Reprotique in Crozet, Virginia

Name: Reprotique
Address: 1171 Carter St, Yancey Mills, VA 22932, USA, Crozet, VA, US
Telephone: (804) 241-6234

Overview

A clear acrylic serving tray with brass handles sits on Reprotique's storefront page, its surface printed with a stallion, or an octopus rendered in mosaic, or a spray of butterscotch-colored ironwork. It is the kind of object that looks like an antique and behaves like something you would actually use to carry drinks across a room. That tension between old and useful is the whole idea here. Reprotique describes what it makes as the beauty of classic traditions in fine art and design, given an elegantly modern twist, and the catalog bears that out: architectural motifs, botanical prints, and vintage imagery pulled forward onto tea towels, coasters, candles, and the walls and tabletops of a working household.

The studio operates from 1171 Carter St, Yancey Mills, VA 22932, a short hop from downtown Crozet, and sells through its site at reprotiqueart.com. You can reach it at (804) 241-6234.

What they make

The heart of the line is a group of acrylic trays, each one a small piece of graphic design fixed under clear molded acrylic and finished with brass handles. The designs run from the ornamental to the whimsical, an iris, a cherub paired with a lion, lavender ironwork, that octopus mosaic, and they carry price tags in the neighborhood of $365 to $375. These are the anchor objects, the ones that read as art first and serveware second.

Around the trays sits a wider family of home accessories built on the same instinct. There are tea towels, sold in the $36 range, printed with things like peony and Scottish thistle, blackwork embroidery patterns, and a fowling scene from what the shop calls its Blome collection, along with a set themed on grafting. There are sconces described as based on unique architectural designs, meant to light up a room with something more considered than a hardware-store fixture. There are soap dishes and trinket bowls in molded acrylic, made for the bath or bedroom or wherever a decorative catch-all is wanted. And there are fobs, small pendants created from classic antique designs and set in gold-finished casings, a jewelry line that carries the same magpie affection for old ornament.

Rounding out the collections are light switch plates and outlet covers, which take the same design language down to the least glamorous surface in the house, plus coasters and placemats, larger acrylic trays grouped under table settings, and candles. It is a coherent world rather than a grab bag: pick up any one piece and you can see the same eye behind all of them.

The eye behind it

That eye belongs to Susan Stanley Sprinkle. By the shop's own account, she has made it her life's work to hunt out interesting and unique items that add life to a room, and every item Reprotique carries is personally curated to reflect her love of history and art. It is a useful thing to know before you browse, because it explains the through-line. These are not products assembled to fill categories; they are the accumulation of one person's taste for antique motifs, architectural detail, and traditional decorative arts, translated into pieces you can buy and live with.

That curator's sensibility is what separates Reprotique from a generic home-goods catalog. The starting point is genuine old design, ironwork, botanical illustration, blackwork stitching, antique fobs, and the modern twist is in the materials and format: acrylic, brass, printed cotton, gold casings. The result is meant to sit comfortably in a contemporary house without pretending the last two centuries of ornament never happened.

Visiting and buying

Reprotique is primarily a shop you experience through its website, where the full range of collections is organized and priced. The trays and tea towels tend to be the most visible entry points, but the fobs and sconces reward a closer look for anyone drawn to jewelry or lighting with a historical bent. For orders, questions about a particular design, or details on availability, the studio can be reached at (804) 241-6234, and the collections live online at reprotiqueart.com.

For a Crozet-area maker, it is an unusually specific proposition: not a gallery of paintings and not a big-box home store, but a curated line of functional objects that carry fine-art and antique design onto the surfaces of everyday life, one tray, towel, and light switch at a time.