Sweets
LOCATED NEAR JOHN WESLEY CHURCH
79th American Crafts & Historic Homes Tour
Master wood carver Adam Willie has been practicing the trade since 1990 and specializes in hard-carved wood signs and customized horse (tack) trunks and stable products. Adam works with each client to ensure a unique and distinctive design and uses only the finest materials to create a one-of-a-kind product that will leave a lasting impression.
I have a creative background earning a BFA in graphic design, working as a graphic artist and photographer before beginning my work with polymer clay. I love the creativity that this medium allows and the surprise each new piece brings. I love color and whimsical designs and strive to bring that out in my work.
I create my designs using various techniques to combine the different colors of clay into the patterns and designs that you see on my work. Nothing is painted on. Sometimes only the clay is used to design my piece and sometimes it is created over an existing object made of glass or ceramic.
I hope you enjoy my work and that it can add an element of whimsical delight to your life and your home.
A mixture of traditional goldsmith, silversmith and blacksmith techniques are used to create gold & silver jewelry, predominantly through a modified repousse technique I developed in 2002. Other techniques include hand forged gold & sterling silver; 14K, 18K gold & sterling silver sand and lost wax casting, and hand made/hand soldered bracelets & chains in sterling silver & 14K gold. Most of my tools date from the 18th and 19th C. With respect to style, my knowledge base is heavily influenced by historic texts, paintings, etchings, and probate inventories while many of the techniques used have been reverse engineered using methods learned as a historic archaeologist. The modified repousse’ technique I developed arose from this type of work.
I use acrylic paints in bold primary colors to create abstract images on canvas. I sketch the image and then layer the paints using a brush or palette knife for a textured effect. I enjoy painting spiritual, musical and landscape images. I have been a full-time for over 20 years, after working for the federal government.
My name is Kerry Digges and I was born and raised in Mclean, Virginia, and at 53 years old, a Mom of 4, I’m still here! In early 2021, I began to make wood charcuterie boards. All from locally sourced wood in northern Virginia. My family is in the building industry and uses local trees for all the homes they build~ for flooring, beams, molding, etc. I found beautiful pieces of walnut and oak that were not being used. I thought, what gorgeous wood this would be for charcuterie/cheese boards! And that right there began my journey. I am the sole owner and employee. I have invested in a planer, a commercial sander, and all the treatments necessary. I truly love the craft!
Being a mom, this job is perfect for me. I can work on my own time. It also has pulled out the creativity in me, I didn’t know existed before.
All the boards are hand-made! I cut them to a particular size, planed them down, and sanded them to a fine 400 grit. Each board is treated with FOOD SAFE materials. I use only the best oils and waxes. The best I have found is BOOS oil/wax.
The boards are made from Cherry, Walnut, Maple, Ambrosia Maple, White, and Red Oak.
I sell my boards to a local butcher in town who has a gorgeous shop! The Organic Butcher.
I also sell to two local gift shops—Two the Moon and The Urban Farmhouse.
This is a true “Farm to Table” scenario—not that I work with food, but the trees come straight to our property from local tree companies or from our own property, trees that needed to come down. The tree goes through a sawmill that is on our property. Once the wood is milled, I get the pieces I need for my boards. Then those pieces come into my home, into a greenhouse we have converted into a makeshift “kiln” for the wood. All the wood must be in the greenhouse for nearly a year. The wood needs to dry out. Once a humidity meter reads about 7%, I know the wood has dried out and is ready for work!
I graduated college in 2017 with a degree in traditionally forged ironwork under the tutelage of Richard Guthrie, a Colonial Williamsburg veteran Journeyman who moved on to teach others the craft through the American College of the Building Arts. Rick instilled in me a value of creating accurate 18th century reproductions exclusively by hand, matching the construction methods, characteristics, underlying geometry and functionality of their historic counterparts. He has since passed but I carry this lesson with me through every day: to make a profit when I can, to take a loss if I must, to sleep some nights, and others not, but always to do good work.
For several years I managed a modern architectural iron shop in Northern Virginia, designing massive custom stair railings and similar projects, from conception to construction and installation. I was surprised by the lack of care that my colleagues had in terms of craftsmanship and excellence in design, not just from coworkers but also from architects and design firms that were supposedly classically trained. The jobs were big, they were interesting, but they didn’t satisfy the quality and standards of the work that I valued. Over that period I worked part time in the evenings producing my own work, until last year, when I left the company and opened my own shop full time.
People often say “as long as it works, who cares what it looks like.” I cringe a little every time I hear this. In my experience, if it looks right, it is right, and while people may not realize it, things are distracting if care is not placed into their design and creation. While B+ work may have no fault with it, the little extra decoration, feature, or degree of quality goes a long way in transforming work from acceptable to exceptional. This is my goal today; to provide people with tools, hardware, furniture and furnishings that are a joy to look at, use, and will work as well as someone can ask, not just now, but through heavy use into the far future. Historically people relied heavily on their tools and could not afford to have them break or to replace them frequently. Because of this they are perhaps the best teachers a craftsman could look to. It is not solely with misplaced nostalgia that I look to my forefathers of the crafts, but also because I believe that we might learn lessons in how to shape our future.
I have been rug hooking for 28 years, with many of my designs adapting PA Frakturs. Before rug hooking I did weaving, starting in 1968, and learned dyeing for my weaving fibers. I then used my dyeing experience to dye for my own hooked rugs and expanded to dye for a few friends. On retirement I started a small business dyeing wool for other rug artisans and sell at in-person events as well as on Etsy. In the past few years I have started to sell some of the rugs I have made. Three of my rugs have been selected for the Rug Hooking Magazine Celebrations book in the past few years, one winning a Reader’s Choice Award.