Selah offers food, thought

THE VINDICATOR, YOUNGSTOWN
By CYNTHIA VINARSKY
VINDICATOR BUSINESS WRITER
POLAND -- For a business that specializes in decorating fireplace mantels, the Old Stone Tavern is an ideal spot.
Built in 1804, the venerable building on South Main Street has six original fireplaces, and Selah Flora, Paperie and Cafe is making the most of every one.
Owner Brian Palumbo has each mantle decorated in a different holiday motif, ranging from an ornate, Victorian-style garland of dried and silk flowers to modern strands of ice-blue icicles.
Besides adding a holiday feeling to the rooms of the old tavern, he said, the decorated fireplaces spark new ideas for customers looking for original ways to deck their homes for the holidays.
Selah includes a full-service florist which offers in-home decorating, as well as wedding, funeral and special event flower services.
At 29, Palumbo has already been in business for four years, and he moved his floral shop and handmade paper shops to the old tavern last spring when the business outgrew its first location on East Broad Street in Canfield.
Here's his latest
In mid-November the young entrepreneur added a cafe and began featuring free jazz performances on Friday evenings in an upstairs party room that seats 30. The room is also available for parties and showers.
Ironically the coffee shop was Palumbo's original dream, but he had to postpone it until he had enough revenue coming in from the other business categories to offset the start-up costs.
A Struthers native, he studied theater at Ohio State University, then quit college to join a traveling theater group in Europe.
Returning to the states, he opened Selah Paperie in 1998, a retail store on the Green in Canfield offering handmade papers from all over the world.
He said he came up with the business name Selah, a word that appears often in the Bible's old testament book of Psalms, because it means "to stop and ponder" -- he wanted to create a unique business that would make people think.
Palumbo chose the paper business because of his own fascination for the varied textures and colors of handmade papers and the traditions of letter writing and journal writing.
Personal touch
One of the store's best sellers has been its message in a bottle. For $15 the sender can mail off a handwritten message on handmade paper, tucked inside an empty wine bottle which is securely packed into a box and shipped.
"One of my goals it to encourage the art of writing letters," he said. "E-mail is just not the same as a letter that you can hold in your hand and keep forever."
The business added custom-designed wedding and party invitations in its first year, and then Palumbo decided to buy a florist shop next door on West Broad Street as a natural extension of its wedding and party business.
Working with store manager Heather Van Sickle and other staff, Palumbo added wedding planning and consulting to his services.
"What I really wanted was a cafe so that my customers could sit and write a letter or journal over a cup of coffee," he said, grinning. "When we finally moved here to Poland, I told Heather: Now, I want my cafe."
He opened the cafe three weeks ago, offering a menu of specialty coffees and teas, pastries and deli sandwiches.
Decorating
The Stone Tavern building was in good shape when the business moved in, having been used recently as an antique store and art gallery, so it needed only some painting and redecorating.
Palumbo believes in decorating ceilings, and he's demonstrated the art by giving each room of the tavern a unique ceiling decor.
There are swirls of copper pipes overhead in the foyer, the flower shop ceiling is decorated with grapevine garland, and the paperie ceiling is trimmed with framed fabric. "I don't like bare ceilings," he said.
vinarsky@vindy.com