The traders have descended on Hinsdale, catching Cheryl Aichele by surprise.
”Here he is. Here they are,” she says, throwing up her hands and laughing in disbelief as a tall, lanky man bursts into the room. ”Abraham, what are you doing here on my day here?”
It is, after all, a Saturday. That violates the deal Aichele had with Abraham Ndiaya: The Africans come into the shop only on her days off. Her mother`s incessant bartering with them, she said, frays her nerves.
But, grinning and gesturing wildly, Ndiaya ignores the reception and answers the question. ”We are here,” he says proudly, ”to see Lavinia.”
Lavinia Tackbary looks at Aichele, her daughter, and beams. Ndiaya, as he has for the last eight years, has come from Africa with the source of her livelihood, the balm that healed wounds from a divorce and the reason her name is equally familiar to neighbors in Hinsdale, traders in West Africa and art collectors across the country.
Ndiaya is what Tackbary calls a runner, one of 30 or so men who comb their native countries and then come to Hinsdale to supply her with the primitive art and African trading beads that fill her shop. She has owned and operated Eye On Design, in downtown Hinsdale, 12 years. Aichele, at 34, the oldest of Tackbary`s four children, has managed the financial side of the business for the last eight years.
Were it not for the preppy salesgirls, entering the shop is like embarking on an adventure through alien lands. Imposing African masks and headpieces greet customers at the entrance. An intricately carved chair that once supported African kings is in a corner. Stools that were the only furniture for generations of families are on shelves. Hundreds of ivory bracelets lie stacked in a glass case.
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And thousands of strands of trading beads dancing with every color imaginable line the walls of one room and overflow dozens of baskets on the floor. It is from these, along with the shells, the lion`s teeth and the snake vertebrae, to name a few, that Tackbary strings her magic.
”Just look at this little bead here. It`s a Picasso, a piece of art,”
says Tackbary, her voice still filled with exitement and amazement after 17 years of designing necklaces with them. ”But instead of having it on your walls, you`re wearing it.”
This melange of exotica is above a drugstore in downtown wealthy, conservative Hinsdale in wealthy, conservative Du Page County.
”When African people come to America, they don`t know Chicago, but they know Hinsdale. They don`t know Times Square; they don`t know Sears Tower; they know Hinsdale,” Ndiaya says, and everyone laughs loud and hard just at the thought of the thing. ”Her name: Lavinia. They know it. To find in one place this much concentration of beads, it doesn`t exist, period.”
It is into the Bead Room, Tackbary`s favorite, that she has welcomed Ndiaya and another runner, Cheikh Mbaye. They are from Senegal, West Africa. She has jumped to her feet to greet them, as Abraham and her daughter continue to interrupt each other with loud, good-natured jabs. Tackbary, slim and youthful in white jeans and wearing bracelets that go halfway to her elbows, allows a few more minutes of laughs before the questions begin.
They have brought only one piece this time, an Ashanti stool, so the bartering would be short. A cab driver waits outside for them, but, relaxed with friends, the pair will stay much of the afternoon.
Sitting around the long, felt-covered table where Tackbary spends most of the day designing with the beads, she confidently steers the conversation from one topic to another: Tell us how you got the Ashanti stool; tell us about the gold that African women wear; what does it mean? Tell us about these beads. She`s breathless and engaging, and Nbiaya, not a shy sort, is happy for a chance to weave tales of his country to a captive audience.
Yet for all her interest and extensive knowledge about African trading beads, the shop`s breathtaking array of African art and her obsession with the continent and its people, Tackbary has never been to Africa.
”I never seemed to need to go to Africa because it`s always at my door. They bring it to me,” she said after Ndiaya and Mbaye had left. ”It would be nice to go to Africa, but Africa`s here. It`s everywhere around me.”
Like the country she has never seen, Tackbary is mysterious and elusive. She seems almost to take pride in that, as she explained that she`ll never let herself be close to anyone again after two divorces, the last quite painful. She refuses to give her exact age, saying only, ”Let`s say I`m well over 50. If you tell your age, you`re a bore. People love to talk and wonder: `How old is she?` ”
She colors her short, dark hair and maintains her size-6 figure by doing 50 situps and eating only 1,200 calories each day. She looks not a day over 40. But that`s almost 20 years too generous.
”She sort of represents a fantasy. She`s a muse for the area,” Aichele said, her directness and ready humor so different from her mother`s mystery.
”There`s not a lot of fantasy around here (Hinsdale). There`s a lot of money, but not a lot of fantasy.”
Tackbary`s rapt attention to the Africans and her wonder at the intricacies of every small bead make her seem almost childlike. She jumps from her seat where she strings the necklaces to pull out books on beads and Africa. And she giggles and talks of having to sneak out to get money to buy from the Africans when her daughter`s not looking.
”I don`t drink or smoke. I`m high on things that are real: real art, real beads. There`s nothing plastic in this shop,” she said. ”You`ve just got to stay with it. Your personality depends on how you feel inside. I just like myself.”
She also enjoys knowing that she`s a successful businesswoman who opened the shop after she raised four kids, survived two failed marriages and whose only work experience was as a saleswoman at Saks Fifth Avenue. It all started 17 years ago with a $10,000 divorce cash settlement and 30 days of unlimited use of her husband`s credit card.
For 21 years, Tackbary recalled, she lived like Cinderella, as the wife of a wealthy businessman whom she had met as she was getting her first divorce. She remembered wanting for nothing. A chauffeur whisked her everywhere. She spent her days working for charities and painting. Her closets were filled.
Until Ron Tackbary, with no earlier indication, asked for a divorce. ”I said one thing: `What day?` ” Tackbary said. ”I later did one thing to try to keep him. I sent him a painting and the note said, `I love you, I want you, I need you.` He returned the painting.”
It was then, as she went through the ”out-of-the-sky, fall-on-your-head” divorce, that she decided to create her designs. She was shopping at the Art Institute one day, with the credit card she knew she had to relinquish at month`s end, when she saw an exhibit of African trading beads.
”I immediately thought, `I could design with these,` ” said Tackbary.
”I always had a flair. I always wore hats, I always seemed to stand out. . . . But I was determined to be a person, a businesswoman. I had to start like I was born again.”
She asked about contacts, and eventually was directed to a hotel where many of the Africans stay when they come to sell merchandise. In the style that`s so obvious, Tackbary concentrated on appearance and set out to make an impression. She rented a limousine, and, with the $10,000 cash settlement in hand, breezed into the hotel room.
”I just threw hundreds at them and said, `I`ll take them all.` I bought the whole room of beads,” she said. ”I did it with class.”
The credit card again came into play as she jetted all over the country selling her newly designed collection. Henri Bendel and Bonwit Teller in New York. Neiman Marcus and Hudson`s in New Orleans. And, back in Chicago, Marshall Field`s, Ultimo and the Museum of Contemporary Art. All bought bead necklaces from the chic woman wearing the polo hat, who looked bored and wealthy, but who was actually returning home to a virtually empty bank account and the end of painless credit cards. But the home, an elegant house in Hinsdale, was hers from the divorce.
”People used to drive in my driveway and say, `This house will be for sale. She won`t be able to keep it.` But I thought: `I`m going to try,` ” she said. ”It was at the beginning, when I went all over the country, that I decided to opened a shop.”
It took five years. Finally, she sold all the antique furniture in her house and opened Eye on Design.
”I was in Europe at the time,” Aichele said, ”and I started getting a lot of phone calls from her asking `Can you come back?` She said, `I want to expand, I want to enlarge the shop.` ”
The mother-daughter corporation started four years later. They readily acknowledge some conflicts. Mother always wants more art and beads, and daughter, the financial adviser, thinks they have enough and should invest in things that have a higher turnover, like gold jewelry.
”Sometimes it`s very stormy between the two of us, and sometimes I have to leave the shop for a few days to catch my breath,” Aichele said. ”It`s differences in philosophy. Primarily, of course, it is the African art. It`s sort of the bane of my existence. If this were my shop, it wouldn`t be nearly as interesting but it would be a lot more profitable.”
”She sort of does put me straight on a lot of things and lets me know when I`m overindulging,” Tackbary said, as Aichele nodded her head smugly and smiled. ”It takes two personalities to run a shop.”
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But their relationship has always seemed to defy a traditional mother-daughter setup, Aichele said, as she talked about ”always mothering Lavinia.”
Tackbary was as much the untraditional mom as the untraditional Hinsdale resident. Her children often came home to a house in chaos. Mom would be off in a room painting imitations of Picasso, Lautrec and Matisse. She made
”pretend home-baked cookies,” Aichele said, and went to such lengths as actually putting them on a cookie sheet and removing them from the oven. The family joke was guessing where Tackbary had hidden the Pepperidge Farm bag that day.
But Tackbary knew nothing of the traditional family. Her mother, an opera singer from Rome, died of pnuemonia when she was 2 years old. Livinia McAfee was reared in New York and then Pittsburgh by her father, an engineer. He vowed never to remarry, and Livinia`s matriarchial influences came from a string of housekeepers.
”I raised myself,” she said. ”All my thinking is because of the way I was raised.”
She worked at Saks during her first marriage to Aichele`s father and put him through college in Pittsburgh, where they lived. Shortly afterward, they divorced and she married Tackbary. The couple moved from Pittsburgh to Hinsdale, where they reared Aichele, two other daughers and a son.
All but one of her children now live in the Chicago area. One daughter, Robin Pertnoy, lives in Palm Beach, Fla., and sells African art and jewelry from her home. She buys from some of the same suppliers that her mother does and was expecting a visit from Ndiaya and Mbaye two days after they left Hinsdale.
Tackbary has stayed in touch with her ex-husband Ron, who lives in Florida and has since divorced his second wife. He has come into the shop several times, generally when his rental and leasing company mandates a business trip to Chicago. He has bought some 18-karat gold.
”He can`t quite believe how successful I am,” Tackbary said. ”I think he expected me to probably do nothing and die.”
She changed her name to Lavinia from Livinia just before she opened Eye On Design, on the advice of Michael Butler, Du Page County`s bon vivant. ”He said, `It would be a better name for you if you`re going places.` I laughed at first, but then I just decided to go ahead and change it,” she said, laughing again.
She hopes to keep the shop in Hinsdale, but she and Aichele realize that relocating in Chicago would be more profitable and more visible. She has loyal customers, but many just buy from her collection of 18-karat gold. Most Hinsdale women don`t care to adorn themselves with necklaces made from lion`s teeth, or even beads that look like little Picassos. To them, daring is a turquoise, coral and mother-of-pearl combination, to which Tackbary gives a feeble ”uh huh. That`s nice.” She then determinedly says, ”I`m going to get you in African next, you wait and see.
”People just want to go out in these little chemises and one little strand of beads, and I say `Oh how sick.` I say `Did you ever play house?
Don`t you want to pretend like you`re playing house and having fun like you used to?` ” Tackbary said. ”I went to a party, a charity here in Hinsdale, and 80 percent of the women had pearls on. They are afraid to make a statement. They feel comfortable and that`s their strand of pearls and they`re going to die with that strand of pearls and I`m not going to change them.”
She gives away some necklaces and has a closet with rows of necklaces for $5 just to entice people to try her creations. Then they`re usually hooked.
”It`s like pulling teeth. Everything I do is like teaching,” she said.
”It`s so frustrating to me, because I know I`m sitting on a gold mine here.”
But for all her differences and frustrations, Tackbary said she feels accepted in the community. Before her divorce and venture into business, she donated much of her time to charities. Now she donates money and spends her time in the shop.
”It`s difficult. It`s difficult every day,” she said. ”But the best thing about life is that I come in every day, concentrate on the business and my designs.”