He then turned toward Catherine, completely unprepared for her response.

“Catherine said she just put it on the market,” Chris recalled. All that remained was working out the terms.

Chris is an artist whose specialty is designing backgrounds on which he arranges old letters, envelopes, and stamps, many of them from 19th century Europe. “It’s mostly for the artistic value,” he said. “There’s something about a hand written letter that’s lost today. You don’t have the touch of the hand in it any more.”

Chris will be bringing a new element to the shop, namely, his creations plus the works of several other local or regional artists. Hence, the new name, Darvill’s Rare Print and Fine Art Gallery.”

Wade’s the computer guy, and his role will be designing a web site that will introduce the shop to a wider audience. Put another way, his job will be “bringing it (the rare print shop) into the future on the Internet,” he said.

However, Chris added, “We’re keeping the look and feel of the store. The technology will go on behind the scenes.”

Chris and Wade believe that they’re here to stay. Although their most recent home was San Diego, Chris is from Oregon, while Wade grew up in Montana, and both are yearning to settle in a safe, beautiful and relatively traffic free area.

But are they ready to follow Fred Darvill and the Pedersons and operate the shop for another 30 years? That prompted a laugh from Chris, who said, “I’ll be 74!”

The shop will be open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day except Wednesday, although Chris said the pair will likely be working there on into the night, and that customers are welcome to drop by whenever they’re in the shop. An open house is planned for Memorial Day weekend.

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