Megan Navarro
DRIPPING SPRINGS — Megan Jones, owner of Speeding Springs in Dripping Springs, is combining her passions of interior decorating and collecting historical memorabilia to soon open an antique store.
Speeding Springs was founded five years ago with a focus of offering secure, climate-controlled vehicle storage and a unique event venue, as well as a museum for automotive memorabilia — this includes a rotating collection of classic and exotic cars. Now, that list is growing even longer, as Jones is working on getting an antique store off the ground next month on the property.
“I already have a large amount of antiques at the property, seeing as I'm a museum. I have a lot of people always wanting to buy my signs and different stuff like that because I have a really huge collection of old porcelain, neon, all that kind of stuff,” she said. “But also, I'm a big collector myself. I have a farmhouse in the back. I go to Fredericksburg, I go to Round Top … My husband and I go regularly to garage sales or estate sales or whatever to try to get that antique feeling in our town. So, I just decided recently that I was going to open the antique store in the front of my museum as like a shop to the museum for everybody to come. It's kind of like your gateway to Hill Country — that's what Dripping Springs is, so before you get to Johnson City, Fredericksburg or the other way, you have something in between.”
Already at Speeding Springs sits an automotive memorabilia collection that will take guests on a “nostalgic journey through the golden era of automotive history.” They will find vintage car parts, crafted scale models, historical documents, photographs, racing apparel and other collectibles.
That collection will continue to grow with the antique store, as Jones has a goal to make sure that what she is putting out on the shelves for sale will stay fresh, so people who frequent the shop will not be seeing the same items every time.
“We want to keep people's eyes interested. That's the interior decorator side of me. I want people to walk in and not only see cool stuff, but want to be there and want to hang out. Enjoy that atmosphere,” Jones said. “Not only do you have the antique store, you have a really cool hot rod museum right behind it, so you're able to look through some of these really rare, cool cars and you almost have the best of both worlds there and it's all from the same era.”
Running an antique store is different from a regular retail shop, as the used items that are in there could be upwards of 50-100 years old. For Jones, being a museum owner and having done appraisals, she has years of experience of knowing what to look for and how to distinguish what is real and what is reproduced. According to her, there is a science to maintaining the historical accuracy and the ins and outs of operating a shop that showcases antique pieces.
“That's something I take pride in because I have taken a lot of time to study what a bolt would look like in that era, what a nail would look like in that era, what the texture should be [and] what the wood choices should be in that era. So, there's a lot that factors in, like even porcelain signs in the gas and oil industry, those are one of the biggest repops and I don’t believe in repops, which are your reproductions that were done in the '90s,” she said. “You have to know exactly how porcelain would look and how it would age … You go to Hobby Lobby and you're like, ‘Oh, that looks like a rusty sign.’ You can do anything nowadays that makes things look old.”
Her interest is in American-made antiques, where she can collect general store, gas and oil and primitive 1800s pioneer items. This specific industry of antiques is a more male-dominated field, but Jones is trying to bring a new generation in and teach them how to appreciate the history behind the items.
“There's a meaning and there's a history and there's a past to every piece you have,” Jones said. “I try to find out as much history as I can per item. I don't just go buy random stuff. That's another little special thing that I have because about 80% of my items, I can tell you where it's from.”
She added that she wants to make the antiques affordable for people to enjoy in their home, so she strategically goes and picks from barns, rather than auctions — as an old sign could be priced at $10,000, when she could find it and sell it for less.
The antique store at Speeding Springs will have a soft opening at 10 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 2, and will then fully open a couple weeks after that. The hours of operation will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Thursday and then, every other weekend after that to give Jones enough time to go out and pick items.
Speeding Springs is located at 7100 Creek Road in Dripping Springs. To learn more, visit www.speedingspringstx.com.
