Samson Historical lives in the past while embracing the future

In 2012, shortly after deciding to devote his professional life to 18th-century wares, Casey Samson spent a weekend at a colonial-era fair in Bardstown, in Kentucky, to sell leather cups. came out of a tent.

On his first night there, Mr. Samson sat alone by a crackling campfire, felt the smelled wood smoke and felt as if he had been transported to a different time. He knew then, he said, that he had made the right choice.

Today, Mr. Samson and his wife, Abbie, own and operate Samson Historical , a three-story company that also serves as a pseudo-museum on the downtown square in Lebanon, Indiana, about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

On a recent morning, Mr. Samson, 32, walked into a small warehouse tucked behind the retail space and spoke poetically about the store's "great wall of vests." But there was more: “These are original sugar dips. » And: “One of Abbie’s passions is clay pipes. » And: "All right, then: flints for guns."

There were breeches and bonnets, dresses and capes, candles and lanterns, hip kidneys (for extra support) and buttocks. rollers (for that perfect silhouette). And while Samson Historical has 10 full-time employees and manufactures its own goods, it also works with around forty artisans from trades that are on the verge of extinction: blacksmiths, carpenters, glassblowers, hornsmiths. A fifth-generation German pipe maker handcrafts the store's pipes.

"A lot of what we do," Mr. Samson said, " tries to help keep these things alive."

In addition to feeding the sartorial appetites of colonial-era re-enactors, Samson Historical sits at the crossroads of interests. growing for "historical delineation", a trend that incorporates period fashion into everyday clothing, and "cottagecore", which celebrates the supposed simplicity of pastoral life. The twin concepts flourished. during the boredom of the pandemic.

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