Henderson vintage shop, with a two-headed pig, has ties to a beloved downtown business

HENDERSON, Ky. — Growing up, Jasmine Elzy and Kyla Ford would spend their weekends sifting through hand-me-downs at garage sales and thrift stores with their grandmother.

And every Christmas, they’d receive boxes of thrifted treasures their “nana” had accumulated throughout the year.

Thanks to their grandma, they’ve always had a knack for finding strange and valuable treasures among the discarded. Over the years, the two slowly amassed a collection of unique, strange and rare antiques that eventually needed to be rehomed.

So, in July of 2020, amidst a global pandemic, they took their hobby to Etsy, where they began to build the business that became Corkscrew Curiosities: a unique vintage shop and likely one of the only places in the country where you can find fossilized animal feces and floral dresses under the same roof.

“I like to say that we had to do it, because otherwise our houses would’ve exploded,” Ford said.

Elzy and Ford opened their first brick-and-mortar shop less than four months later, in a unit at The Elm. And in November of 2021, they relocated to their current, larger location at 2250 South Green Street, in a building they share with an antiques shop.

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Their ever-growing vintage and oddities shop gets both its essence and its namesake from their grandmother’s café – Corkscrew Deli.

Corkscrew Deli

Though originally started by Corky Taylor in the late 1970s, the thrifty cousins’ grandmother, Jane Stanley, who started as a manager, bought the Henderson sandwich shop just a couple years later.

“She pretty much ran the whole thing from day one,” said Taylor.

Long-time Henderson residents remember the deli for its unique steamed sandwiches – like hot turkey and mozzarella or Kielbasa with swiss on rye – and Stanley’s impeccable cleanliness.

“(The health inspector) could almost never find anything wrong in the deli. He used to give mom a hard time, saying: ‘I can’t give you an A plus every time, people won’t believe me!’” said Melody Thompson, Stanley's daughter.

One commenter in the local Facebook group “I grew up in Henderson and remember…,” said the only problem with the deli was its long lines at lunchtime.

According to Thompson, Stanley never missed more than a couple days of work, even as she battled breast cancer. Her staff was comprised of mostly women, and in financially difficult times, she made sure her employees received a check before she paid herself.

“Of all the people that I’ve had working with me over the years, I’d say she’d be one of the very top,” said Taylor. “And I’ve had a lot of employees in my heyday.”

Stanley sold Corkscrew Deli in 1991, and it shut down soon after.

The deli’s original logo – a yellow and white bullseye with the words “Corkscrew’s Deli” etched in black – served as a template for the one that now represents Corkscrew Curiosities.

Vintage art, jewelry, and a two-headed pig

Stanley passed away in 2016, but her memory lives on in her granddaughters’ shop.

Decoupaged on the front desk in a collage of other local historical photos and documents are pictures of Stanley and the deli.

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“We kind of got our love for all of this from her and we wanted to pay homage to that,” said Elzy. “And that fact that she was a businesswoman, and we were becoming businesswomen, that kind of just felt like it fit.”

The store’s front room is full of vintage art and jewelry from local vendors. Glass cases display rare dishware made of green uranium glass, which glows under black light. There are postcard racks stacked with vintage photos that Ford refers to as “instant ancestors.”

The shipping garage off the back of the building houses some of the larger items, like furniture and décor, grouped by decade.

But Corkscrew Curiosities isn’t just another vintage shop. Many of the items – like the perfectly preserved arterial system of a fetal pig, the raccoon penile bones or the home embalming machine – are likely not the kinds of things Elzy and Ford were finding at the bottom of their grandmother's Christmas boxes.

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Elzy’s favorite item is the two-headed pig.

“Someone called us, and they had gotten (the pig) from a veterinarian,” said Elzy. “The people brought the pig that had just been born into him and said, ‘I don’t know which mouth to feed.’ And the vet looked at them and said, ‘That’s the smallest problem here.’”

Despite how strange some of these things might sound, people come from all over the Tri-State in search of the next unique piece to add to their collection. And online, where they do about 60 to 70% of their sales, they’ve sold their products as far as Europe and Australia.

If Stanley were still around, the cousins say, she’d be in the shop all the time.

“This would be her personal mission in life,” said Elzy. “She would love it.”

This article originally appeared on Henderson Gleaner: Kentucky vintage shop Corkscrew Curiosities pays homage to family deli