Sandra Webb last week, on her last day at Heritage Gallery.
Twenty-seven years after Sandra Webb opened Heritage Gallery in Cambridge, she has finally called it quits.
After mulling things over and putting behind her a year when she felt her energy flagging, she put the gallery on the market in April, signing the final papers just over a fortnight ago. There was a tragic poignancy about the timing as finalising the gallery paperwork coincided with the passing of Sandra’s mother.
In a way, those two significant events marked the ending of an era and the beginning of another, she said on her last official day at Heritage.
“The gallery has been my baby for so long … there is a sadness in leaving. I had to be ready to release it, and I got to the point where I thought ‘yeah, I can do that now’. I didn’t want to go on until it became too much for me.”
Sandra started the outlet 27 years ago when she and a friend Gail Kelman opened a gallery in Victoria Street. Sandra was a successful potter at the time, making and selling pots from her basement; Gail had a craft outlet in Hamilton. Both were ready for a change and opened originally in what is now In Stone.
Gail bought Sandra out a few years later, and in the early 2000s Sandra welcomed the news that the adjacent takeaway restaurant was closing. She grasped opportunity to take over the space, and together with her late husband Michael and a host of other helpers, fashioned the space into the gallery as it is today.
She has built Heritage primarily on the relationships she has nurtured with artists from around the country. Time has seen her add to the range, growing the gallery into a space where paintings, prints, studio glass, ceramics, jewellery and a selection of gifts keep the customers coming in seven days a week.
“Everything comes down to relationships in the end,” Sandra said. “I’ve been very touched by the number of those artists who have written to me since I announced I was selling. Building those relationships was so worthwhile. When artists put stuff on show, it is like baring their soul … that they trusted me to do that is very rewarding.”
There have been tough times, too. The repercussions of events such as 9/11, the global financial crisis and Covid-19, affected both customers and staff.
Sandra, born in Cambridge’s Penmarric, is now ready to spend more time with her children and grandchildren. The pottery she enjoyed may come back – both in the doing and the teaching – and she hopes to enjoy more leisure time.
She will also make herself available to help new Heritage owner Adriana Borges if and when she’s needed.
“I read once, ‘you’re not retiring … you’re re-wiring. I think that is going to be me.”
