The Filson x Governor Baxter Reversible Vest costs $495, looks like something Kevin Costner might wear on Yellowstone, and — on my 5-foot-3 frame, anyway — is shockingly heavy. When I try one on at Pejepscot Purchase, Topsham’s pleasantly cluttered nostalgic-outerwear emporium, it’s like sliding into my burliest winter coat: the vest feels as sturdy as armor, as comforting as a weighted blanket.

Phinney Baxter White, who designed the vest and runs the shop, is the great-great-grandnephew of Percival Baxter, Maine’s governor from 1921 to 1925 and an avid outdoorsman who spent more than 30 years acquiring and donating the Katahdin highlands now protected as Baxter State Park. When White launched a side hustle, back in 2012, designing rugged, outdoor-friendly dog beds, he named his brand after the uncle he idolizes (who loved his Irish setters). Today, Governor Baxter turns out small runs of outdoor apparel and other goods inspired by the American-made outerwear the 57-year-old White remembers growing up with — particularly old-school L.L.Bean goods. Pejepscot Purchase, which he opened last year, is filled with packs, jackets, pocket knives, and other “sturdy goods” — some that White has designed, much that he’s collected — that wouldn’t look out of place in one of L.L.’s earliest catalogs. “I look in antique stores and at vintage clothing for inspiration,” he says. “I grew up around these things, and they have the aesthetic that I want to be associated with.”

White’s latest collaborative Filson vest. “It’s rugged outerwear, but it has rustic elegance,” he says. “My products are engineered for the elements and to be durable but also cool looking and stylish in their own way.”

Of late, White has been collaborating with Seattle-based Filson, maker, for more than a century, of famously durable workwear for miners, loggers, and ranchers — and, more recently, the style-conscious urbanites who enjoy dressing like them. White’s done two vests with the heritage brand, which started out selling his Governor Baxter dog beds. The most recent was a run of 50 zippered, reversible vests, with pockets on both sides, sewed by a Maine sailmaker. One side is made with Filson’s waterproof waxed canvas (hence the heft), the other with White’s signature material: World War II–era military blankets, which he sources from flea markets and online sellers, giving all of his Governor Baxter vests both warmth and historic character. 

“There’s an element of mystery to each blanket,” he says. “Was this blanket in Europe? Or the Pacific theater?” All but one of the Filson x Governor Baxter Reversible Vests sold within 24 hours. White kept one for display in his shop; as of this writing, the Filson website touts a single vest still in stock (size small, in teal).

Gear and trinkets at Pejepscot Purchase look like they were salvaged from one of Percival Baxter’s mid-century Katahdin trips.

Governor Baxter products don’t come cheap — a dog bed costs $500, an external-frame pack with vintage-blanket tarpaulin sets you back $975 —  but then neither do the materials White uses: waxed-cotton canvas, fluffy kapok fill, organic silk. Other than thread he uses to stitch things together (made partly with polyester), he relies only on all-natural fabrics. “Cotton and wool are the original performance fabrics,” he says. “All this extra synthetic stuff companies use is overkill.” 

Since hanging his shingle at Pejepscot Purchase, White’s left a full-time job in retail design. He’s focusing these days on custom vest orders, refining his mitten pattern, and a jacket design he has percolating. He’d love to do another collab with Filson. But whatever his next project, he says, what won’t change is his commitment to a throwback aesthetic and time-tested materials. “I think they’re the future,” he says.

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“Making dolls has been my lifelong pursuit. I always dreamed of going to the Portland School of Art [now Maine College of Art], but back in the 1970s, the logical choice was to get an office job. I worked as an insurance agent and for an export company, and doll making remained a sideline for me until I retired, two years ago. Then I went full bore with it. 

This series of dolls for display at Maine Craft Portland is called “Wildlings.” They’re just regular childlike dolls, made with paper clay heads and cloth bodies, but I’m felting animal masks for each one that has a story to go along with the doll. I feel like making up stories is my gift. 

As a child, I was always a bull in a china shop. We’re told things are related to animals — you’re eating like a pig or eating like a bird. I was never sure which I was. I was a good student growing up. But I didn’t like school. My mother once ran into my teacher at the grocery store, and my teacher said, “Has Deb been ill?” My mother said, “Why do you ask?” And my teacher said, “She hasn’t been in school for three days.” My mother found out I was leaving with all the kids to go to school and I would break off and spend the day in the field. I went home for lunch and then went back to the field. I don’t know, maybe I’m a wildling. 

This series is about stories we’re told about ourselves and how we take them on in our persona. While I’m working, things are running through my mind, almost like a meditation, of what each character will be. I’m working on a doll of a little boy that will wear a hedgehog mask. Making him, I thought of all the prickly people we meet in our lives who just need us to be patient. 

I use a set of dental tools, like what dental assistants use to clean your teeth, to do fine shapes and lines in the paper clay. Then, for the masks, there’s a lot of sculpting with needle felting, and I add colors using wool and fine needlepoint. For the clothing, I use vintage fabrics, like some of my grandmother’s batting and lace. Each character will have a small satchel I made from the tips of a leather gardening glove. I may put a beach stone from Maine in each one — like the dolls were out foraging. And I want them to be kind of smudged. You know, like kids.”

Deb Butters’s exhibition, “Costumes and Masks,” is on view October 6–31 at Maine Craft Portland. 521 Congress St., Portland. 207-808-8184.

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Most artisans start small, as side hustlers and hobbyists. When they’re ready to start building scale, finding the right platform can be tough — it’s easy to drown in the sea of Etsy sellers.

That’s why Mary Plummer, the maker behind Gorham’s Bar Soap Company, opened Maine Micro Artisans, to provide a space for other micro-entrepreneurs to sell their work and build a community of patrons. After opening her downtown Gorham storefront last summer, she was surprised by how quickly it took off. “I underestimated the amount of connections it would make,” she says. By the time MMA marked its one-year anniversary, in June, some 150 makers had work on display — jewelry, apparel, paintings, ceramics, and more — with another 200 on a waiting list.

In May, a Bangor leasing agency approached Plummer about a vacant space in the Bangor Mall. The store aligned with the city’s vision for more Maine-made flavor in the struggling shopping center. So, in September, MMA opened a Queen City megastore, with room to display the works of nearly 500 makers. 

For Plummer, whose plate was increasingly full with her soap biz and family responsibilities, the expansion signaled the right time to step away. Bangor entrepreneur Caity Brown — whose downtown café, Tea and Tarts, closed during the pandemic — took the reins of the new mall location. In Gorham, screen-printer Sam Camino took over the shop where she’d once sold her wares (renamed Shenanigans, it will still feature work from several dozen MMA makers).

Plummer, for her part, is tickled to see others carrying on what she started. “When people walk into these stores, I want them to recognize how many artisans there are in Maine,” she says. “We are creating on a big scale when we work together.” 

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Aspen Golann wasn’t always interested in woodworking, but she took to it fast. Six years ago, after spending the previous six years as a high-school art and English teacher, she felt an urge to find her dream job. So she decided to get out of the classroom and work with her hands. At Boston’s North Bennet Street School, a vocational school, she found her joy in the furniture-making program. “I thought, ‘This is a place where I can never hit my ceiling,’” she says. “I loved knowing that I would never learn everything they have to teach me.” 

Golann, who’s 36, moved to Berwick last year and now works full-time with wood. No project is too big or small, from dressers and cabinets to brooms and spoons. Her favorite undertaking, though, is Windsor chairs. In May, she won a $100,000 grant from the California-based Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, an organization that awards five artists across the country each year for their commitment and contribution to their craft. The award took Golann by surprise — she still doesn’t know who nominated her. 

When she’s not making chairs, Aspen Golann also writes and sells instructional woodworking zines — self-published, miniature magazines — to fundraise for the nonprofit school she founded.

She plans to use much of the award to support the Chairmaker’s Toolbox, a nonprofit she founded in 2020 that aims to preserve traditional woodworking techniques and offer resources and classes to communities of historically underrepresented craftspeople. The organization hosts free classes across the country, works with skilled toolmakers to make and sell a line of classic chair-making tools, and distributes donated tools — froes, adzes, scorps, and more — through its Living Tools program. 

The grant, Golann says, will help to give more scholarships to aspiring makers and to hire more accomplished craftspeople to teach classes. And expanding the roster of teachers, she says, will help her focus more on growing her own woodworking knowledge and practicing new skills. “More than anything, this money is time for me,” she says. “It means more time for targeted learning. I want to learn from badass people who know what I want to know.”

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Aspen Golann 

Why chairs?

No piece of furniture has a more intimate connection to the body than a chair — you can reverse engineer the human body by looking at one. You can see the way the body engages with the world when you look at the way a chair is made. People will be like, what’s the perfect chair? And I’m like, are you eating soup in it? Studying? Rocking a baby? Different chairs are different tools.

You studied sculpting in college. What was the transition from sculpture to furniture like?

I tried to be a sculptor for years, but it never took because it felt too open-ended. I love the combination of limitation and freedom that comes with making furniture. I play more bravely in a fenced yard. There are problems to solve and rules to break — something to push back against.

How did you come up with the idea for the Living Tools facet of your nonprofit?

When I was working for my chair-making mentor, Peter Galbert, I made a list of every tool I needed to own to make Windsor chairs. If I bought every tool new, it would cost $8,000. Someone who was retiring from chair making gave me a box of tools they wouldn’t be using anymore for free, and it changed my life. 

How has your style evolved since you started woodworking?

The work I’ve made since is more sculptural and strange, and I apply hyper-masculine and fancy techniques to common domestic objects. That’s because, while at school, I started thinking about the social and political contexts of 17th- to 19th-century American furniture styles I was learning to make. Furniture plays stereotypical female domestic roles — seen and not heard, invisible labor. So I thought, “How can I leverage these skills to make whatever I want instead?” You can teach me a skill, but you can’t tell me what to do with it.

Golann sells her work online and accepts commissions. Smaller pieces, from spoons to brooms, sell for around $250–$700, and the price of furniture typically tops out at $20,000.

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Frank Kilburn was a professor of natural history and ornithology at the Washington State Normal School — what’s now the University of Maine at Machias — for 25 years. After he retired, in 1949, he set about carving birds, then painting them and mounting them on driftwood. Quite a few were displayed on campus, in a building the school named for Frank. His family estimates he carved between 800 and 1,000 in all. He gifted some to relatives and some to friends, and he sold others, for $12 apiece, to souvenir stores along Route 1. By the time Frank died, in 1978, many of the birds had flitted off to faraway homes. 

Jeff Yorks, Frank’s grandson, is my father-in-law, as well as a tinkerer, artisan, and itinerant carpenter with a penchant for collecting. In his 66 years, he’s bought and sold hundreds of antique cars, trucks, motorcycles, boats, and bicycles. He goes through stretches where he’ll spend hours a day on Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, and eBay. Every home he’s ever lived in has had a small flock of Frank’s birds on display. 

One morning last year, Jeff typed “F.M. Kilburn bird carvings” into the search bar. Five results popped up, from a seller in Windham. He bought them for about $130. A month later, the same seller listed a pheasant and a kingfisher, and Jeff added those to his collection too. “The guy wouldn’t tell me where he got them from,” Jeff says, “he was very elusive.” From then on, he was determined to track down as many of his grandfather’s birds as he could.

Jeff was raised in a neat, suburban home in Rhode Island, but he spent long stretches in Maine with his grandparents, especially after his sister, Dena, died of complications from a heart problem, at just 16. His grandparents’ 100 acres in Waldoboro were perfect for hunting squirrels and disassembling and reassembling old lawn mowers. If Jeff asked his grandfather for nails, Frank would tell him to yank some out of their old icehouse with a crowbar. More likely than not, Frank could be found at his workbench, wearing his jackknife down to a nub as he whittled.

“My grandfather was stern,” Jeff says, “As a little kid, I didn’t think he really liked me. But now, I think he got me a lot better than my parents even did. He knew I liked to work with my hands, that I like to be out in the woods, that I didn’t want to be a car salesman or an insurance actuary or whatever.”

Frank Kilburn, pictured sitting at the beach and walking through his Waldoboro garden alongside a much younger Yorks. Photos courtesy of Jeff Yorks

Jeff is capable of living off seemingly nothing. He’s been divorced since 1997, and he’ll go long spells not communicating with anyone. He can build houses, make jewelry, write songs. When his Pomeranian, Tina Turner, broke her leg, he fashioned her a splint. He turns scrap into children’s toys. He values handmade things. One of his grandfather’s chickadees cost him less than a six-pack of beer. “To me, that’s just awful,” he says. “But sometimes I’ll see them at auctions where they’ll go for three or four hundred a bird. My biggest fear is that people would have, like, 10 of these birds and sell them at a yard sale for a buck apiece. I tend to look at objects like they’re alive. That’s just the way I am.”

Jeff still splits time between Rhode Island and Maine — he built himself a cabin in Farmington 11 years ago. After Tina Turner died, last fall, Jeff put up two bird feeders. In the evening, he washes the dishes in his outdoor kitchen and listens to Kool & the Gang, Lil Yachty, and Herb Alpert (his taste in music, as in objects, is eclectic). Then, he likes to sit on his deck and watch the wildlife. He’s the only one in his Farmington neighborhood who doesn’t have a lawn, his little cabin nestled among suburban-style homes.

One day this spring, he’d just learned what it would cost to have a new well drilled and was debating which of his collected cars he’d sell to cover it. He doesn’t mind so much if the cars come and go, but F.M. Kilburn’s birds are a different matter. Now, 59 of them — owls, warblers, jays, and many more — are scattered across the table in his cabin. His searching recently turned up a red-tailed hawk his grandfather carved, but he was too late to buy it. It had already sold at auction.

“These birds are like family members to me,” Jeff says. “I think about the others that are out there, and I’m like, they just need to stay with their family.” He hopes he might eventually find a permanent home for the birds, somewhere they could be on public display. “I don’t want to split them up when I die,” he says. “I’d like them to stay together.” 

Wondering if a bird carving in your possession was made by Frank? Email a pic for confirmation here.

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Heading to the camp? Whether your summer hideout is deep in the woods, perched on the lake, or steps from the seashore, these Maine-made finds — from tools to toys to décor — can help you make the most of the long, lazy days.

“Oh Yeah Comfy” Beach Chair

It’s darn near impossible to plop down in this handmade folding chair without exclaiming its name. Sturdily constructed from Brazilian cherry, it has a high back that’s great for taller users, and its comfiness comes from its flexibility — founder Brian Fish uses lobster-trap bungees to attach breathable marine-mesh fabric to the wood. The seat has four recline settings and a cup holder: adjust the recline or your beverage strength to match your relaxation needs. $385. Maine Casual, South Portland. 207-619-3102.

Vintage Travel Posters

Designer Liza Kelley Sperry’s art-deco–inspired posters highlight iconic Maine spots like Acadia National Park, Bailey Island, and Moosehead Lake. The geometric shapes, strong lines, and bright colors add some pop to any wall at the camp. Sperry and her husband, fellow graphic designer Patrick, donate 1 percent of their shop’s sales to the Natural Resources Council of Maine. $55. Sperry General Store, South Portland. 207-712-3893.

Body Surfing Hand Planes

Body surfing is the purest way to ride a wave, says Christopher Aakjer, who makes these hand planes to give body surfers more control in the water. The planes act like skis on a snowmobile, helping a surfer stay buoyant. Each one is handcrafted with pieces of lightweight paulownia wood left over from the surfboards Aakjer also makes. Just slide both hands into the strap, throw your arms out in front of you, and ride. $150. Old Soul Wood Work, Topsham.

Northwoods Portage Pack

Early Maine woodsmen used a style of pack similar to this, made with classic waxed canvas and leather rather than modern synthetic fabrics. Avid paddler Jeremy Miller cuts, stains, and stitches each pack by hand and prefers the natural materials for their durability. His pack can stand up to extra-heavy loads, as useful for portaging a canoe as it is for packing a weekend’s worth of camp supplies. $349. Northwoods Outdoors & Northwoods Fur Co., Hampden.

Fishing Rod Rack

Craftsman and angler Joshua Goodwin and his fish-crazy teenage sons, Donovan and David, first built a rack together to store their own excessive collection of rods. Before long, they were selling their handsome, space-saving racks, which fit up to 10 poles. Made with rugged poplar plywood and designed to be low-profile, they can be mounted on either the wall or the ceiling, depending how out-of-the-way you want your rods to be. $95. Craftsman Fish, New Gloucester.

Soy Fire Starters

When candle-maker Julie McKechnie Tozier first started making fire starters, she kept the recipe simple: just soy wax and wood chips in a cupcake wrapper, with a wick to light. But on one of her regular nature walks, it dawned on her she could use pretty leaves, plants, and pinecones to decorate her starters (and up their flammability). If you can bring yourself to light these artful cakes, they’ll burn up to 40 minutes to help get a strong campfire going. $4. My Maine Farmhouse, Hampden.

Mountain Bookends

A browsing session on Pinterest helped inspire IT-analyst-cum-woodworker Travis King’s idea for bookends designed and painted to look like mountains. His simple knotty-pine bookends are lightweight but strong enough to keep a small stack of books upright. $23. King of Sawdust, Lewiston.

Rustic Camping Silverware Set

Blacksmith Korey Ames starts with scrap metal and uses anvil, hammer, and tongs to repurpose it into silverware sets that include a fork, knife, and spoon. No two sets look the same, and Ames makes sure his cutlery doesn’t look too shiny or finished. “It makes them look handmade in a pleasing way,” he says. Throw a set in your backpack for camping or use multiples as silverware at the cabin. $80. Northernwolf Forge, North Bucksport.

Maine Bug Blocker Candle

Wherever your camp is, Maine’s dogged mosquitoes and blackflies can find you there — but they don’t have to spoil your fun. Greg Clements blends citronella, lemon, peppermint, and eucalyptus in a non-toxic soy wax, then pours it in small batches to make all-natural candles that help keep bitey pests at bay. $17. Nubble Light Candle, Kittery. 207-423-3614.

Support more Maine makers! Read up on other Maine-sourced summer outdoor gear, from sunglasses to surfboards, rucksacks to rain pants, here.

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In an industrial park in South Portland’s Cash Corner neighborhood, wedged between auto-body garages and equipment suppliers, a sign with a rainbow bursting out of a welding helmet marks the entrance to People’s Inclusive Welding. Classes at the shop are open to everyone, but founder and primary instructor Jo Remillard designed the school specifically to serve students from marginalized communities, particularly LGBTQ+ people and people of color. The subculture of blue-collar work can be intimidating to outsiders, Remillard says, but the goal of the South Portland shop is “to give folks a place that is geared towards making them feel like they’re allowed to be themselves.”

Remillard, who uses they/them pronouns, has worked as a shipyard welder at Bath Iron Works and as a bridge builder and a boilermaker on job sites across the country. Over the last 10 years, they found they were consistently the only openly queer person working such jobs and that coworkers were mostly white men. Remillard, who is also white, endured plenty of lewd and sexist comments on the job. Then, three years ago, a few former coworkers — Congolese immigrants Remillard had hit it off with — approached Remillard with an idea to start a school that would encourage people from under-represented groups to learn a trade. The partners later turned the project over to Remillard, who set out building a curriculum focused on students’ individual needs, more so than a typical trade school, and creating an enforceable zero-tolerance policy concerning discrimination, harassment, and violence. 

People’s Inclusive Welding opened in 2021, offering an eight-week intensive program for those envisioning a career in the skilled trades, along with shorter courses for anyone wanting to brush up on their welding skills or simply learn the basics. Courses focus on safety and on several types of processes for what’s known as arc welding, employed in shipbuilding, aerospace, construction, and other industries to fuse metal together using intense heat from an electric arc. About 30 students, from as far away as California, have completed the eight-week program, and nearly all have gone on to secure welding jobs in Maine and elsewhere. 

The school is filling a need: welders are in short supply everywhere. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts nearly 48,000 job openings a year over the next decade for welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers. The American Welding Society, which defines the profession a bit more broadly, predicts 90,000 annual jobs to be filled. Some 20 percent of the current workforce, the AWS reports, is approaching retirement. 

This year, in partnership with the Maine Department of Corrections, People’s Inclusive Welding launched a program for incarcerated women. Six participants from the Southern Maine Women’s Reentry center at the Maine Correctional Women’s Center, in Windham, took a monthlong course at the prison, then completed 120 hours of structural welding instruction with Remillard at the school. “The trades don’t care about what you may have done in the past,” Remillard says. “Folks who have been incarcerated can make an entire career in the trades, one where they can build a retirement, buy a house, and be respected for their craft.”

Besides teaching skills that provide access to well-paid work — the national median salary for welding jobs is just shy of $50,000, says the AWS — Remillard educates students about principles that can protect them throughout their careers: workplace safety, workers’ rights, and when and how to say no to an assignment that might not be physically safe. The school also helps alumni find jobs, extends an open invitation for alumni to practice their welding in the South Portland shop, and helps proctor tests for students to obtain AWS certification — proof of transferable skills that opens doors for entry-level welders. “As we start to break apart the demographic of the welding industry, these students are the representation that the next person coming in needs,” Remillard says. “We are building that foundation.” 

Eight-week intensive programs cost $4,000. Two-week introductory courses cost $1,200. Students with financial barriers are charged on a sliding scale and are eligible for scholarships.

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Masey Kaplan keeps a written log of every project she knits. She describes the pattern of the item she’s making and the materials she’s using and makes a note of who it’s for. She’s not just staying organized — she’s leaving instructions for someone else to finish her work, just in case. A knitter since she was 15, Kaplan, who’s now 53, has stepped in to complete a handful of family members’ and friends’ unfinished knitted pieces over the years, after they died or became too ill to work. “You don’t want to throw away a loved one’s half-finished project, because it’s part of them,” she says. “They made it with their hands and had intentions for it.”

That’s why she started the Loose Ends Project. Kaplan, who lives in Falmouth, and her friend Jen Simonic, who lives in Seattle, Washington, launched the effort last August, connecting volunteer fabric artists with other people’s left-behind works in progress. The idea came about after a friend’s mom died of cancer and Kaplan and Simonic were asked to finish two blankets she’d been crocheting for her sons. Simonic too had experience finishing knitting for loved ones after their deaths, and the pair knew they weren’t alone. “There’s something about unfinished projects that compels crafters to finish them, out of an unspoken respect,” Kaplan says. 

So they created a website for submitting incomplete works and pulled in volunteers through social media. In less than a year, more than 9,000 craftspeople from 44 countries have signed up to finish quilts, rugs, embroidery, weavings, baskets, and more. Menders have also enlisted to fix tattered clothing and other items made by people who’ve died. Kaplan and Simonic match volunteers with assignments based on skill set, experience level, and location, so that, if people choose, they can meet up in person. For the most part, the service is free — project owners only supply materials and, when necessary, cover shipping costs. Since the site launched, volunteers have taken on some 700 projects. The Washington Post and NBC Nightly News are among outlets who’ve covered the effort.

For Kaplan, the good press is nice, but the real reward is helping strangers do kind things for other strangers: volunteers and owners who wouldn’t have otherwise connected, joined in appreciation for a lost maker. “Someone pops into your life and cares about you enough to finish an item for you, and they get nothing in return,” Kaplan says. “It’s an act of respect for what someone was making, but it’s also an act of love for the person receiving it.”

Learn how to become a Loose Ends Project volunteer here.

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As kids, cousins Luke and Edmund Couture spent a lot of time in the woodshop on Luke’s parents’ farm, in Benton. They taught themselves to carve spoons, spatulas, and coasters, and they started selling their work at the Common Ground Country Fair when they were 12. These days, the 22-year-old cousins still spend most of their time in that woodshop, having taken their woodworking full-time. And besides making utensils, they’ve launched a more esoteric endeavor: mushroom sculptures.

Their fungi figurines came about a couple of years ago, after the cousins (and besties) got into mycology. Luke and Edmund started by foraging for mushrooms in the woods on their family’s Benton property, then began growing their own: oysters, shiitakes, lion’s manes. Last winter, while playing around in the shop, Luke carved a small mushroom out of wood, and it hit him: why not combine their love of woodworking and mushrooms? The cousins registered a domain and opened Nature’s Functions, an online marketplace for their handcrafted wares, including, wooden ’shrooms of all shapes and sizes.

Now, the family woodlot is not only a place to go mushrooming but to sustainably source materials. The cousins harvest cherry, birch, maple, cedar, and pine from trees that would otherwise die or rot, and they also collect deadwood from the forest floor. Back at the shop, they use Luke’s grandfather’s old draw knives to debark, angle grinders to remove excess material, Kutzall grinding bits to add detail, and a homemade drum sander to smooth out rough edges. They finish each mushroom with a linseed-oil rub, bringing out the color of the wood grains — or else Edmund’s girlfriend, Sydney Bouchard, paints them, using realistic shades of red, white, and yellow. The caps and stems of each mushroom are made separately before being joined with wood glue, and the final products range from a few inches to nearly three feet tall.

Each sculpture takes anywhere from 45 minutes to several hours to complete, but each is a joint effort — Edmund might carve the cap and Luke the stem, or vice versa. “We wanted to make money while being outside, doing the stuff we like doing,” Luke says. “This is a way we can make a living working with nature instead of against it.” 

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Luke and Edmund Couture

Why forage all of your materials? 

We love working with natural materials. It gives us a relationship with, and a use for, things in our environment. We grew up on farms our whole lives, so we’ve always been working with nature. Our name, Nature’s Functions, ties into sustainability and working with nature — you don’t want to do anything that’s going to harm where you live, where you’re getting your food, or where your animals live and eat. 

What’s next for you?

We’d like to start making more exact replicas of different kinds of mushrooms — morels, the cortinarius species, and other amanitas. Stone is another one of nature’s materials that we love, and we want to start carving bowls, lamps, and other kitchen products. We’re also looking to get into jewelry making. We’ve started collecting minerals and using our finds to create unique pieces.

What’s so special about making mushrooms? 

We love making spoons, but we’ve been doing those for a long time, and making a bunch can be a headache. Mushrooms are much more enjoyable because you can see it all come together. Most of the stuff we make mushrooms out of, people would burn in the fire, but we’ll take beautiful, twisted pieces that have just been hanging out for years and turn them into art. 

Nature’s Functions mushroom sculptures sell for $60–$225. Custom orders start at $40.

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Dave Gutter found out he’d be attending the Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles, just three weeks before the ceremony. The longtime front man of Portland rock stalwarts Rustic Overtones, Gutter co-wrote the song “Stompin’ Ground” for New Orleans R&B legend Aaron Neville, which was nominated (and won) in the category of Best American Roots Performance. Luckily, he knew right away who his date would be — he’d long ago promised his 16-year-old daughter, Kani, that he’d take her if he were ever nominated.

Kani wanted to wear a Maine-made dress, so Gutter put out a call on Instagram looking for a last-minute couturier. Kelsey Parker, who runs Lewiston’s Garbedge Designs, piped up. Parker, who specializes in custom pieces from repurposed fabric, spent three weeks working with Kani, finishing a dress at 2:30 a.m. the morning the Gutters flew to LA. “Having a garment worn on the red carpet is special for a designer,” Parker says. “The fact that the Gutters were looking to share their moment with a Maine designer was very generous and fun.” 

1. The color and style reminded Kani of a dress worn by Disney’s Princess Tiana in a favorite movie, The Princess and the Frog. Gutter’s nominated song was from a documentary on New Orleans music. “And The Princess and the Frog takes place in New Orleans,” Kani says, “so it felt like a good fit.”

2. Parker added removable straps to the originally strapless dress just days before the ceremony. Parker and Kani had just two fittings, so there wasn’t enough time to ensure the weight of the dress would rest on Kani’s hips and prevent it from slipping. The straps buttoned into discrete holes in the lining.

3. Kani sent Parker a pic of a corset top worn by her Bitmoji (that is, an app-designed cartoon emoji of herself). Parker copied the seam lines from digital Kani’s top onto the real-life bodice, which she structured by sewing nylon horse- hair behind satin, so it wouldn’t wrinkle or buckle.

4. The lining has secret pockets. Parker inserted them in the dress’s original ungathered skirt but didn’t love the look of the faux-satin fabric and added another layer of sheer fabric over it, for extra elegance.

5. Given the quick turnaround, Parker bought her materials at Joann Fabric and Craft, in Auburn and South Portland, where the cost came to about $200. Kani’s red-carpet smile? Priceless. “When a garment fits someone right, you can see it in their expression,” Parker says. “And you could see on Kani’s face she was happy.”

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These days, a man makes you something and you never see his face,” Don Henley sang, back in the ’80s. That line, from a solo track by the Eagles drummer, has always resonated with Lori Keenan Watts, a ceramicist who owns Fine Mess Pottery, in Augusta. Machines make most of the objects in people’s homes, which doesn’t sit well with Watts. “There are potters in every Maine community,” she says. “And people can have a deeper appreciation of handmade work if they see who made it and where they made it.”

That’s why Watts organizes the Maine Pottery Tour, a weekend-long, self-guided driving tour of studios across Maine. For 11 years, on the first weekend in May, ceramicists have welcomed the public into their studios for demonstrations and workshops. Watts even invites visitors to help her unload soda-fired stoneware pottery from the kiln.

Clockwise from top left: Jeffrey Lipton’s finished pottery often features images of fantasy or farm animals, drawn with glaze; in Swanville, Jody Johnstone’s 24-foot-long anagama tunnel kiln holds up to 800 pots; Portsmouth’s Stephen Zoldak demonstrates slip-trail decorating by applying patterns on clay using a bottle; York potter Amy Clark puts a copper finish on her Ocean Fire Pottery pieces using a wood-fired kiln; Joshua David Rysted makes slab-built and wheel-thrown pottery in the Bethel studio he shares with his wife, potter Martha Grover.

The tour started back in 2011, when she and six other ceramicists decided to coordinate open houses on the same weekend. Word spread, and more fellow ceramicists have signed on each year — this year finds the circuit populated with 65 makers of both functional pieces and fine art. Their studios speckle the map as far north as Phillips, east as East Machias, and south as Kittery; Watts posts four regional maps on the website to help with planning road trips. 

During last year’s tour, nearly 5,000 visitors stopped by the studios — and Watts hopes they left with a little deeper relationship to their ceramic belongings. “When you wrap your hands around a handmade mug or bowl and it keeps you warm,” she says, “you know the person who made it for you had the idea of nourishing you.”

The 2023 Maine Pottery Tour will be May 6, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., and May 7, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.

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