Doris Rosen brings Salinas a new approach to antiques

During her long career as a registered nurse, Doris Rosen of Salinas cultivated another interest, painting antique wooden furniture.

She’d paint pieces she found at flea markets and at estate sales.

“I’d find old dressers and decorative items,” Rosen said Thursday. “I found a bed.”

“If I saw a pick-up truck loaded with old furniture and headed for the dump, I’d flag it down.”

Now Rosen has an outlet from which to sell her creations. It’s Tito’s Tiques, 8 1/2 West Gabilan St., in Salinas. “Tito” is Rosen’s nickname. “Tiques” is short for “antiques.”

Oldtown’s newest store opened Feb. 27.

“I used to paint my furniture in my driveway on San Miguel Street,” Rosen said. “I became famous as ‘The Painter on San Miguel.’ People would drop by to talk. They’d give me pieces.”

One day, her husband glanced out the window. He noticed that their driveway had, because of his wife’s enthusiastic painting activities, begun to look like a rainbow.

“So now I paint at my mother-in-law’s house,” Rosen said.

Rosen grew up the daughter of Swiss immigrants. Her mother, Gianna Pura, lives in Greenfield. Her father, Elio, deceased, was a Greenfield farmer, but Elio had also learned woodworking as a trade in Switzerland and passed his interest on to his daughter.

Rosen, though, worked for 33 years as a nurse, including time in the emergency room at Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital.

For several years, she sold her antique-painted furniture out of Bliss Boutique, a clothing store at 266 S. Main St.

In creating Tito’s Tiques, Rosen first had to bring the shop’s interior - the previous store sold dog-related items - in line with her own artistic vision.

That took two months.

Friends Janis Barnes, Becky Perez and J.R. Perez helped her. J.R. also owns a cabinet-making business and can repair any of the old furniture, Rosen said.

In preparing Tito’s Tiques, the group erected Mediterranean-style columns. They inlaid red brick into walls as design touches. They installed a white trellis made from old house fencing as a display device in the front window.

“We tried to create a unique environment with color and texture,” Rosen said.

Items in the store, for example, include a chest of drawers which started life painted a dull brown. The chest was sanded then painted blue and yellow. Antique replica knobs, $100 worth, were added.

One technique Rosen employs is “distressing.” First, paint the piece, she said. Then, strategically remove small areas of paint to create highlights.

Rosen meticulously arranges each item in her store, making sure they play off each other in terms of height, color and texture.

She wants customers to experience a pleasing artistic “flow” the moment they step into her store.

“I’m fussy about that,” Rosen said.

Customers are especially buying furniture painted black and white and green but red, too.

“Red is eye-catching,” Rosen said. “You can put red anywhere, and it looks good.”

Creating Tito’s Tiques, filling the store with her painted antique furniture, has given Rosen a sense of artistic accomplishment, she said.

“I never dreamed I’d have a place like this,” Rosen said.

Information from: www.thecalifornian.com