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Touch
of Gray - October 2004
Jean Breckenridge's Thimble Thoughts
Jean
Breckenridge's Thimble Thoughts
Have you ever looked closely at those small
hand-painted inspirational sayings often displayed in your
neighbor's living room? These little pictures usually
included hand lettered simple messages. They were all the
rage a few years ago, - four lines of neatly matted and
framed sentimental or philosophical maxims with hand painted
illustrations.
Look
carefully at one of them and see if you can spot a tiny thimble
in one of the corners of the picture. You might find the initials
JB enclosed in the thimble. If you do, you are looking at
one of Jean Breckenridge's Thimble Thoughts. You may
even find cross-stitch samplers with the same distinctive
JB trademark. Jean's creations - the framed pictures
and later the cross stitch displays - were featured in craft
shows, department stores and gift shops from Florida to Ohio
all through the eighties and nineties.
Jean
Breckenridge is no longer in business but in her retirement
in Carolina Meadows she still dreams up those four-liners
that were so popular, a generation ago when she ran her own
business from a Durham storefront, opposite the site of the
old South Square Mall.
Where
did she get the name Thimble Thoughts? Jean recalls "It
came to me from a long-remembered remark made by my mother
as I was trying to sew a doll's dress without using the
thimble she'd given me. The result was a bleeding finger
as I pushed the needle through thick fabric". Her mother
responded, "Why don't you use the thimble? A thimble
is such a little thing but so useful if you'll just use
it." And so she gave the name Thimble Thoughts to her
little sayings - essential ingredients of her line of
decorative accessories.
She
has always been a writer, going back to her Chapel Hill childhood.
Her father, Millard Breckenridge, was a noted law professor
at UNC-CH. "All through the fourth, fifth and sixth grades
I used to write plays and poems when I was supposed to be
doing my arithmetic", Jean recalls She believes that
she couldn't have helped but be involved with some form
of writing, having grown up in the stimulating environment
of a town where she used to walk to school with Professors
Archibald Henderson and Horace Williams and had Frank Graham's
help with her essays. At Chapel Hill High School she was managing
editor of the yearbook. She wrote crossword puzzles for the
school newspaper, She acted under Harry and Ora May Davis
and the legendary "Prof" Koch in the Junior Playmakers.
She
wanted to enter UNC-CH and pursue a degree in English but
in those days men only were accepted in the freshman class.
So she had to enroll in what was then the Women's College
in Greensboro. During her freshman year she published her
poetry in the literary magazine, though she recalls she was
not very happy to be away from Chapel Hill. Her sophomore
year was spent at Monmouth College in Illinois, and then she
finally returned to Chapel Hill as a junior transfer student.
She recalls that she spent her time "dating, dancing
and struggling through enough of my courses to graduate"
with a degree in English.
After
college she did YWCA work in Danville, Va., before marrying
and rearing four children. When she lived in Florida she wrote
and aired a women's call-in radio program called "An
Hour with Jean" on a Lakeland radio station and sometimes
included a few of her own poems.
When
she and her husband separated after the children were grown,
she returned to Chapel Hill. There a stint as a Welcome Wagon
regional director and work at the University news bureau occupied
her till 1975 when she decided to start her own business and
launch Thimble Thoughts.
How
did she start? First she copyrighted the name and idea with
the U.S. Patent Office. At a Chapel Hill Chamber of Commerce
seminar for small business entrepreneurs she found out that
she could get professional advice from SCORE (Service Corps
of Retired Executives) on marketing her product. She picked
a selection of her little poems and sought out a calligrapher
and a reproduction process. She found the first in the audio-visual
department at Duke University, and the latter in a local commercial
copying company. Next she found an illustrator, Nick Young,
who later became head of the Cultural Arts Department at Chapel
Hill High School. Her two daughters joined her later in running
the business.
How
did Jean sell her mounted Thimble Thoughts? She did most of
the marketing herself, visiting craft shows, large and small,
as well as gift and specialty shops and department stores
and local banks across the State. She found out that the best
sample cases for her unique product were two plastic diaper
bags (each held 13 Thimble Thoughts perfectly). Her earliest
shipping cartons were secondhand cardboard boxes from the
local ABC store.
Finally
she marketed seventy different designs with production in
batches of one hundred at a time. She had catalogs printed;
illustrating the many one-of-kind mountings available and
she developed quite a mail order operation. In her very first
year in business traveling around the state, wherever she
has friends to stay with, she placed Thimble Thoughts in 25
different outlets ranging from gift shops to bookstores as
far apart as Sylva and Cedar Island. Eventually you would
find her Thimble Treasures prominently displayed in stores
from Florida to Ohio...
The
next step forward was the development of cross-stitched versions
of Thimble Thoughts. Cross-stitching is a skill going back
many centuries. Common nowadays is the embroidered sampler,
which has a 500-year history. At a meeting of the National
Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) she made good
friends who helped her move the business along in many ways.
One such friend was Susi Torre-Bueno of Durham. "I knew
at once that Jean's Thimble Thoughts would be perfect
for cross stitch application," Susi wrote later. So together
they developed a whole book of cross stitch designs and patterns,
with complete details as to fabric, floss, stitch count and
embroidery instructions so that the finished originals would
be as faithful as possible to Jean's hand colored mounted
and framed wall hangings. Before long the cross stitch versions
of Thimble Thoughts were appearing in homes throughout the
Southeast.
Now
retired, Jean still likes to dream up fresh Thimble Thoughts
for the enjoyment of her family and friends. Thimble Thoughts,
she notes, "were nothing deep or scholarly but simple
reflections put in four-line form that expressed commonsense
truths".
"At
the same time," she added, "the more you thought
about the deceptive simplicity of the quatrains the more you
saw in them. That's why they were illustrated and framed
or cross stitched in many colors to hang on the wall to be
seen day after day."
A
year after she arrived at Carolina Meadows in 1997 Jean was
elected Precinct Representative for the residents of her building
and served on the Council of the Residents Association. Jean
still maintains an active interest in the University through
the annual Spicer/Brenkenridge Memorial Lecture on the Humanistic
Side of Medicine, which is part of the Medical Alumni Weekend.
This program was organized by the class of 1938, and named
after two flight surgeons from the class killed in World War
Two, one of whom was Jean's brother, Arnold.
Summer
is the time of the year when all of the family tries to visit,
for as Jean comments, she likes nothing better than getting
the family together. Her twin boys, Tom and Bob, now live
in Virginia. Daughter Gay lives in Florida and Caroline in
Chapel Hill. Jean's extended family now numbers four
children, nine grandchildren and at last count eight great-grandchildren
- with two more due this year.
Jean
tells an interesting story about another Chapel Hill resident
who was also the originator of a very successful woman-run
business in town. She is Jean Holcomb, the founder of Viking
Travel and a member of the Carolina Members Board of Directors.
When Jean Holcomb was starting her travel business in Chapel
Hill in 1979, she knew that her friend, Jean Breckenridge,
was an active member of the National Association of Women
Business Owners (NAWBO). She asked her if she could accompany
her to one of the meetings and get some ideas on developing
her new business. They attended a meeting together in Research
Triangle Park. Jean Holcomb went on to create her very successful
travel business. Jean Breckenridge gave one of her framed
and mounted Thimble Thoughts to Jean Holcomb and it stood
on the travel agent's office desk for many years. - Des
Reilly, resident
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