Feels like home: The Olive Branch, an inviting new St. Paul shop

This will be the first holiday season for The Olive Branch, a new home-goods store run by MarySarah Stokman, a 28-year-old Catholic who attends St. Mark in St. Paul. Stokman’s love of beautiful household objects reflects her faith. She’s eager to share artisan-made treasures — and the stories behind them — with Christmas shoppers in her airy, inviting storefront in the Mac-Groveland neighborhood.

Q) You opened The Olive Branch in July. Tell me about the storefront.

A) It’s about 600 feet — a smaller space, which I like. You can make it homey. I always have a shop playlist going. It’s very folky. I often have fresh flowers. I always have a candle burning. I try to use the natural light as much as I can. We have a lot of shop plants, adding literal life to the space. And there are a lot of antique pieces from my family that make it feel homey, like a hutch and little side tables and rugs. These antique milk jugs from my family’s little farm in Colorado are in here and my grandmother’s wheelbarrow, which I fill with dry flowers.

Q) She loved beautiful home goods, as does your mom. Did that flow from their Catholic faith? 

A) I definitely see in both of them a huge heart and love for the other. My grandma embraced the native art and the indigenous communities in the Southwest, where her ranch was. My mom always had an old pine-needle basket on our living room coffee table that held all the rosaries. Those baskets were a staple, but super striking. That marriage of function and form was really impressionable, and the perfect example of the type of things that I carry in the shop.

Q) Was this shop a longtime dream?

A) No, it was more of a surprise. I’ve always loved small shops. After graduating from college, I was working at a small home-goods shop in D.C. That put the idea in the back of my mind. I did their photography and marketing, and I realized I love telling the stories of the makers. I thought how you can create this environment and invite people in, and I just thought, “I should try it!”

After trying it, it was clear: I love it. It’s simple work, but it engages all aspects of my personality. All my interests and skills have a home here.

Q) You just went for it!

A) I’m more spontaneous, and my dad is an entrepreneur, so he was really supportive. I was freelancing at a shop and the owner kind of offered me her business. I vividly remember driving home and thinking: “How in the world did that fall into my lap?”

But then I thought there’s something more that I have to say than a concept built by someone else. It lacked something deeper that, for me, would be the core of anything I would start. I had this moment of wondering: “Does God really just want what we desire? Could it be that simple?” I had tears in my eyes, thinking: “He will bless this if it’s a good thing.” I felt this freedom to take this desire seriously. Every desire of my heart is from God and has a place in the world.

Q) And God has blessed it.

A) It’s clear that this place was blessed and given to me and all of these things unfold here. Every customer is such a sign of that! There will be customers who I would’ve thought I’d have nothing in common with and then in conversation be so surprised by their desire for beauty and their receptivity to the shop. I have customers who would stop by on their daily or weekly walk, and slowly this friendship grows. It became such a place of encountering the other, and that was such a gift. That’s partly why something so simple could be so fulfilling.

Yesterday this older woman came in and she had drawn me a beautiful sketch of an olive branch for our nursery. I’m expecting. I was so touched!

Q) Wow!

A) Now I’m in the habit of really engaging with people. I don’t like to sell in an aggressive way. I love just having a warm environment. I love sharing the stories of the goods and the makers, and people can buy if they want. The more I really engage someone, the more I’m surprised and blessed — but also it makes people more free to engage your product and buy things, they feel more free to do that. It’s a cool give-and-take.

Q) It’s easy to imagine you, running this charming little shop, as the protagonist of a Hallmark Christmas movie. But I bet there’s an unglamorous side.

A) That’s true. I also see that in having something that’s your own, you really care about the parts you never thought you’d care about. Even the accounting for me, which is hard to do every week, is something I embrace and care to do well. It’s less glamorous, but it’s more rewarding.

There’s a huge element of the mission of the shop, this conviction that beauty happens in the mundane. The everyday moments that could seem against are totally possible to be filled with beauty or to break through your day.

My friend once told me: “Live every day at the service of beauty.” And that motto has always stuck with me, especially when doing mundane chores like sweeping or watering plants. Once a week I take all my shop plants outside and water them, and it’s the hardest task! It’s messy. That’s a moment where I try to say to myself, “This is a moment to live at the service of beauty.”

When you approach those chores like that, it’s often when I’m aware of something like the way the light is interacting with the leaves of the plants, and I’m struck in a new way. Or sweeping and finding peace in the rhythm of it. It’s this choice or disposition.

Q) Is Christmas shopping at The Olive Branch more meaningful in an age of Amazon Prime?

A) For sure. Nothing here is bought without an intentionality. I’ve had a lot of people say, “Oh, it’s so peaceful in here, I feel like I could stay for hours.” They’ll slow down when they come in. For me it’s a sign that we all crave beauty. The experience of a beautiful home is that you enter and you can rest.

Q) The prices of artisan-made goods can’t compete with Target.

A) I really want to be accessible. I hate when people think that shopping this way you have to be rich. That’s not true. It’s different: You consume a lot less when you shop this way because you take care of each object. You’re also affirming something really human and beautiful. I want it to be possible that artists can make a living, and we embrace craft as a way of life. It’s really meaningful to connect people to thoughtfully made goods and to make that possible.

The small pine-needle baskets we carry are $20, and it’s a beautiful thing that could totally change your entryway or your coffee table in your living room, and it’s really functional. It’s not that every single piece in your home has to be homemade. One thing can elevate a room so much.

Q) Your thinking on this reflects Catholic social justice principles and guidance from Pope Francis.

A) Pope Francis helped me embrace environmentalism and sustainability and being more intentional. The tendency is to overbuy and then get rid of things quickly. Even with fashion I’ve tried to buy pieces I really value rather than for less.

Q) What do you know for sure?

A) I’m certain of beauty. I know for sure that my heart is continually changed by beauty. And in following that, I have found a purpose for my life and known the Father’s love.