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.”

Like many Marylanders, Brian Treacy sat devastated as he watched news footage of flood waters rushing down Main Street in Ellicott City on Sunday, May 27. The town’s second catastrophic flood in two years had wiped out businesses, overturned vehicles, and taken the life of Sgt. Eddison Hermond, a heroic National Guardsmen who was attempting to rescue a resident when he got caught in the torrent.

“My heart just went out to them,” says Treacy, president of the Sagamore Spirit distillery in Port Covington. “Less than 18 months after the first flood, these folks were going through this again. I immediately sent off an email to my team saying, ‘I don’t know what it is, but we need to do something.’ By the time I came in on Monday, people were standing there at the door ready to talk about what we could do to help.”

At the time, Sagamore’s limited-release Cognac Finish—a rye whiskey five years in the making—was just about ready to go to market. But instead of shipping the bottles through distributors and retailers, the company decided to sell them directly from the distillery and donate 100 percent of the proceeds to flood relief efforts led by the Ellicott City Partnership (ECP).

“It was a challenging decision for us in some ways because we wanted to get it as far out into the market as possible,” Treacy says. “But the way things are set up in the three-tier system, there would be one third or less of the money left by the time we went through that process. We wanted to make sure the Ellicott City community had every dollar.”

This Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., the Cognac Finish will be on full display at a special iteration of Sagamore’s ongoing Whiskey on the Waterfront event. Aside from featuring the usual live music by local bands and eats from neighboring Rye Street Tavern, this weekend’s outdoor fête will focus on selling all 1,000 bottles of Cognac Finish.

Priced at $70 per bottle, the limited-release rye is 105-proof—featuring notes of spice, honey, almond, and vanilla from its time spent finishing in French cognac barrels.

“We proofed it pretty high, so it’s nice and strong just like the Ellicott City community,” Treacy says. “We thought it would be a great dedication to them. They’re extremely resilient, and they’re worthy of one of our best whiskies yet.”

More than 30 Ellicott City shops and restaurants have reopened since the flash flood, and officials are anticipating that traffic on Main Street could resume as early as this weekend. But there are still many residents and business owners who will benefit greatly from Sagamore’s direct donation.

“As sad as a devastating flood is, I’m uplifted each day by the generosity of people all over who want to help,” says Heather Gaetano, ECP board member and promotions committee chair. “When we’re having our rougher moments, it really helps to know that we’re still supported and people still believe in our town.”

In the spirit of community, Sagamore invited Ellicott City executives to the distillery campus earlier this month to participate in the bottling of the Cognac Finish. Gaetano—along with Howard County Executive Allan Kittleman, County Council representative Jon Weinstein, and other officials—were involved in every step of the process, and even got to initial some of the labels.

“Many of our hours are usually spent agonizing over individual stories and difficulties,” Gaetano says. “So this was a really positive way to be together and feel supported. It’s nice to see that people don’t want to let go of the magic that is Old Ellicott City.”

Treacy, who describes the bottling event as a “career highlight,” is looking forward to expanding that experience to the community this weekend. Though organizers are hoping to sell out at Saturday’s event, any leftover bottles will be available for purchase at the EC Marketplace on Saturday, July 28—which will be followed by the 2018 ECStrong 5K around the neighborhood.

“It doesn’t end once these bottles sell,” Treacy says. “Ellicott City knows they have a big lift in front of them, and they do it with a smile and they don’t complain. It’s our job to keep checking in to see what we can do.”