The crafty shopper

A holiday tour of local artisans

By Leon Nigrosh

Want to give something unique and personal for a change? Then by all means visit these local artisans' studios to see what they've prepared for the holidays. It's a win-win-win situation: the artists win a little well-deserved appreciation (as well as some money), your gift recipient wins a special (often unique) treasure, and you win the feeling that you've done something more than just feed Christmas dinner to the corporate beast. Take a pleasant drive out to North Brookfield, cross the main drag, and then take the second right onto High Street. Up on the left you'll see a cheery yellow farmhouse. The loft over the converted barn is Brookfield Paperworks, Elisabeth Hyder's pristine studio where she creates a bright rainbow of decorative paste papers. Using a mixture of laundry starch, water, and acrylic paint, Hyder first lays juicy swatches of color on to fine Strathmore watercolor paper. While the paste is still wet, she then begins to comb, roll, or stamp designs and decorations into the rich colors. Using tools as diverse as trimmed windshield scrapers and tiny hand-carved pencil erasers, Hyder creates complex patterns and imaginative little worlds that, after drying and ironing, can become the surface decoration for everything from hand-made boxes to three-ring binder covers to note card sets to hand-sewn blank books. All of these items and more are on display with prices from $5 for the note cards to $30 for a large decorated box. Hyder also has many brightly colored collaged wall works on display, some with geometric designs and others in carefully cut-out floral arrangements. Because no two paste patterns ever come out alike, each one of Hyder's works is guaranteed to be unique, from the smallest bookmark to the largest wall piece -- and the full chromatic scale of colors along with the infinite variations in the patterns are spectacular to behold.

Brookfield Paperworks, 25 High Street, North Brookfield, (508) 867-7274.

One turn off Route 20 in Charlton will lead you to Dr. David McCracken's home where he displays a wide array of painted silk scarves and wall pieces. After five decades of minding other people's business, McCracken now has time to indulge in his own. The just-retired veterinarian spent the past half-century caring for people's pets, sneaking a little time from his hectic schedule for his first love, watercolor painting. Now he's jumped in with both feet and is creating hand-painted abstracts and floral designs on lengths of hand-rolled Chinese silk. He employs large brushes to flow heat-set dyes onto the dampened silk and then uses small brushes and eyedroppers to develop the details, relying on his skills and intuition as a watercolorist in creating each distinctive design. Many of his scarves, which range in price from $50 to $75, are rendered in soft pastel tones, often featuring subtly changing color schemes from one end to the other. Eager to expand his offerings, McCracken is willing to make scarves to your specifications, including size, colors, and motif. He has won awards for his wall-mounted silk paintings -- mostly brightly colored floral designs inspired from his own gardens -- which are each matted and framed under glass and priced at $500.

David McCracken, 86B Oxbow Road, Charlton, (508) 248-4446.

Don't want to drive that far? Then how about visiting Joe Taylor at the Sterling Glassworks, just behind Union Station in the Worcester Gear Works building. Step off the elevator on the seventh floor and you enter a different world -- one of sound, heat, motion, and transparent colors. Against the never-ending roar of the glass furnaces, Taylor and his assistant, Matt Heim, perform a fascinating pas de deux as they gather globs of molten glass from the "pot" and roll them, blow them, stretch them, and curl them into starfish sun catchers, ball ornaments, mugs, and more. Each glassblowing movement must be timed just so, or else. Too soon and the glass slumps, too late, the glass shatters. Taylor is primarily self-taught He started working in glass about eight years ago, and has been operating this "hot shop" for more than six years.

He heats recycled soda-lime cullet, a clear glass, to 2150 degrees, and then uses powdered glass colorants and metallics to create the various hues for his works, most of which have a decidedly oceanic feel.

"I'm a Water Baby. Most of my stuff turns into a fish, jellyfish, octopus, turtle, or starfish, even sea anemones." While the bulk of his work is wholesaled throughout the United States, "Hawaii and Alaska included," Taylor puts out an effort every year at this time to have tree ornaments available for visitors to choose from. The usual selection includes colorful balls, stars, icicles, and small disks -- all for between $10 and $25. The transparent mugs with bright swirl accents go for only $30 each.

Sterling Glassworks, 8 Grafton Street, Worcester, (508) 757-3715.

Okay, so you're really lazy, and you still want one-stop shopping, but you can't stand the idea of fighting the hordes at the mall -- try the Art Well, an artists' co-op with eight individual artisans each doing his own thing. Rhonda Hershey is a textile and installation artist who grew up around quilters in Pennsylvania and has been sewing since she can remember. She eventually realized that someone had to make all those fabrics and decided that's what she'd do. The majority of her hand-woven pieces are made from high-quality recycled materials. For the holidays, she has created rugs that sell for $35 and up and scarves that start at $70. Hershey also produces hand-painted canvas floor-cloths, from $60, and placemats, individual or sets from $20.

New member Jenn Swan makes notebooks and sketchbooks with her own hand-made textured paper. Using shredded recycled paper blended with straw, pine needles, garlic root, and a pinch of wheat paste, she dips screening into a tub full of this mixture to get a thin layer of pulp, which she then lays out on blotters and allows to dry. For a finishing touch, Swan often hammers sage or lavender into the paper sheets to create a touch of added color, an imprint of the leaf, and a hint of natural fragrance. Her five-by-six-inch hand-stitched journals are available for $50 and up.

Jason Ram, a recent graduate of the Worcester Craft Center's School for Professional Crafts, divides his attention among painting, printmaking, photography, furniture making, and woodworking. For this holiday season, he's making turned wood bowls, which sell for $30 to $60, spinning tops for $10, along with small wooden boxes for $70 and up. Metalsmith Ann Revicki, another WCC alum, creates elegant jewelry from beach stones and rust. Yep, rust. She prowls the beaches of Maine, Rhode Island, and even Jamaica to find naturally smoothed stones with interesting shapes. These she mounts in sterling-silver bezels to make earrings that sell for as little as $18 a pair and necklaces from $65 up. Revicki scavenges rusty iron washers and bits of link fence which she surrounds with sterling silver "to make them precious." As odd as this may sound, her jewelry is well conceived and surprisingly stylish. She also has some funky little wire figures carrying wrapped presents that make off-beat tree ornaments for only $8.

The four other members of the group all work in clay, but their styles are as diverse as their individual backgrounds. Ginny Gillen discovered clay about 20 years ago when she took a class at the Greenwich House Pottery School in NYC. And she's been hand-building sculptures and functional pottery ever since. Her work is about texture, so all her plates, tiles, and rattles offer a tactile experience as well as a visual one. Her wood-fired stoneware plates are available from $20, her stamped tiles from $5, and her humorous rattles sell for $45.

Ann Rainey was about to finish an advanced degree in art education in Buffalo, but decided she really didn't want to be a teacher, so she, too, came to the WCC to try clay. Her major interest is in slipcasting, but not for its inherent repetitiveness. She makes her own casting molds to use as building blocks for complex, unusual forms that still have a functional use. Her teapot sets start at $75 and you can get cups for $15, plates for $25, or a sake set for $65 and up.

In real life, Mark Spencer is in "technical support for a software company," but he enjoys clay as his creative outlet. He took clay courses with Makoto Yabe at the DeCordova Museum before coming to the WCC. Although he likes to work on the potter's wheel, his latest works are extruded and altered whiteware containers. His bud vases cost only $25, while his larger vases go for $35 and up. The newest member of the co-op is Sarah Carroll, who just graduated from the WCC-SPC courses in June and is offering her wood-fired pottery for sale for the first time ever. You can get her wheel-thrown mugs for $12, and bowls for $18 and up. Her hand-built teapots start at $25, and slipcast double-wall cup-and-saucer sets go for $50 and up.

The Art Well, 95 Prescott Street, Worcester, (508) 797-3160. The gallery is open on Thursday from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., on Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., and by appointment.