When the light filters just so through the windows of Wentworth, a new entertaining and home goods shop in Charleston, South Carolina, it glints off stacks of speckleware bowls and refracts through Lobmeyr crystal candy dishes lined up like soldiers in a glass cabinet. Nearby, scagliola lamps made by Christopher Wall in Worcestershire, England, face off against lampshades hand painted by the Spanish artist Alvaro Picardo, and five-piece sets of silverware look out from display cases like gems in a jewelry store. A library of candy-colored taper candles hangs behind the hardy wood register. This mélange of treasures would look right at home in a Paris flea market stall or a shop on London’s Portobello Road.
Indeed, “I wanted it to feel like something that you would see in New York or London,” says Blake Sams, who founded the store last summer with his business partner, Liz Macpherson. It could be in those places, but it’s not; Wentworth is a shop so rooted in Charleston that it’s named after the centuries-old street on which it sits.
Sams grew up in Upstate South Carolina, raised by a family with “laid-on-thick Southern charm,” he says. “My grandmother always had way too much food. More than anyone would ever need.” When he moved to Charleston for college, he integrated himself into the city’s event industry, interning and then working for organizations that had him planning intimate South of Broad dinner parties and large-scale black-tie galas. Now his own company, Gregory Blake Sams Events, hosts masterfully curated soirees for a sophisticated roster of clients across the country.
“I would have clients constantly texting me, asking where they could get this or that when they were hosting a party on their own,” Sams says. “And I thought that there really should be a repository where people can easily go and get the things that they need to finish out their house before they have guests.” So he made one.
When Macpherson—who founded Mac & Murphy, a beloved but now shuttered stationery shop—and Sams signed the lease on Wentworth, the circa-1870s structure was “down to the studs,” Sams says. “Like it was standing on top of toothpicks.” After a two-and-a-half-year renovation, they opened the doors in June 2024. The store’s layout bobs on a merry-go-round of aesthetics, with a complete revamp every two months or so. For Christmas, it transformed into a greenery-draped wonderland with warm white lights, more than ten thousand ornaments, and a full wall of cuckoo clocks. This spring, Sams has emphasized small furniture and bright vignettes full of color—oil paintings, throw pillows, rainbow-hued watering cans—to warm up the space. “Every time we flip it, it’s sort of an event in and of itself,” he says. Less than a year into the shop’s existence, the team is already planning an expansion, moving the company’s office space from the storefront next door to make room for more inventory—namely bedding, textiles, and furniture.
Whether sourcing an antique cabinet from Europe or a dish towel, candle, or match striker from a small-batch artisan, Sams picks his inventory with intention. “I want everything to be of quality; I couldn’t care less if it’s cute,” he says (though everything is decidedly cute, too). “We have holes in the store right now—wine keys, for instance. My colleague’s desk has probably twelve different wine keys on it right now as we look for the best one.”
Context is just as important as quality; what fits best in Charleston may not fly elsewhere. “We want to play off the city’s architecture and the color palette,” Sams says. “And how you entertain in Charleston—there are different essentials here. I wouldn’t use as much traditional silver in New York, for instance, but there’s definitely a space for that in here. And in Charleston, everyone’s always looking for a surcee; you don’t go anywhere without a hostess gift.”
