Helen Winnemore

“I don’t have a clientele; I just have people. I want people to have the enjoyment of picking things out…As long as I live, this will be my daily work.”  

Those are the words of longtime Grandview Heights resident Helen Winnemore, founder of Helen Winnemore’s, the iconic Columbus shop previously located at 1367 Glenn Avenue and currently located in nearby German Village, Ohio.  

Although she spent over 50 years bringing beautiful and functional crafts to central Ohio, Winnemore’s route to that calling was an accident. Born in 1901 in Iowa to Quaker parents, Winnemore received a BA degree in 1928, and joined her sister, physician Dr. Charlotte Winnemore, in Columbus. Winnemore took fine arts classes at The Ohio State University and taught children at the North Columbus Friends Meeting.  

In search of pint-sized chairs for her students, Winnemore went to the woodworking shops at Berea College in Kentucky. This association with the college plus her Quaker commitment, led her to become involved in Eleanor Roosevelt’s first homestead community in Arthurdale, WV, whose wood, textile and pewter workshops provided jobs for out-of-work mining families during the Depression. By 1938, Winnemore had begun opening the sisters’ home in Columbus to display and sell artists’ work. Winnemore  offered a cup of tea to visitors to her "Afternoon Shop" and invited them to investigate items nestled in her bureau drawers. Customers at Helen Winnemore’s today still receive a welcome cup of tea (or coffee) and enjoy opening the 40 built-in jewelry drawers to discover the treasures within. 

In 1941, the sisters and their mother moved their home and The Afternoon Shop to this home in Grandview Heights. The shop, by then known as Winnemore Contemporary Crafts, relocated to downtown Columbus 10 years later. Displaced by freeway construction in 1964, Winnemore took the shop to German Village where it remains open today. Winnemore’s purpose was straightforward, “…to bring the work of American artists to people who appreciate and love the handicraft” she stated.   

A chance encounter at the shop in the 1960s led to Winnemore’s marriage to Stefan Horvath in 1965. They were married until his death in 1992.  

In 1991, the Helen Winnemore Scholarship was established in her honor at the Columbus College of Art and Design to foster arts in Columbus. Winnemore retained ownership of the shop and her Grandview Heights home until her death in 1996 at the age of 95.  

In 2000, NICHE magazine called the opening of Winnemore’s shop a prominent event in the “Timeline of 100 Years of American Crafts,” perhaps because it altered the public’s view of crafts from basic utilitarian items to functional art.  

Winnemore, in her later years, at her shop in German Village.