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We, the owners of The
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, are Shon &
Patrick Miller. We live on the San Francisco
Peninsula—more or less in Silicon Valley—and
have been married for 38 years. Additional staff
consists of our three dogs—Missy, Buttons
& Bow—who try very hard to help. (Buttons
particularly likes to shred paper to make packing
material, and Bow is fond of popping the bubbles
in Bubble-Wrap; Missy supervises.)
I was born a packrat, from generations of packrats;
Patrick, on the other hand, delights in tidying
things out of existence. When we met, he wouldn’t
own anything that didn’t fit in his Navy
ditty bag—boy, did I fix him! Pat’s
collections now consist of Hats, Royal Doulton
Character Jugs and his ’57 T-Bird—in
addition to Vintage Police/Fire Badges, English
Darts Medals, and Pocket Watches; mine
consists of everything else. My mother started
Pat’s collection of
Doulton Jugs by giving him the  Large
Mephistopheles—since his mustache &
goatee resembled those of the character. Talk
about starting at the top!
When we opened our antiques business, in 1990,
we had Vintage Clothing (lots of Hats, of course),
Illustrated Children’s Books (think ‘Alice
in Wonderland’ among others) and over
300 Toy Tea & Dinner Sets (so ‘Tea
Party,’ of course). The name simply had
to be The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. In the
website, we’ve used characters from
‘Alice in Wonderland’ to name the
categories of antiques & collectibles we
offer. The illustrations are adapted from those
originally created by Sir John Tenniel for ‘Alice.’
I specialize in Vintage Clothing & Accessories;
Pat’s specialty is the Royal Doulton Jugs.
Costume & Fashion Design was my major field
of study in high school and college. I worked
in professional and amateur theatre for many
years—while working full time in printing,
private label foods packaging, advertising,
and as Purchasing Agent/Packaging Engineer for
a high tech corporation, from which I’m
now happily retired. Patrick was an MIS Manager
in the Insurance industry, and swore upon retiring
that he’d ‘never touch a computer
again as long as he lived’. Ha! Of course
the computers he managed were mainframes not
PC’s; just try to drag him away from his
computer now!
 We
take pride in the quality and condition
of our merchandise. Care and a great deal
of research goes into the descriptions of
what you will see in our Product pages.
We are always happy to learn more about
any item we offer, and hope our clients
will learn from what we have to say. You
will also find information that’s
both interesting and useful, in the FAQ’s
for each ‘department.’
Now, slide down the rabbit hole and step up
to the table at The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party! |
