Cornerstone Antiques owner retires

<p>Helen Wilbers/FULTON SUN</p><p>Sharon Vaught, owner of Cornerstone Antiques in downtown Fulton, is retiring after 28 years of operating the business. She said she hopes to pass Cornerstone on to a passionate young person.</p>

Helen Wilbers/FULTON SUN

Sharon Vaught, owner of Cornerstone Antiques in downtown Fulton, is retiring after 28 years of operating the business. She said she hopes to pass Cornerstone on to a passionate young person.

By Helen Wilbers

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Sharon Vaught, owner of Cornerstone Antiques in Fulton’s Brick District, has decided it’s time for someone new to take her place.

She plans to retire after 28 years of operating the business at 537 Court St.

“I’ve been thinking about it for several years,” Vaught said. “I think that I need to pass that on to a younger person that will be a new asset to downtown. I will not sell it to just anyone — it’ll have to be someone with the same vision as myself and my son (Garry) who owns Beks.”

The vision: To preserve the Brick District as a thriving shopping area. She hopes Cornerstone’s new owner will be able to keep it open more days a week.

“(At 71), I’m just getting more tired,” she said. “I can’t keep up the way that I wanted.”

Building the business

Ever since she was a child, Vaught dreamed about owning her own store. Antiques didn’t enter the picture until later.

“It was always play to me,” she said. “As a kid, I always just wanted to play store. … I never was in the position that I had to make money, although I did make money, just because I worked hard at it.”

In the 1980s, Vaught decided to start selling her crafts at Carousel Antiques, a small antique shop above what is now the Fulton Café.

“That place was always closed,” Vaught said.

She helped keep the doors open and started learning about antiques. In 1989, she and her sister Susan Koprivica decided to go out on their own.

“J.C. Penney was in the building where I am from 1946-89,” Vaught said. “That one opened up, and we decided that we could handle the rent for that between the two of us.”

In what Vaught said was a novel approach at the time, she and Koprivica rented space to other dealers.

“We learned about antiques because we were selling other peoples’,” Vaught said.

Business was booming.

“Everyone was collecting everything,” she added. “(But) when 9/11 happened, it seemed things changed as far as people collecting.”

Vaught said she and her sister’s good memory served them well as they began selling antiques themselves. She could spot an item at an auction selling for $5, remember it would sell for $10 and snag it.

Her favorite find, she said, almost escaped her.

Among a box of miscellaneous paintings and frames she bought, was a lovely floral watercolor. It caught the eye of Fulton’s then-meter maid.

“She took it home on approval and said she liked it but she didn’t like the frame,” Vaught said.

She agreed to sell her the print and keep the frame.

“I took the watercolor out and in behind there there was a photograph of a woman dressed in Wild West show stuff with a gun,” Vaught said. “I thought it was Annie Oakley, so I researched it. If it had been her, it would’ve been worth thousands.”

It wasn’t Oakley, but turned out to be almost as good. Vaught said it was a photograph by a famous Chicago photographer of someone dressed as Oakley. The picture went on to be used as a postcard, but what Vaught had was an original print signed by the photographer.

It was worth way more than the $45 she’d been about to sell the watercolor for.

“I still got $2,000 for it,” Vaught said.

She learned a valuable and nearly costly lesson: Always check behind framed pictures.

Eventually Koprivica and her husband left to start Apple Wagon Antique Mall, but Vaught stayed behind.

“I just like the downtown atmosphere, so I continued to run it myself,” Vaught said.

At different points, she was joined by her son Garry and stained glass artist Terry Pope.

Changing times

“There’s a new generation, like Unkamen that’s coming in across the street (or One Canoe Two), of people that have online stores as well as brick and mortar,” Vaught said. “I see that as maybe a new starting place, because a lot of young people like to repurpose.

“I’d love to see the kind of artistic people that can do the sort of things that I can’t do.”

She thinks whoever takes over Cornerstone should be tech-savvy and able to navigate social media.

“I did get myself a Facebook page, but I think it’s too late in my career to continue on with that,” she added.

Vaught plans on closing her doors after Christmas. In the meantime, she’ll steadily lower her prices to get rid of as much as possible. Right now, everything downstairs is 50-percent off, and she said that percentage will rise. Anything left will be donated to SERVE.

She won’t give up antiquing entirely, however.

“I will continue doing Etsy and eBay at home,” Vaught said.

Vaught sells antiques at etsy.com/shop/stardustantiques.

She may also bake the occasional pie at Beks and continue her hobbies of gardening and travelling.

“My husband Al and I have a farm,” Vaught said. “Maybe I can help him out a little bit keeping the grass mowed.”