Martha's TV show has Kentucky connections
By TOM DORSEY
The Courier-Journal

Martha Stewart's TV show is coming to Kentucky tomorrow by way of New Orleans.

The show, seen in Louisville at 11 a.m. on WAVE-3, will spotlight New Orleans, but feature a segment on the Eleanor Beard fabric design studio of Hardinsburg. But that's only one of the Kentucky connections.

The other is Jane Scott Hodges, a Lexington native who owns and operates Leontine Linens with her husband, Philip, in New Orleans.

Hodges says she re-discovered Beard's work when she returned to Lexington to get married in 1995, coming back from New Orleans, where she went to college.

" I was looking for trousseau and monogrammed linens," she said. "New Orleans, which is richer in antique heirlooms than just about anywhere in the country, really couldn't provide that. So I bought Eleanor Beard for my trousseau."

Hodges also saw an opportunity to set up a niche business, so in 1996 she established Leontine Linens in New Orleans to service decorators around the country with the private labels she handled, including those from the Beard Studio in Hardinsburg.

" These are very old designs from moons ago," Hodges said. "They still do hand-quilting, making blanket covers, sheets, towels and fabric sewed on fabric. Their art is appliqué."

Today the studio employees about 25 people. Beard, a Louisvillian, set up her business in Hardinsburg in Breckinridge County in 1921; her husband operated a farm there. She became interested in the women of the area and their hand quilting and appliqué, and she wanted to help preserve and market it.

The ownership  of the business  passed through other hands over the years, including  its  employees.

After she married,  Hodges became a frequent visitor to Hardinsburg.

" When we came home to Lexington two or three times a year, I would drive down to Hardinsburg to say hello so I had a rapport with them other than business," she said.

Last year ,  the Hodgeses  got the word that the Beard studios were going to close.  Hodges and her husband  made a farewell trip to the studio. "As we were driving out of town, my husband said, `Shouldn't we ask someone about buying that business?' "

So they did — and saved the business one more time.

The Hodges spent last summer moving the studios to new, renovated quarters. "People said we were nuts," Hodges said. "We never intended to be the largest private employer in Hardinsburg, which we may now be." 

But it's more than business that brings her back.

" When I go to Hardinsburg, I think to myself that I could live there and move back to Kentucky again," she said. "It would be full circle for me in a lovely way."

Along the way, Leontine Linens was growing and getting lots of national attention. Articles have appeared in The New York Times as recently as  last Sunday (in its magazine) , as well as in Town & Country, Southern Living, House & Garden and House Beautiful. Not to mention Martha Stewart's Wedding and Martha Stewart Living magazines.

That's how someone on Stewart's TV show staff heard about the Beard connections and inquired about doing a story.

"I had never pulled a stitch," Hodges told Stewart's representative. "We have go to do this in Kentucky where the sewers are."

But that didn't work out with Stewart's shooting schedule in New Orleans.

"So I said, let's bring the sewers to New Orleans with their machines," Hodges said. She and her husband brought 11 women employees from the studios to be their guests and appear on Stewart's show, which was taped last month (August 2002).

The stories about Stewart being hard to get along with didn't ring true to Hodges after she met the media icon; "Marth was incredibly gracious. She went out and met the ladies and visited with them and was very interested in their work and who they were."

For her part, Hodges was ecstatic. "Martha Stewart changes people's lives, giving their businesses exposure they never could have dreamed of any other way."

Hodges also had lunch with Stewart and found her to be "an incredibly lovely woman."

And no, Stewart didn't offer Hodges any stock tips. "The subject never came up," Hodges said with a laugh.

View the segment now:

Martha Meets Eleanor

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