Illuminating Ideas

"LIGHTING IS jewelry for the house." That's the inscription over the doorway in Mary Davis' La Conner showroom. And Davis has done her best to adorn both her house and business with plenty of jewelry. For the proprietor of this combination vintage-lighting showroom, restoration workshop and apartment, the journey from the corporate world of fashion and home furnishings to a Victorian house in the verdant Skagit Valley has been an eye-opening experience in gaining independence, paring down possessions and taking pleasure in daily small accomplishments.

Davis took a major leap in leaving her job as West Coast regional manager of Polo Ralph Lauren, where she was responsible for many aspects of that company's clothing and home-furnishings markets. She came into the lighting business through the back door when she bought a 1907 West Seattle Classic Box that had been remodeled and stripped of its original lighting. "I did the lighting for the house, finished the house and kept doing lighting," she says. Most of her fixtures date from the 1910s to the 1930s. But since not everyone has 15-foot ceilings, she tries to offer a variety of lower-profile fixtures, too.

Davis worked out of her home for four years, traveled to antique shows and rented booth space in local antique malls until serendipity happened. Customers who owned the Victorian building in La Conner offered her the storefront after seeing her huge stock of fixtures and hardware and commenting, "Mary, you've got to take this stuff out of the basement." Davis, who grew up in Oak Harbor and loved the Skagit Valley, was quick to accept the offer.

She moved in March to the late-19th-century frame building, which has variously housed a stained-glass business, antique stores, a salon and even a tea house. Over that time, the interiors had been changed many times. Davis and some talented friends, including Sean Sifagaloa and Eric Swanson, did significant work to return molding and trim that had long since disappeared and to make the upstairs into a comfortable apartment.

Davis and Chester, her Old English sheepdog, live upstairs in a dollhouse-sized space just large enough for a living area with kitchen, bedroom, tiny bathroom and office-storage nook. "Moving from a big house has been liberating," Davis says. "It's been wonderful to be tied into the business this closely, which I need to be at this point. I'm always figuring out what to do next, and it all takes time." She loves the convenience of being able to work on a project whenever she wants.

Of her tiny apartment, Davis says it is actually a good space for entertaining. And it is certainly a space where customers can see how antique and vintage lighting can be incorporated into a home, because Davis uses it everywhere — from flush-mounted ceiling fixtures to standing and table lamps for reading to milk-glass-shaded Edison bulbs that illuminate counters. There are even newly assembled task lights that Snohomish lighting specialist Tom Minifie made of old parts.

Davis is not alone in appreciating historic lighting. "There are a lot of lighting addicts out there, too, that just love the glow, the illumination you get out of them — it's like a work of art." For her, the process of restoring and reassembling lighting is magical. "I love to bring things back to life — it's really a joy," she says. "And then you get to turn the lights on and it's a double joy."

Lawrence Kreisman is program director of Historic Seattle and author of "Made To Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County." Mike Siegel is a Seattle Times staff photographer.