Recutting Harris Tweed jackets into satchels and bags, pouring molten soy wax scented with balsam into rustic jars or even painting botanical scenes on silk lampshades is all in a day’s work for Maine’s craftspeople.
This time of year craft shows, chock-a-block with crocheted pot holders and painted rocks, are everywhere. But amid the homespun offerings, artisans and craftspeople who work with their hands full time, year-round, stand out from the DIY hobbyist. For these career professionals, producing handmade artifacts is a way of life.
“There is a strong market in New England for crafts,” said Stuart Loten, a self-taught lamp maker who sells his wares from here to San Francisco. “It gets weaker as you get away from New England.”
For 13 years the craftsman has created light sculptures in his Montville studio. His gallery, Loten Art Lighting, attracts crowds. When he isn’t at home at work, he’s on the road at fairs.
Initially Loten’s welded branch-like bases were topped with commercial shades, but they didn’t meet his full vision. “I wanted something more unique for the shades,” the former silk necktie painter said.
Now he paints each shade by hand with dyes. Leaves are a constant, peaceful motif. “I look at simplicity and balance. I don’t start with a preconceived notion. I am building up a vocabulary that I trust works,” Loten, who looks at the whole lamp as a work of art, said.
Traveling to craft shows and selling at high-end galleries across the country from Alaska to Hawaii keeps him busy.
“No one is painting silk shades with dyes,” Loten said. “It took me five years to control it.”
Bags to riches
Bangor native Pam LeBlanc of Old Bagzz also came to her craft — bags made from recycled men’s suits and vintage fabric — organically. Originally making children’s clothing, the fiber artist, who studied fashion merchandising at the University of Maine in the ’80s, turned to totes, commuter bags and creative weekend luggage.
“Part of the fun is the hunt for the fabric,” LeBlanc, who sources heavily from Goodwill, said. She looks for men’s 1970s leisure suits, plaid and thick tweed. One of her biggest scores came from a thrift shop in Millinocket. Her bags are sewn together like a collage with buttons and patches added here and there for accents.
“It goes back to that New England sensibility of reusing something, giving something a new life. My grandmother was always making quilts from old dresses, so I learned to repurpose. I find it very rewarding, also very creatively challenging to take something like a garment, make it flat and then three dimensional.”
When the Kennebunkport artist, who works from home, attends an arts and craft show she is often standing and sewing on site. Her quirky unisex bags are in demand because people “love getting something made in Maine.”
Let there be light
The owners of The Primitive Keeper in South China are finding a brisk market in Japan for their home fragrances, soy candles, soaps and bath and body products. In a Colonial house on 30 acres of woodland, a husband-and-wife team have turned their daylight basement into a workshop filled with woodsy, wholesome scents.
“It started as a hobby — very small. Six ago we went full time,” said Erica Currie, who makes her natural soy candles and potpourri with dried botanicals while her husband Rick focuses on products that include barefoot butter and body chapstick.
“If we are not at shows, we are working, Monday through Friday, 40 to 60 hours,” Erica said.
Her rustic candles made with cotton wicks in old-fashioned scents such as Maine Christmas are popular in gift shops from Bangor to Bethel. Lately, Primitive Keeper candles are trending in Japan, where department stores and boutiques are snapping them up.
“They like U.S.-based products,” Erica, who is boggled by the international interest, said. “I am astounded by the customers and where they are coming from. It’s just little old me filling orders from around the world from Maine.”
Why is this former L.L. Bean call center employee, who taught herself candle making with a kit, doing so well? Hard work, yes. But she has stumbled upon a simple luxury and figured out how to make it herself.
“Scent is key to a person’s mood. It evokes things in us, memories, for sure,” Erica said.
Though not an everyday necessity, her hand-made products carry a gravitational pull. When hitting the craft market, “people tend to purchase something scented, other than, say, jewelry, it opens something within their mind.”
