Since I haven’t added a new post on the site in a few months AND since one of my New Year’s resolutions was to add at least a post a month I figured it was time.

I was tempted to title this ‘Owl-pocalypse’ due to this:

Recognize anything familiar? Those Owls maybe? Those are ours, and the catalog they were featured in was Pendleton Home Catalog. So thanks to Pendleton we spent the period from August 2011 to, well, now, making owls. And more owls.

And our Owls aren’t just popular with Pendleton’s clients. The new items we designed for Lancaster Market are out now, and guess what? More Owls!

We worked hard to make sure our owl designs are different from our hand-crafted owls. If you look close, you’ll see that our hand-carved owls have hand-blown crystal eyes, and are much larger than our mass produced, cast owls. Our hand-crafted owls also come in many different paint patterns based on the different species of Owls. We’ve always branded our hand carved pieces, but now we add a special logo sticker to the backs of every piece just to make sure there’s no confusion about where an item of ours originated.

We’ve got a few other Owl related news as well. The images below are of our newest Owl creations- Flying Owls. These are based on a famous Native American pictograph/petroglyph inscribed on a rock in Colorado.

These were fun to make. They have hand-carved faces; carved deep for more personality, with the aforementioned crystal eyes and wings hand cut from tin salvaged from an old barn here on the farm. The two pictured are a Snowy Owl and a Barn Owl, but they could (and probably will) be painted in every species imaginable.

Since I’m on a roll with the web stuff today I’ve also updated our 2012 show schedule here. Keep an eye on it as we may add or drop some fall shows depending what our loyal customers order from Pendleton’s 2012 Home Catalog, which will feature some exclusive items we’ve designed just for them. Check in periodically for details.
Jac

It’s that time again – July on Nantucket.  That could mean lots of things; the Glorious Fourth of July, Karaoke at the Rose and Crown, shopping at Nantucket Looms, Pizza from the Muse, partying at the Chicken Box and traffic at the Rotary.  But for us it means it’s time for the Small Friends on Nantucket show at Bartlett’s Farm!

We’ll be at the show for the 18th straight year  (a number which really surprises me) and have a lot of original and new work for sale.  The show benefits Small Friends on Nantucket, a great organization that seeks to enhance the quality of life for families and meet the needs of working parents by providing the highest quality early education and care for the children of Nantucket year-round, regardless of financial ability.  There is a preview party Thursday night, with the show opening to the public Friday morning.  The only change this year from years previous is that the show will be running through Sunday.  It will cut into our beach and shopping time, but we’re more than willing to make the sacrifice for Small Friends.  Tickets are available in advance and at the door, and we hope to see everyone on the island stop by.

Before I go – here’s a preview of one of our new pieces:

Hope to see you there!

Jac

That’s right, it’s time once again for the Annual Dismal Swamp Stomp half marathon.  We were honored again this year to be asked to provide the awards for the winners – carved Herons on driftwood in two different sizes.

Good luck to all the participants this year, and many thanks to Kale Running and the city of Chesapeake, Va for choosing us to provide the awards.

More updates soon, I promise.

Jac

…but that’s not the exciting news.  The exciting news is that’s it’s also First Friday at City Folk Gallery in Lancaster PA!

I’ll wait to add images of the new work.  I want Karen at City Folk to have the pleasure of unveiling the new pieces we created for the show.

I’ll also be adding another update or two soon…or I should say as soon as our workload lightens up a bit.

If you do happen to be in the Lancaster area of Pennsylvania City Folk really is worth a visit.  From garden fountains to salvaged architectural elements to original works of art, the gallery has a great selection of eclectic items that can really make a distinctive house a stylish and original home.  And of course you can see our work there all through the month of April, April Fool’s day included 

More later…

Jac

2011 Historic Home Show/Designer Craftsman Show

If you happen to be around the Valley Forge area this weekend please stop by.  The show looks better than ever!

Last Sunday morning about 1:30 my great Uncle Mac passed away.  He was one week away from his 95th birthday.

I wasn’t that close to him.  To say that we belonged to different generations would be an understatement.  He was 55 the year I was born.  I saw him at the family Christmas party, and at his (infrequent) birthday parties.  The generation gap was part of it, but not all.  For one thing Uncle Mac was deaf.  Stone deaf.  Carrying a conversation with him required a lot of patience and hand gestures.  And paper and pen if handy.  For another he was uncomfortable around people.

Uncle Mac was widely known in the family to be brilliant.  He graduated from George Mason and MIT, and wrote his dissertation on acoustical phenomenon that I can barely pronounce, much less understand.  But, like a lot of brilliant people Uncle Mac had his mental demons.  He was slightly schizophrenic, and dealing with people could be difficult for him.  He was happiest ensconced in his little brick house working on his genealogy entries on an aging PC.  When my two little ones were born Uncle Mac made sure to get their info to add to his database.  He was forever fascinated with where ‘we’ came from, who in town was related, and to whom.  Unfortunately he wasn’t able to live out his time happy in his own home as he had wished, but he did live his life as he wanted.

The reason I wanted to do this blog entry was to honor the Uncle Mac I never knew.  My great Uncle served in the Navy in World War Two.  He was the Commanding Officer of the US Navy Ship Jacona.

The Jacona was a US Ship built as a bulk carrier that was modified in Hampton Roads as a floating power plant.  The ‘guts’ of the ship were removed and generators, power regulating equipment and fuel tanks were installed.  After modification she had a generating capacity of 2oK Kilowatts, and she saw action in the Pacific theater of the war, finally ending the conflict by providing power to the devastated Japanese city of Nagasaki.  The Jacona was decommissioned in 1971 and transferred to the Phillipine Government.

What struck me when reading about my Great Uncle’s service in the war was how important he was to the working of the Jacona, and by extension how he helped provide power to the citizens of Nagasaki after the end of the conflict.  I had no idea, and no one in the family really talked about their service.  My Grandfather served in the Army and helper repatriate US POW’s, and my other great Uncle, Uncle Frank served with distinction in the Navy in the Pacific. The WWII generation may truly be the greatest generation, and by my posting this online it’s my hope that my Uncle Mac’s service may be remembered for as long as the internet holds it’s bits and bytes together.

RIP Uncle Mac.



Our News for 2011?

We’re designing for Lancaster Market!

If you’ve ever seen one of these:

Church Card Holder

…or bought one (Thank you if you did!) then it might surprise you to know that we designed it.  It and hundreds of other items over the last ten years.

Some of you may know we’ve been licensing some of our ideas going all the way back to 2000 or so.  We never really hid that information, but neither did we advertise it.  Our adventure in licensing started back in the late ’90′s.  We were exhibiting at a trade show in Philadelphia in ’98 or ’99 and Tricia and I counted about eight or ten booths that carried direct copies (or items derivative of ideas) we had originated.  Needless to say it was a bit frustrating and discouraging.  After checking with our attorneys we discovered that pursuing legal action against the myriad businesses that were using our ‘property’ illegally was just not economically feasible.  So when we were approached to design for a company here in Southside Virginia we jumped at the chance.   We figured that if so many companies were copying us then we must be doing something right.  We created quite a few popular items in those ten years, along with some that didn’t quite find the market that we hoped for.  But all in all those nine years or so gave us a valuable education in what worked and what didn’t.  From those years of design  experience we were able to tailor our handcrafted work to be less like the work being imported from overseas, which lead directly to the ‘Commissioned’ segment of our business.

We met Lancaster Market at a similar trade show about ten years later and found that we had similar tastes and goals.  Starting early in 2010 we started designing the first of the items featured, the ‘Night Owls’.  Incidentally I’m fairly confident that they garnered that name from my habit of emailing and updating our website after midnight – although they deny that   Other creations flowed naturally from the collaboration, including the Christmas Caribou and some fun ‘Jac’ -o-lanterns.  There are more coming, but I’ll let Lancaster Market spring the surprises.

Over the last ten years we have worked hard to keep our handcrafted work separate from our design work.  We may sell some our design items but we will always let you know, clearly and obviously.  The items we design for mass production are items we couldn’t make here in our studio efficiently or economically enough to compete with off-shore labor, but don’t want to leave on the drawing board.

Make sure you check out their website and let us know what you think.

We are currently enjoying some lovely Southern Hospitality (no offense to those of you reading this from above Mr. Mason and Mr. Dixon’s line!) while we exhibit at the 2010 Country Living show/fair at Stone Mountain Park just outside of Atlanta Georgia.

In honor of this event we decided to salute one of the local ACC teams (sorry Clemson) and make special piece just for this show.  So if you are a Georgia Tech fan, this Yellow-jacket is for you!

The weather has been great, and the crowds have been large and enthusiastic.  There were several times this weekend when our booth was packed and customers had to skip us and come back later when the frenzy had died away.  I even had one client from Alabama stay over so she could have the booth to herself this morning during early buying.

The show runs through Sunday (Oct. 24th).  If you are in the area stop in for a great time.

And now that I’ve made you skip over my sub-standard prose, here’s what you visited for  – pictures!

Many thanks to Country Living Magazine and Stella Shows for an outstanding event.  They are the best.

Jac

…not that it was a huge priority compared to other concerns.  But it is refreshing to navigate the maze of oauth logins, login keys, apps, etc. and come out the other side with something that functions.  I’ve also added a wholesale order form in anticipation of getting the wholesale section of the website set up.  I’ll also be adding a page with an update on our crushing fall show schedule. And crushing is mildly accurate – what withe three shows in four weeks of October.

But I wanted to get the automatic Twitter upload done so that I could update what we’re working on as we go, instead of having the photos/copy sit in a folder until I had a window of time to add them to the blog as an update (like this one).

If this works then all of our new posts will hit Twitter when they’re published on our site.  If not, then its a night of troubleshooting for me.  Again.

Jac