Sun-and-Fun Shopping on St. John

Boutiques burst with palm-tree-painted plates, stylish pastel outfits and vibrantly hued paintings in St. John's shopping havens.

By Lynda Lohr

Start your shopping stroll in Cruz Bay, the island's main town. Stores sit tucked in alleys and retail centers that begin at the flower-fringed Wharfside Village shopping complex on the waterfront and continue to Mongoose Junction, with its exterior of beautiful native stone. A half-hour away in Coral Bay and its environs, visitors will find several small shops strung out along Route 10 and Route 107.

When looking for a special gift, don't overlook places you might not normally shop. The Virgin Islands National Park's Visitor's Center, for example, has a nice selection of books and gift items, such as the National Park Service's version of Monopoly, and hotel shops often carry some nifty merchandise, including locally made perfumes and toiletries.

Many St. John retailers specialize in gifts. Store owners scour the ends of the earth for special items, many with tropical motifs. St. John has a huge art scene, and the works of local artists are sold at galleries and gift shops. Most paintings and prints are splashed with bright island colors or pastel accents.

When it comes to jewelry, you'll find pieces at all prices. Some are crafted right on St. John. Several stores carry pendants shaped like sugar mills or tropical flowers.

Try holiday shopping on St. John - no matter the season. Several stores carry Christmas ornaments year-round for vacationers who like to trim their trees with reminders of their travels.

If you want comfortable, casual, attractive resortwear, you can stock up. Bou-tique racks are loaded with cheerfully colored tops and bathing suits.

When you're ready to make the plunge into owning your own snorkel or dive gear, the island's several water-sports shops are generally stocked with equipment in all price ranges.

Made By Hand

Take home island crafts made by artisans living in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

By Carol Bareuther

Historical dolls. Retired St. Thomas schoolteacher Gwendolyn Harley sews soft-sculpture dolls in long colorful quadrille-dancer skirts, as French women with neat peaked bonnets, and as farmers sporting hand-woven straw hats. On St. John, Mandy Thody-MacDonald and her daughter, Merryn MacDonald, create a line of Pétit Caribee baby and child dolls in 18th-century dress. The heads are made from raku-fired clay.

Date palm brooms. Native St. Thomian Justin Todman keeps tradition alive by fashioning sturdy old-time brooms from wild-growing date palms. Locally grown birch-berry wood or red mahogany serves as decorative handles.

Hand-painted ornaments and tiles. Known for her whimsical mermaids, fanciful fish and other playful designs, Water Island's Diane Kwiecien specializes in distinctive Christmas ornaments and decorative tiles that can be used collectively in swimming pools.

Island fragrances. Native New Yorker Gail Garrison puts the essence of sultry island scents such as gardenia, frangipani and white ginger into body splashes, powders and perfumes for women, and into bay-rum after-shave for men, under the Island Fragrances label.

Handmade tropical soaps. Mary Mercer manufactures a line of 28 scented glycerin soaps, including pineapple, with the crisscross design of a pineapple on top; spice, sprinkled with fine shavings of nutmeg and cinnamon; and frangipani, with a flower inside.

Island miniatures. Granville Christopher, a retired USVI police officer, fashions native woods such as mahogany, genip, sea grape and yellow cedar into polished works of art that depict circa 1940s and 1950s scenes such as St. Anne's church in Frenchtown with open windows and tiny pews, and a Carnival Village with booths filled with foods and crafts.

Tropically scented candles. Jason Budsan, a St. Thomian of French descent with a culinary arts degree from Johnson & Wales University, produces Caribbean Herbals Candles with the scents of pineapple and night jasmine, and also produces a mango citronella Bug Gone candle.

Carved calabash bowls. A handful of island artists employ an age-old African art technique to carve the cored and dried shell of the calabash gourd into intricately designed bowls.

Reed baskets. Native St. Johnians Herman Prince and Felicia Martin are two of the few left who create finely woven baskets from hoop vines or delicate wist reeds into long oval, flat-bottom patterns or rounded lidless ones.