Jul 23, 2007

Gift shop delves into the Victorian; Hand of Man finds niche in Christmas decorationsBy Bill WingellPressConnects.com

Oswego — The Hand of Man gift shop on Owego’s historic Front Street found itself in a real pickle last year.

Widely known for its enormous, year-round selection of colorful and unique Christmas ornaments, the shop ran out of its best-selling item: a German-made green glass pickle ornament.

“We didn’t realize how many people wanted those pickles,” said shop owner Patricia Hansen, 71, of the Town of Tioga. “We had never run out of pickles — ever, but we did last year. It was a real crisis. I think the company must have back- ordered them.”

Hansen said the pickle is popular because of a tradition attached to the ornament: “People hide it in their Christmas trees and whoever finds it gets an extra present.

“It was a German custom, but now it’s kind of a universal thing that everybody seems to know about. When people give a gift of ornaments, they most always put the pickle in. Children love it.”

This year shoppers at the Hand of Man will have no problem getting their pickle ornaments, said Hansen, who noted the shop’s “well-stocked with pickles.”

Actually, a visitor to the Hand of Man would quickly conclude that the Riverow shop is well-stocked with a great deal of merchandise. In addition to Christmas decorations — there’s a year-round 9-foot-high wall display of thousands of those German “Old World” ornaments — the store is filled floor-to-ceiling with an extraordinary variety of other gift and home-decorating items, much of it styled with a decidedly Victorian theme.

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