Tickets on sale August 1st | Kids 12 and under FREE! October 3-5 | 10am-5pm | Waterford, Virginia
81st American Crafts & Historic Homes Tour
This artisan has been making penny rugs and other wool applique pieces for 15 years, and began selling her work on Etsy about 10 years ago. For the past four years, she has been selected into the Early American Life Directory of Traditional Crafts. She enjoys showing and selling her work at juried traditional artisan shows.
Discover landscapes that come alive through glass!
Each of my stained-glass panels captures a moment in nature – from rolling waves to desert skies. Feel the wind, warmth, and raw emotion in every intricate piece.
Handcrafted with copper foil technique, these aren’t just art, they’re experiences waiting to be hung in your space.
Applicant is an impressionist using glass to capture a landscape’s color, line, motion, and season—inviting you to feel wind in your hair, warmth on your face, water flowing around you, rough hide on your fingertips.
Landscapes may be real or imagined places.
Patrons often exclaim, “I’ve been there! You captured my place!”
The first step is selecting rolled art glass sheets whose texture, pattern, and color invoke land, water, and sky.
Applicant then draws a landscape jigsaw puzzle and cuts each glass piece to fit exactly. He cuts simple lines using traditional hand-held glass scoring tools. Intricate, high-risk lines are cut with a wet ring-saw.
Each piece of cut glass is foiled on the edge using copper tape. The cut and foiled pieces are soldered into place and a copper patina applied to the solder before framing in solid copper.
The making process is an invitation for the artist to flow, fully absorbed in the immediacy of vision, tactile response, and emerging result. .
Jacob Grotheer
My trades-partner and I have both been participating in living history for over 20 years. He gravitated towards teaching himself blacksmithing, while I learned from a friend how to cast pewter. When big projects or ideas come about in either trade, we help each other to make the ideas reality. Due to the intensive labor it takes to smith steel, the majority of what we sell is pewter, including toy soldiers both painted and unpainted, musket ball dice, reproduction coins, historic necklace charms, salt cellars, chess sets, and spoons cast in original bronze molds or copies of original spoons of which I make molds.
Peggy Wertheim
My fifty-year career as a Surface Design Artist, Colorist and Master Teaching Artist began with the artforms of traditional batik & silk batiking. I then continued by develop;ing my techniques of Complex Dyeing and Discharge with my Wearable Art designs including jackets, tunic dresses and shirts. In addition, my colorist’s eye was fascinated by Traditional Marbling using carrageenen and acrylics. I took the incricacies of marbling and applied the techniques and my designs to papers, cottons, silks and ceramic. Throughout my career, color and design create a fascinating palette of interest.
My joy and goal in my work is to preserve and spread the knowledge and enjoyment of
traditional springerle cookies to others. I do this through making the cookies, cookie mold casting, handpainting ornaments made from the cookie molds, teaching cookie making classes, and lecturing on the history of springerle cookies.
The tradition of pressing painstakingly-carved designs into food goes back many centuries in the human story, and in nothing is it expressed so beautifully and deliciously as in springerle cookies. Enfolding life’s joys, setbacks, triumphs, and whimsies into intensely-flavored cake-like pillows, these little morsels are truly edible art and I am still – after 27 years – enamored of them
Our work is a celebration of craftsmanship, sustainability, and timeless design. Using both new and vintage leather, we create timeless pieces of leather artistry that can be passed down to future generations.
The design process begins with an exploration of the materials at hand—vintage saddles, bridles, halters and reins. Each piece is carefully inspected to utilize the aspects with the most character. By repurposing these pieces of personal history, I believe that honors and commemorates the many memories created between horse and rider. Each saddle is a blank canvas, waiting to be reimagined. After design, it is then brought to life as a handbag to be used and loved for many years to come. We enjoy working to restore and repurpose tack into something fresh and beautiful, giving new life to items that might otherwise go to waste.
We also create unique items utilizing newly tanned leather. From wallets to belts, handbags to home decor, the utmost care is taken to produce the finest of accessories.
Our goal is not only to create accessories that are practical and durable but also to craft objects that carry an emotional connection and a sense of individuality. Each leather bag or accessory is a one-of-a-kind piece, meant to be cherished and appreciated for its artistry and sustainability. As we continue to experiment with textures, shapes, and techniques, our commitment remains to producing leather goods that transcend trends and endure through time.
I became interested in the historic art of Fraktur as a hands-on way to blend two core interests in my life – art and history. The traditional designs of the 1700s are my inspiration.
To help ensure our traditional arts continue, I demonstrate at 18th century events, such as Landis Valley Museum and Fort Loudoun Market Fair. For many years I have been recognized as a Master Artisan by the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen and am listed in the Artisan Directory of Early American Life Magazine.
Fraktur has become, for me, so much more than art and history.
I have been a potter for over 30 years, my focus is on form and function as well as surface design. I mix and use colored slips on bare clay to carve and sculpt illustrations, often featuring nature, trees, mountains and many recurring animal characters from the forest. I strive to make beautifully crafted functional art, I want my pieces to be part of everyday life and use.
I have always been fascinated by Art that tells a story. Therefore many of the pots I make tell a story, with many returning characters. Some of the characters you might find are tortoises, owls, ravens and birds, bears, deer, foxes, bunnies and horses all have special meaning to me and hopefully the viewer. They interact with each other, they seem to be having very full lives outside our windows, I like to think that they are a witness to a moment in time. The tortoise represents the slow moving of the earth but also the witness. If he’s in the story his shell will be showing another memory in time. Dinosaurs, and many mythical “monsters” show up in the stories as well, because who knows and why not. Who knows what the tortoise sees out there. Maybe it’s Bigfoot chopping wood. Maybe it’s just a friendship between an owl and a horse. Every pot tells a different story, I can tell you what the characters mean to me, but it’s up to the viewer to decide the story.