The Stories

Tallmadge Ave

The Stories

Where the pieces came from, who made them, and the houses they were made for.

Each story is built around things we found and brought home: along the Pike to Lancaster, in Adamstown, in Vermont. Everything in them is one of one. When a piece leaves, it stays on the page, marked as found a home, so the story keeps its shape.

A gravel road under red and orange maples at Shelburne Farms, Vermont, in October

No. IX · October 2026 · The latest

The Green
Mountain Edit

Vermont keeps things. Folk art, paintings and the good plates, in five chapters from the farm to the dining room.

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The full shelf

Newest first.

Pat McCarthy painting of a spaniel with a pheasant

No. VIII

October 2026 · Pat McCarthy

Off Duty

Gun dogs, a ratter, a badger dog, a fox, and three rabbits who never had a job at all.

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No. VII

October 2026 · Wayne to Lancaster

The Pike

Wayne to Lancaster on the old turnpike, and what came home with us. For the house in November.

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No. VI

October 2026 · Color, kept

In Color

The world went gray on purpose. Some people kept painting it back in.

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Pat McCarthy dog portrait on a gilt plaque

No. V

October 2026 · Pat McCarthy

Sat for the Court

The dogs that posed for Van Dyck, Goya and the Qing palace, painted again in Lancaster County on Florentine gold.

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No. IV

September 2026 · The export trade

Made for Export

Four hundred years of workshops furnishing a country they would never see.

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Pat McCarthy watercolor of a cat in a blue and white Delft plate

No. III

September 2026 · Porcelain and chinoiserie

Blue & White

Chinoiserie, porcelain, and two paintings that already live in this world.

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No. II

September 2026 · Pat McCarthy

Good Company

Pat McCarthy, past the rabbits now. Dogs, cats, and whatever the same steady hand turns to next.

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No. I

September 2026 · Pat McCarthy

Never Once Commissioned

The paintings of Pat McCarthy, rabbits, mostly, and whatever she's painted since we last looked.

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A running series

One painter,
four stories.

Pat McCarthy paints animals on whatever is at hand: watercolor paper, old Florentine gilt plaques, porcelain. She has never taken a commission. We buy from her directly, and her paintings have filled four stories so far.