posted 01-24-2017 10:33 PM            

Beverly Bremer, left, and Helen Frushtick talk shop.

Their shops are only a few miles apart, but it’s not often that two of Buckhead’s leading business women ever cross paths.

Yet they share a bond of clients, style and determination that has kept them in business for more than 80 years combined.

Beverly Bremer’s name has long been synonymous with refined elegance. The proprietor of the silver shop that bears her name carries some of the finest and rarest silver pieces in the nation.

Her clients come from around the country to find that odd Gorham spoon to round out a collection or to purchase an unusual toasting goblet as a gift.

Strolling through her shimmering emporium at 3164 Peachtree Road, surrounded by glinting silver flatware, serving pieces and tea sets, it’s hard to imagine that she got into business by selling her personal items. But in 1975, the divorced mother of three took a spot at a flea market and launched a business.

“It all came out of my house,” said Bremer, 79. “From there, we started a unique little place that had good retail, wholesale and second-hand silver.”

In 1980, Bremer moved the business to its present location, in the strip shopping center that’s also home to the White House restaurant. At the time, the building was a “dirty movie house,” Bremer recalls, but the low rent fit her budget.

Today, the soothing hunter green and silver shades of the showroom make it an appealing place to browse. Behind the scenes, the staff has access to a reference library, a polishing room and a shipping center. And you’ll find Bremer running the show six days a week, despite recent health setbacks and a depressed economy.

“It’s a fantastic product: beautiful, not perishable, and it never goes out of fashion,” she said. “And, every 50 years or so, it goes up about 10 times in value.”

A few miles from Bremer’s shop, Helen Frushtick reigns over the fur emporium that bears her name. It’s only been three years since she tucked into the shopping center anchored by a Houston’s restaurant. For 47 years before that, Frushtick drew a crowd to her showroom in the Atlanta Apparel Mart.

The move to Buckhead changed only the address; the business still draws an elite clientele in the market for coats, jackets, vests and more made of high-quality mink, leather or other upscale furs.

“I have always dealt with better merchandise; that’s what’s given me a good following from all over the country,” said Frushtick, who lives in Sandy Springs close to where she grew up.

Frushtick also stores and cleans furs, and undertakes makeovers to turn out-of-date pieces into stylish, contemporary togs. (She’s cultivated a following of fans who bring in their well-worn denim jackets for a fur-trimmed update.)

She learned the business from an aunt who owned it before Frushtick took over. Today, Frushtick’s son and sister work with her in the family enterprise that is still centered around mink.

“Mink is always what people come in for,” she said. “It’s very chic. And we make sure that our merchandise looks perfect on every client.”

Like Bremer, Frushtick has had health concerns, but neither illness nor a sluggish economy is slowing her down. She still delights in showcasing her wares, from a $20 scarf to a Russian sable coat priced at more than $100,000.

“I love this business,” she said. “I love that it’s very hands-on. I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Among Frushtick’s favorite stories are working with clients from Atlanta’s rap scene and even one involving a customer of Bremer’s.

posted 01-24-2017 10:43 PM            

Heavy Mettle: Silver Maven
Beverly Bremer

It’s a small space, only 2,600 square feet, but like its owner, the Beverly Bremer Silver Shop strikes a high profile. This modest-looking storefront in an easily overlooked Buckhead strip mall is a nationally known source for new and “estate” sterling and hollowware place settings, decorative pieces and collectibles.

Inside, more than 1,500 popular and obscure patterns, meticulously organized in labeled boxes, line the shop’s dark green walls, all the way back into its labyrinthine recesses. Glittering glass cases display an assortment that encompasses moderately priced everyday goods such as frames and baby gifts as well as museum-quality antique punchbowls, chafing dishes, trays and goblets, in sterling and rare American coin silver. (One baroque “gentleman’s ice bucket” incorporates glaciers and polar bears to commemorate the Alaska treaty.) Prices range from $10 to $80,000.

“I just love all this Tiffany junk,” Beverly Bremer says, standing in front of one locked case. Although she knows the exact worth of the pieces inside, she’s not exactly clear on their provenance. “I’m a merchant, not an historian,” she shrugs.

Despite Bremer’s notable business successes, her shop’s true worth isn’t its inventory – it is its place in Atlanta’s culture. For nearly 30 years, it has been the spot where generations connect and mark seismic shifts. It’s where matriarchs joyously buy a first grandchild’s silver baby cup, dreamy new brides outfit a sparkling holiday table and divorcees unload painful memories for much-needed cash.

At first glance, the shop’s 76-year-old founder and redoubtable resident expert seems to fit the profile of what you might imagine as her stereotypical shopper: the well-dressed, fashionably coiffed and comfortably situated Buckhead matron who has never experienced real need. But Bremer quickly dispels that image. Sitting at a small antique table in the back of her shop with her daughter and business partner Mimi Bremer Woodruff, Bremer leans over on her elbows and describes the start of her career with a characteristically frank declaration: “I was penniless!”

In many ways, mother and daughter are alike – both are tall (Bremer is 6 feet; Woodruff is 5’10”), slim and attractive, with hawk-like intelligence and easy social graces – not to mention smart business suits and impressive jewelry. In other ways, they’re opposites. Woodruff’s business degree and international work experience help explain her circumspection, despite her comparative youth. Bremer’s matter-of-fact telling of the twists and turns of her amazing career belies her home economics degree and ladylike demeanor.

Bremer is a student – of silver. She can trace its roots to royalty. (“It was the only metal that was hygienic. It probably saved several dynasties.”) And well knows its mythic place in Southern lore – usually buried in the backyard, to hide from the Yankees. (“If half the people who had stories like that actually saved their silver, I’d be a lot better off today,” she tsk-tsks.)

But she is more intimately familiar with its traditional role as a woman’s savings account. Before they were allowed to own property, women accrued their net worth in jewelry – and silver. Like Queen Isabella, who funded Christopher Columbus’ explorations with her jewelry box, women made deals with precious metals, often those hammered into sterling tea sets or place settings.

In 1975, Bremer joined a long line of women who reversed their fortunes by carefully trading her silver. She was at an inconvenient crossroads: divorced and looking for work in a time and social environment in which neither was acceptable. She had three young children.

Despite her family’s accomplishments (her grandfather, John Collier Hart, was a state attorney general), she describes her background as “poor, but cultured.” Still, there were three servants, and constant reminders to “Remember who you are,” she says.

“Everybody was poor in 1931,” she points out – especially in the South. She grew up the daughter of a soil conservation agent, moving from Dallas, Texas, to attend high school in Gray (between Macon and Milledgeville), graduating in 1948. In her senior year at the University of Georgia, an uncle gave her enough money to join the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority.

Bremer’s height bestowed a self-consciousness that still plagues her. “It’s hard when you don’t fit in,” she says. But her stature proved to be a boon on her first job, as a sales clerk at Rich’s department store, when merchandise manager Frank Neely sought her help in opening a tall girls’ shop. “Those buyers were wonderful,” she says of the first career women she encountered. “That was my first experience with target marketing.” She took note of the way shoppers’ preferences were recorded.

After her divorce, she went back to work at Rich’s, and later the Swan House, where she says she felt the acute disapproval of her former peers – and was fired for “assuming too much responsibility,” she recalls, laughing. She did the unthinkable for her time and social class: She reached out for help, going to counseling, and later, flying her entire brood to Big Sur, Calif., to attend seminars at the “alternative education” center, Esalen. “It was a grand way to examine your value system,” she says.

Bremer was determined to make her mark – even if she didn’t yet know how. On New Year’s Day 1975, she accompanied a friend to a new flea market on Piedmont (on land now occupied by the Lindbergh MARTA station). There, scores of vendors had set up 8x12 booths separated by curtains. To her amazement, Bremer found that her Burgundy and Francis First silverware was bringing $60 per place setting – as a young bride, she’d bought her first at $15.

Before long, with her three children often accompanying her, Bremer had again done the unthinkable: The well-bred lady set up a table in the flea market, and started selling her silverware on weekends. Despite the unorthodox surroundings, the Bremers loved the colorful characters they met there.

“It was my first exposure to immigrants,” she says. “We had Chinese food, a Jewish deli. It was glorious.” One of their first friends was a gay man with a law degree who also sold jewelry. “He pierced my ears and drew up my will,” Bremer says. The lawyer/jeweler’s partner, a coin dealer, taught Bremer to weigh silver on the troy ounce system, to determine its value as a commodity. Pawn brokers became sources and trusted advisors.

“One day I’ll write my memoirs – Tales of a Junior League Pawn Broker,” she says. Old friends came by with pity in their eyes, and she just smiled – she was making more money than she could have ever dreamed: $50,000 that first year, “mostly out of my house,” she says.

Her timing was impeccable – in 1973, the Hunt brothers had decided to corner the silver market, and the value began climbing steeply. Bremer, her children and motley crew of advisors held on for dear life. “I carried around a calculator – the value was rising that fast,” she says.

Incredibly, by her fourth and fifth years Bremer was taking in $1 million annually from her flea market silver sales. As she had learned at Rich’s, she kept notes on every buyer, and manually inventoried every salt spoon and asparagus server. In 1980, the silver bubble burst, dropping precipitously from a high of $54 per troy ounce to about $10, but by then she had learned the business well enough to survive.

That same year, she bought space on Peachtree Road, next to Tomfoolery, a small bar featuring a comic magician who worked the lights, played the music and amused the crowd with his series of cigarette tricks. “Here,” says Bremer, motioning behind her, toward her desk, “is where he and his two dogs slept. That was his shower, over there.”

After the magician vanished for a long-term gig in Vegas, Bremer expanded from her original smaller space next door, and dug in for the long haul. “I don’t ever move,” she says.

At a windowed room at the back of the shop, two men polish silver full time, so that estate pieces bought at the shop are sent home gleaming. The careful notes Bremer kept on customers eventually became an extensive database she still maintains – with 89,000 names, in the U.S. and abroad. She regularly informs clients what pieces in their pattern have become available. Premier auction houses such as Christie’s and Sotheby’s are among her rivals for rare old silver.

Woodruff, her daughter, earned degrees in French and business, and was set to work for Tiffany’s in London, before a last-minute denial of a work permit kept her at home. She has helped bring the analog-driven Bremer (who does use a computer – but only DOS) into the digital age, heading up the effort to create a website on which thousands of individual pieces are for sale.

“The challenge,” Woodruff says, “was to make it like visiting the shop,” where many among the staff possess decades of institutional knowledge and expertise. (One part-timer is Joseph Brady, also seen evaluating silver on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow.) Along with prices and patterns, the site (www.beverlybremer.com) carries a wealth of information on the history, care and use of silver. Up and running only since September, the site brought in $230,000 in its first four months.

It’s clear that Bremer’s business is approaching another crossroads. Although she seems little affected by it, Bremer says myasthenia gravis is taking a toll on her energy level. Woodruff, with children of her own at home, cannot yet afford to be at the shop full-time. More ominously, despite the fact that silver’s value continues to increase annually, climbing steeply in recent years, sales have stagnated for the first time in her career, never recovering from the 9/11 crisis. “It’s cultural,” she says. She mourns the decline of elegance.

What’s not yet clear is whether Bremer’s shop is facing the end of an era, or the passing of a torch. Woodruff seems imminently qualified and poised to take the business into its next phase – although Bremer seems by no means ready to retire, still putting in long hours, six days a week. (She does, however, take a break at lunch for tai chi.) But what neither of them can yet envision is what kind of business it will be, and for what kind of customer.

One thing is certain – the shop’s founder is like her own best merchandise: unique and malleable, an enduring symbol of both a forebear’s gift and a future bequest, its value and beauty only increasing with time.

posted 01-24-2017 10:51 PM            

October 20, 1931 - January 22, 2017
Obituary

Beverly Hart Bremer, 85, Founder of Beverly Bremer Silver Shop died after a brief illness January 22, 2017 in Atlanta, Ga. She was surrounded by her three children. Born to George Sibley Hart and Margaret Hall Hart in Dallas, Texas, she was raised in Gray, Athens and Atlanta, Georgia. She attended Girls High and graduated in 1952 from The University of Georgia as a Home Economics major and a member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Upon graduation, she returned to Atlanta and started her career at Rich's Department Store where she successfully created The Tall Girls Shop. She attributed her lifelong sales and marketing expertise to the years spent under the direction of Richard Rich. It was during early buying trips with her mentor, Shirley Warner, that her love for merchandising and marketing became a passion. In 1955, she married Carlton Henry Bremer, Jr. of Utica, NY. During her marriage she was an active volunteer, a member of both the Junior League and The High Museum of Art, and started her family. When her marriage ended with three children to raise on her own, she was motivated to begin her own business. Starting with her own set of silver in 1975 at the Atlanta Flea Market, she rented a booth and began using her sales and marketing training to buy and sell new and used silver and antiques. Her wedding silver sold quickly and she reinvested in more patterns and established a flatware matching service. She was such an astute business woman that when she relocated to her permanent address on Peachtree Road, that one set of silver had transformed into an inventory grand enough for a Brinks truck. A year into her new location adversity struck again-the shop burned to the ground. But even a fire could not slow Beverly Bremer down! She ran the business out of the basement of her home while she rebuilt the shop. For the next thirty-five years she grew to be one of the premiere dealers of new and used sterling silver in the United States. Beverly had an insatiable appetite for learning and adventure. She traveled the world and never met a stranger, often asking "What is your silver pattern? Let me buy you a drink". She will be remembered for her courage, tenacity, and willingness to offer her opinion and advice: solicited or not. She was a generous hostess and loved to throw a good party. She often said, "I'm not in the silver business; I'm in the entertainment business."

She is survived by her daughters Beverly Welles Bremer, Margaret "Mimi" Bremer Woodruff (Gerry), and her son Carlton Henry "Hank" Bremer, III (Kathy), her brother George Sibley Hart, Jr. (Penny), her four grandchildren Taylor Hart Bremer, Hunter Welles Bremer, Margaret Grace Woodruff, Davis Meriwether Woodruff and numerous nieces nephews and cousins. Beverly is predeceased by her sister Irene Hart Strickland.

A Memorial Service will be held at 2pm on Thursday January 26, 2017 at The Cathedral of St. Phillip. The family will receive friends immediately following the service in The Fellowship Hall.