Joan Maricle says an old school bus drove her to fulfill her life’s ambition: to become an antiques trader and live surrounded by the “old, the beautiful and the imperfect.”
The bus pulled into her driveway in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in the mid-1970s, crammed full of vintage furnishings. Her $2,000 check had bought the entire bus-load, sight unseen, from a friend’s father, who had decided to get out of the antiques business. Joan, a new mother, wanted in, a way to finance a stay-at-home career while she and her husband raised their daughter.
It was the beginning of the occupation that would become her preoccupation for the next 25-plus years and turn their 1900s, vintage Craftsman-style home into Little House Antiques, a two-story, 3,600-square-foot, hands-on testing ground for Joan’s pet theory about antiques, namely, that “Nothing is too precious to live with.”
Joan’s eye attracts avid antiquers from throughout the Northwest. Wannabe sellers call with offerings that keep her showrooms well stocked, and would-be buyers commission her to look out for their pet styles, periods and pieces.
In this ongoing exchange, her role as a dealer, Joan says, is less about collecting precious items and more about decorating and living at ease with antiques of all stripes. Therefore, the pieces in the Maricles’ ever-changing environment are there to serve until they’re sold.