Open the door at Bohemian House, an eclectic art gallery and gift shop on Main Street in historic Ellicott City, and you’re bound to see owner Tiffany Brown Averill standing at the till, her signature rockabilly style on full display.

She’ll flash her big smile and before you know it, you’re sharing your life story and she’s helping you pick the right crystal to get your aura back on track or she’s describing each artist in the shop like a proud parent.

“I love people. I love making connections. I love people’s stories,” says Averill, who first opened in 2020 on lower Main Street closer to the railroad tracks. She wanted her store to encompass all the things that made her happy. “I really just wanted to do it for me and do what I’m good at and obviously be part of this awesome street.”

When the opportunity arose, she moved up the hill closer to more high-end boutiques like Su Casa and Sweet Elizabeth Jane. “This is my happy hole,” she says, with her trademark throaty laugh, of her 800-square-foot brick-and-mortar.

Her shop is funky, wide-ranging, and accessible. “I want people to touch the art or pick up a sculpture or something handmade, and I want them to connect to the community,” says Averill, who fills her store with locally sourced original artwork, home décor, oddities, repurposed vintage, candles, jewelry, and healing oils.

“Every artist that I have is local, so I’m not sourcing paintings from, like, an art dealer in L.A.,” she says. “Art should be accessible. It shouldn’t be serious and stuffy.” (Averill herself is a fine-arts painter.)

Her take on art comes from growing up in a culturally rich environment. Averill was raised in Baltimore—the PR powerhouse Edie Brown is her aunt—and attended Garrison Forest before finishing high school at Seton Keough. (“I was the only Jewish girl,” Averill recalls. “Which was interesting.”) Her father was a doctor and her mother a nurse. But both parents also dabbled in sculpting and weaving. Aunt Edie owned a pottery shop when Averill was a kid.

“I used to hang out in there,” she says. “They had this walk-in kiln, and it was filled with pottery at all times, so I’d go in there and look at the glazes.”

Averill was fascinated at how the kiln—a thermally insulated chamber—used heat to alter the finishes through chemical changes. “That really inspired me.”

Her parents also took Averill and her brothers to art museums like The Walters Art Museum and Baltimore Museum of Art, sketch books in tow. “When I was growing up, my parents were very hell-bent on making sure my brothers and I had culture,” says Averill.

Her natural talent was evident, and she spent time in middle and high school attending young artist studios at the Maryland Institute College of Art. “I loved it. I’ve just always been around art.”

But despite her family’s deep love of the arts, plus tons of family friends who were artists, “I think they shit their pants a little bit when I said I wanted to go to art school,” laughs Averill. They were probably worried she’d grow up to be a starving artist. They eventually relented, and Averill headed to MICA to study painting and art history. She lasted a year.

“It just wasn’t my jam,” she admits. She ultimately headed south to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) where she dropped the art history part and dove into painting and fiber arts, textiles, weaving, sculpture, and crocheting—“all the things, but mostly painting.”

She loved the school and the city and spent eight years there before heading back to Baltimore. She spent the next 10 years as a restoration artist and gallery assistant at Renaissance Fine Arts and another eight at Radcliffe Jewelers as a luxury sales manager running the bridal registry.  “I can sell you a Rolex or a Picasso,” she chuckles. And she loved it, but she longed to be part of a community surrounded by the items she wanted to sell.

Growing up, her best friend lived in Catonsville—where Averill lives now with her husband and youngest son—and Ellicott City had always been the “fun backyard” they hung out in. She loved the historic buildings, quirkiness, community, and romance of a main street.

“I love history, which is one thing that drew me to Savannah. So, when I was thinking of opening a store, I knew that it was going to be either in Catonsville or here. Obviously, being in Ellicott City is an absolute privilege, and I don’t take that for granted.” (If you like ghost stories, Averill has plenty of encounters she’s happy to share.)

Even though she became a shop owner after the big floods of 2016 and 2018, she’s well aware of the scar it left on many business owners, but also the resilience that grew out of it.

“We have this motto, community over competition. And we’re a tight group,” she says. “You know, sometimes we close shop in the middle of the day and go have a martini.”

Averill sits on the executive board for the Ellicott City Partnership, which oversees the town, and is part of the Main Streets of America organization. “I really am passionate about bringing people to Ellicott City. I mean, my store is great, but I want other stores to be successful, too, because when you build a strong town and a strong Main Street, everything around it thrives.”

Even with her shop and board commitment, she still finds time to work as an art restorer for a number of historical societies and big estates. “I have a whole side hustle of restoration and conservation work,” she says. She loves relying on her years of learning and problem-solving, and there’s a little bit of chemistry, too. “It’s [figuring out] what paints they were using, what pigments, what solvents during different periods of time. So, it’s a lot of science and a lot of detective work.”

She stops. “I’m a strange bird,” she says. But she’s not. Just an impressive renaissance woman.

“They say it takes three to five years to build a business,” says Averill, who is now in year five. Last year’s goal was to double her business, which she did. So, her goal for this year is to expand her Ritual product line, which includes oils, simmer pots, and candles.

She learned to make candles when she was at SCAD, working at a shop called Kandlestix that did candle demonstrations for all the tourists. Averill would dip and hand-carve and create shapes over and over again. “I just always loved wax.”

She also loves what creating candles and oils represent—the act of doing something as self-care. “I mean, anything you can do, whether it’s having a glass of wine on your porch or lighting a candle, it’s about being present. It’s a constant reminder to just be there.”

She feels that way about art, too. It should give you pause and bring you joy. “There are so many different reasons to buy art, but it should not matter, as long as you have some kind of emotional reaction to it,” she says.

When customers come in, she tells them it doesn’t matter if they are sourcing art from a free cycle site, Goodwill, if it’s passed down, or if they spend thousands of dollars on it.

“It doesn’t matter, as long as you love it, as long as it makes your space feel like home,” she says. “That’s what art is. It’s that feeling of home.”

Mei Xu picks up soy candle nestled in chartreuse frosted glass, topped by a faux-wood lid. The scent—sweet basil with a hint of cool mint—is, according to the label, meant to spark hope and simplicity. And the latter is something Xu can’t get enough of, because of her non-stop work days.

“When I wake up in the morning, the first image I have in my head is my datebook,” says Xu, founder and CEO of Chesapeake Bay Candle.

And it was realizing she was not alone in her struggle to find “me time” that inspired her to create Chesapeake Bay’s “Mind and Body” collection. “I don’t have time to get my nails done, much less go to a spa,” she says. “But if I have a moment where I can burn a candle, even if it’s 30 minutes, I can enter that space.”

Chesapeake Bay candles, Xu says, are designed to evoke moods—from the comfort of pumpkin latte to the elan of white gardenia.

The formula seems to work. The company, which manufactures most of its products in Glen Burnie, was recently sold to Newell Brands (which owns products as diverse as Ball jars, Elmer’s glue, and Rubbermaid) for $75 million, but Xu has stayed on in an executive role.

Before she and then-husband David Wang founded the company in 1994, she had been in a Manhattan corporate job that didn’t suit her. Alone in the big city, she’d wander through Bloomingdale’s where the cosmetic clerks proffered splashes of scent. “I loved to be sprayed,” she recalls. The fragrances, she says, “planted little seeds in me.” Next, she’d take the escalator to the second floor to admire the well-tailored women’s fashions, another of her personal obsessions.

Xu, born in Hangzhou, China, during the Mao regime and hand-picked at the age of 12 for English-language training, decided to quit her job at the Manhattan firm, which exported medical equipment to China. She knew she wanted to start a business, and fashion was her first love. “I’m a little fashionista,” she says. But fashion, she points out, “is too fickle.” So she and David settled on home décor.

They asked friends to bring a range of home products from China: silk flowers, decorative pillows, and yes, candles—ornate candles with a stained-glass motif that sold for $15 retail. They rented a table at a Charlotte, North Carolina, gift show to see what would sell. “We got the most orders for candles,” says Xu.

Market research showed they’d be entering a crowded market, but one lacking much imagination. “The candles being sold out there were boring,” she says—hunter green, cranberry, and off-white. “But they were flying out of the shelf because they have fragrance. That was an ‘aha’ moment.” Xu upped the game by eschewing pine, cinnamon, and vanilla scents, opting instead for more sophisticated aromas and a color palette of melon green, lavender, and yellow.

In a Chesapeake Candle showroom, candles cover shelves and tables. There are citrusy scents, milky scents, and the scent of a cypress grove. Some candles are part of established lines, like the Mind & Body candles, available at Target, and others are destined for wholesale shows.

Often a new product will start with an idea, or an emotion, Xu says. “But once the mood is determined, we know we have the scent to go with it.”