Ragged Sailor FInds New Port

The seems to have found a safe harbor in Corte Madera.

The frame shop and gallery relocated a month ago to The Marketplace on Tamal Vista Boulevard after more than 30 years at its former Larkspur Landing location. Slowly but surely his clients are finding the new store near Book Passage.

"It's been busy. I'm not saying I'm ready to buy my Mercedes yet, but I wasn't buying a Mercedes at the other location," owner Cobb Blake said. "So it's a different space but it's a better-traveled space."

When the Larkspur Landing shopping center changed ownerships and was rebranded Marin Country Mart, Cobb decided it was time he made a change of his own.

Blake seems to have drifted into his current career almost by accident. He could have just as easily spent his life working on boats in his homeport of Maine.

"When I was in high school … I got the idea of making some planters and pots and stuff which my stepfather was doing as a hobby," Blake said. "I opened a store for the summer, July 4 to Labor Day that's when I closed down, and I sold all these big cement items that I made to all the tourists and the wealthy people who were just summer folk. That's when I did it. I called it the Ragged Sailor and I kept the name. 

"Ragged sailor is an old term they used for a bachelor's button, which is a long-stemmed flower that looked like an old sailor's cap. I was a Ragged Sailor because they knew I sailed and I was knee-deep in cement."

Blake eventually came to California to sell his planters, setting up shop originally in Tiburon in 1972. At first, he paid someone else to frame artwork for his store, but "eventually I ended up doing some of the framing myself and found it was a better setup for myself," he said.

Cobb opened a second shop as one of the original tenants of Larkspur Landing and later sold his Tiburon store.

His store, no matter where it was anchored, has always had the same seafaring feeling, with ship's wheels and driftwood art decorating the entryway.

The new shop, Cobb says, gives him more space to display and work on frames.

"Now, people are coming in, they're finding me. Plus the new people going to Book Passage see the store," Cobb said.