Style Weekly
Richmond's alternative for news, arts, culture and opinion
Ho-Ho-Ho?
by Chris Dovi
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Here's a last-minute holiday gift idea that should probably have been left dancing in visions with the sugarplums: Pornaments.
Filling an aching market need for anatomically correct elves stuffing stockings with care, reindeer reproductive practices and snowmen in unseemly poses, Spencer's Gifts has priced its new line of hand-painted porcelain at a thrifty $8.99.
Available at all three Richmond locations — including Chesterfield Towne Center, Regency Square and Virginia Center Commons, the tree ornaments are selling well, according to one store manager who asked not to be named.
Impressed with the quality of craftsmanship, the manager called them "really good-looking ornaments."
At Chesterfield, Spencer's shares a wall with the Family Christian Bookstore. That store's manager, Laura, who declined to give her last name, was blissfully unaware of the new product line before a call from Style.
"Most of my customers just kind of don't go in there," Laura says, though she adds that the subject matter of the product line is "a shame."
Despite the infrequent overlap of the two stores' customer bases, Laura says she maintains good relations with the folks who work next door.
"Some of my customers want to make it an enmity sometimes," she says. "But we don't want it to be a people thing — just a product thing. I don't want to make it about them just because we have a different world view." S
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