SHARON — For 20 years, while living in her native Portland, Ore., Brenda Hall had a day job as a furniture refinisher. But in the evenings, she followed her dreams: She designed and built her own furniture. Hall said she has been entranced with woodworking since she was a child. “It’s my passion.” At a certain point, she said, “I realized I had to give up my day job and devote myself fulltime to doing what is important to me: designing and building functional art furniture.” Hall moved to Sharon eight years ago from Portland with her partner, Tina Lebeda, and her son, who is now 15. And, naturally, she built most of the cabinets and built-in pieces in her new home.She particularly likes to work with “sculpted pieces of wood, discarded things which can be brought back to life, and anything organic.”On the exterior of her home, for example, is a handrail on the porch steps that includes pieces of an old tree. A wine storage rack sits on legs made from knobby tree parts. She doesn’t want her pieces to look as though they were made from straight-forward milled lumber, she said.Hall recently returned from a trip back to Portland, and one of the souvenirs of the trip is a slice of wood, about one yard by one foot, from an old tree that had belonged to her uncle. “I’ve admired that piece of wood for many years. My uncle finally gave it to me.” She and her son and partner fit it into their car and drove it back to Sharon, in four 16-hour driving days. Now it will stay in her workshop until Hall determines what will be the best use for it.Eventually, she hopes to have a showroom for her work. For now, she is getting assignments through word of mouth. She recently completed an order from the Trinity Conference Center in West Cornwall to build a number of desks for a conference room.The one thing she is most proud of, Hall said, is that she is entirely self-taught in woodworking and furniture refinishing. “Most woodworkers I’ve met on the East Coast are from ‘schools,’” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with that; I’ve even taught classes of my own. But I enjoy knowing I learned my trade by myself over more than 20 years of hands-on experience.” For more information, contact Hall by email at hnlwoodworking@gmail.com or go online to www.facebook.com/hnlwoodworking.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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