In the heart of Point Clear, sharing an old home with the beloved Punta Clara Kitchen and sitting next to the Wash House restaurant, there is a shop that manages to feel less like retail and more like rummaging through the most interesting house on the street. Market on Main is the work of Belle Laurendine, and the way she ended up running it explains why the place feels so different from a chain boutique.
Walk in and the reaction is what regulars call the “aha moment,” the feeling that a genuine discovery has taken place. Ironstone kitchenware sits near one-of-a-kind local pottery; baskets, pillows, bags, and guest towels share shelves with weathered wooden pieces handmade in the 1940s and 1950s; and out on the porch and in the garden, more treasures wait under the live oaks. “It has to be interesting,” is Belle’s entire buying philosophy.
From Arkansas to the Gulf Coast, by Way of Louisiana
Belle’s family is from Arkansas, and her husband Ed is from Mobile. The couple spent most of their young adult years in Franklin, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, and later in Metairie, before the pull of Ed’s hometown magnet drew them home. In 2010, they moved to old Daphne, near Bayside Academy.
Belle brought unusual credentials for an antiques dealer. An early childhood specialist who graduated from the Mississippi University for Women in Columbus, she wrote much of the Louisiana state curriculum for her field. But antiques were always in her blood, and Franklin, with its little tucked-away shops and old barns full of locally made pieces, was exactly the right training ground.
The Education of a Picker
What Belle learned in the Louisiana countryside was that the best dealers and craftsmen do not open up to strangers right away. You had to spend time with them before they let you into the inner circle. “I don’t chew tobacco or dip snuff, but when they invite you in to visit, you accept a cold glass of iced tea,” she says.
As a hobby, she began telling her shop-owner friends where she had spotted items worth buying, and soon became known as a picker before picking was a television occupation. “It was fun, I didn’t consider it a job.” The gig went semi-professional when the Antiques Roadshow came through town asking whom to consult about finding antiques in the area, and three different shops gave them Belle’s name. “I just like people and enjoy helping others.” She spent weekends on the road, hunting down pieces her shop friends could sell, and building the network of dealers that still defines her business today.
Market on Main, Twice Over
After the move to Daphne, Belle faced a question many relocating spouses know well: what am I going to do with myself? The answer was sitting empty on Main Street near where she lived, a little corner building with a for-rent future. She approached the owner, rented it, and opened the first Market on Main.
She ran that shop for seven and a half years before a buying trip ended badly. She returned with a truckload of merchandise to discover her lease would not be renewed, and she had exactly one week to clear everything out. The inventory went into a warehouse while she hunted for a new home, and she found it by spotting the for rent sign next to Punta Clara Kitchen, in the historic Point Clear building that the shop shares today, complete with a porch and an adjacent garden.
The grand reopening was spectacular, one of her best weekends ever. The next week, COVID arrived and forced her to close.
What happened next is the part of the story Point Clear regulars love to tell. Belle left a note on the porch: make yourself at home, and if you see something you want, leave me a note. On that honor system, she sold everything in the shop. “People were so happy to get out,” she recalls. It was such a chore to travel that neighbors wandered up, found something they liked, and got in touch. Her dealer friends opened their warehouses for her, and the shutdown turned into a strange, warm reunion with the network she had spent decades building.
What You Will Find Inside
The merchandise reflects a very particular eye. Belle gravitates toward pieces that add character to a home, starting with money boxes. “I like cash,” she says, deadpan. She is drawn to Louis Philippe furniture, admiring its straight lines and simplicity, the kind of antiques that work anywhere, and she champions a blend of modern and old rather than any single era.
Practicality matters too, and it comes from watching how people actually live on the Gulf Coast. Folks here want to be outside, and they need furniture that moves easily from the lawn to the porch to the living room depending on the occasion or the weather, so she stocks rugs and rattan outdoor furniture that look great and, in her judgment, cannot be destroyed. There is resort wear for the forgetful, including scarves and silk jackets “in case you’ve forgotten something,” local folk art, and a rotating supply of small three-to-five-dollar objects that add character without a second thought.
The shop uses every inch of its setting: indoor rooms, the porch, and the garden all double as display space. “I love serving refreshments in the garden, lemonade, and wine,” Belle says, and on a good afternoon the shopping trip drifts into a garden party without anyone quite noticing when it happened.
The Dealers, and the Wisdom of Moving Furniture
Many of the dealers behind her inventory are European, and once they get to know you, she says, you are like family. They look, in her words, like they all just came from central casting, which is one way of saying that the people in this trade are as collectible as the merchandise.
Among her aphorisms, two deserve framing. The first: never underestimate the power of a woman to move furniture herself. The second is demonstrated rather than spoken, and it involved the purchase of a wooden sausage stuffer from the 1940s, one of those handmade mid-century pieces that no one needs and everyone wants once they see it.
That is the whole charm of Market on Main. It sits at the intersection of a professional curator’s eye, a social worker’s warmth, and a picker’s endurance, in a building that has been part of Point Clear life for generations, next door to a candy kitchen and down the street from a garden shop that draws its own pilgrims. Come for the Louis Philippe sideboard; leave with a money box, a hand-thrown pot, and a glass of lemonade from the garden. That is how it usually goes.