Jean Davis Bruton

Jean Davis Bruton has been on the job at non(e)such since 1978. The Shah was on his Peacock Throne, still, and President Carter was up nights worrying over every little detail in the federal government.

She had taken two years at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, VA, and another two at USC, where she graduated in 1978 with a degree in history. That summer she fixed her career track.

Jean Bruton and her mother, Margaret Davis, put together non(e)such in 1978 as an antiques and luxury goods shop in a ground-floor space in Middleburg, just off Forest Drive. They settled on the name they found in an antique dictionary that identified non(e)such as a castle in the realm and the reign (1413–22) of Henry V, King of England. The parenthesized (e) im-plies it is optional.

Three years later, in 1981, they relocated to where they stayed, 4,000 square feet at 2754 Devine Street. President Reagan’s Economic Re-covery Tax Act had just kicked into effect and luxury goods were moving.

Thompson’s Market was still standing on Devine Street, and Schneider School had not become a housing development. Mrs. Bruton’s roommate, Elizabeth Mays, had Needlework a few doors down. Frawley’s had been in business for decades, and Racke’s dress shop was where Molten’s Halfmoon Outfitters moved in.

Jean Bruton at her front door on Devine Street The Forum was the name of a bar on Senate Street, not a shopping strip on Devine. Point being, non(e)such, establishment and all that, was something of a Devine Street corridor pioneer.

Their timing was perfect for carrying gift–quality china because Sylvan’s had just discontinued its bridal registry business. And at the time, Tiffany was outsourcing silver retail sales.

Besides good timing, the two women came equipped for the shop with their shared good tastes. Buying trips for the shop were essentially shopping trips to please themselves. The selection of goods for the shop became something personal and then reflective of the shop owners. They could talk about the place and its products with Columbians because they naturally knew what Columbians liked.

With such awareness, none such known anywhere else, the two women wind their way through two national gift marts every January and every summer. Atlanta’s gift mart is the largest in the world, and the non(e)such shopkeepers spend five days each season stocking the store, barely getting to see it all. The New York gift mart is in the Jacob Javits convention center. Not only is it bigger, but the Atlanta version is also nicer with a more polite population – more Southern, actually.

Besides the expected antiques, linens, silver, china, jewelry, and other gift items, non(e)such is a serious art gallery with countless framed original canvases on the walls throughout the store.

Among the many familiar brands there are pieces by Baccarat, Fabergé, Haviland, Royal Crown Derby, Waterford, and Wedgewood. Again, if Jean Bruton and Margaret Davis like it enough to stock it, the customers tend to share the same sense of selectivity.

There is no strategic time to shop at non(e)such. Sales are rare. The store is stocked with goods of timeless quality, never fashionable, but never out of fashion. Christmas is a busy time, of course, but usually whenever a big wedding is scheduled non(e)such is included. In Columbia, it appears, weddings are not weddings without non(e)-such.