Your Destination for Unique Furnishings and Gifts
If you’re looking for a special piece of furniture to make a statement in your home, accents to add warmth and style, or gifts with a personal touch, make a point of visiting Beekeeper’s Cottage in the village of Lucketts. Located just north of Leesburg and part of a small enclave of shops at the intersection of Route 15 and Lucketts Road, this charming shop welcomes visitors with its sunny yellow exterior, its cheerful red and white polka-dotted shutters, and its friendly shop dog, Shane.
Owners Nancy Hilliard and Anne Carrington share a flair for and love of design. In 1996, they opened Beekeeper’s Cottage to feature romantic home furnishings and accessories. They offer vintage furniture pieces that they have restored and painted in a style they define as European cottage or modern urban farmhouse. That last may sound like an oxymoron, but they explain that a barnwood table or a vintage sideboard or armoire can work even with very modern décor.
In addition to the vintage pieces, Beekeeper’s Cottage also carries newer furnishings to help customers achieve modern elegance. One of the things the shop is best known for is its barnwood tables. The tables are custom made to order using reclaimed barnwood sourced along the East Coast from Virginia to Maine.
Hilliard and Carrington’s style has gotten noticed beyond the village of Lucketts. They have participated in designer showhouses, including the NSO Showhouse in Washington, DC, and they designed the bridal suite at Rust Manor in Leesburg. They also have been featured in Better Homes & Gardens, Washingtonian, The Washington Post Home Section, Country Home, Romantic Homes and on HGTV.
Destination Shopping
The business has evolved with the times and has established a virtual presence to complement its physical location. BeekeepersCottage.com not only shows visitors what they can find in the store, but it includes online shopping and shipping for all of the merchandise. Beekeeper’s Cottage also has a social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest.
But the brick and mortar location still draws a lot of foot traffic. Some customers just happen upon the cottage while in the area, perhaps when visiting nearby Tarara Winery or Fabbioli Cellars, the Vanish Brewery or Loudounberry Farm. But for others, Beekeeper’s Cottage is a destination itself.
“Today is my day off, and this was my destination,” chimed in a woman browsing the shop with a friend.
“It’s a great place to come if family is visiting or for an outing with your girlfriends,” said Hilliard.
“Some people come by just to see Shane,” said Carrington. “They will call to see if he’s here.” The shop is known to be dog friendly, and customers sometimes bring their dogs with them.
What You’ll Find
There’s a lot to discover at Beekeeper’s Cottage. “All your senses come alive when you come here,” Carrington said.
Inviting smells greet you as soon as you walk in the door, where a selection of goat milk soaps, lotions, bath bombs and soy candles from locally grown soy are arranged on a table. “We’re well known for our candles,” Hilliard said as she pointed out the different scents, such as French lavender, blackberry sage and the citrusy fresh wanderlust. Each candle is hand crafted with 100% soy wax and contains no added chemicals or dyes.
Each room of the cottage reveals treasures that reflect the shop’s design aesthetic. A room near the front of the store contains vintage-inspired and modern jewelry and accessories. Hobnail glass jars in various sizes are great for holding candles and are a popular item for parties and weddings.
Hilliard and Carrington try to give customers a variety of ways to use their items. For example, Hilliard demonstrated that a mason jar with a flower-arranging frog on the top also can be used as an air freshener when it’s filled with rose hips. The extremely realistic-looking faux flowers sold in the shop can be arranged in the mason jars, black-and-glass industrial vases or lath wood boxes.
Discover all that Beekeeper’s Cottage has to offer at 42350 Lucketts Road between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily.
Analiese Kreutzer is a contributing writer to VivaTysons and VivaReston. As a long-time resident of the area, she is passionate about the communities, people and businesses our publications cover. She can be reached at AnalieseKreutzer@gmail.com.
