In Honor of Neil Kelly. A Father’s Day Post by Jim

This year, we have been sharing our Labor of Love stories with you. Some have been about products and some have been about personal experiences, but they’ve all reflected on our appreciation for the handmade, the hard-won, and the heartfelt.  For Father’s Day, we’re honoring the people who often work the hardest for the least amount of praise — dads.

I was the baby in a family of eight, back in the era of huge Irish Catholic families and the rhythm method.  In the early years my Dad had to work hard to put food on the table. Around 1950 he was self-employed as a photographer, hauling a real pony around in the back of his station wagon in order to take pictures of little kids on the pony. A few year later he upgraded to “Tin Man,” selling aluminum siding and roofing door to door. Eventually the company he founded became a highly successful and well-regarded remodeling company, building designer kitchens and such, and still thrives today.

Dad would typically work about 70 hour weeks. His office was in the basement of our house, so despite the hours he worked, my Dad was far from absent.  He did not hunt, fish, golf, or any of the other things men do to blow off steam and get a break from the family. Instead, our parents took us snow skiing, water skiing, sailing, crabbing, camping, etc. Everyone got to go.

My Dad would often haul me around as he went to appointments and checked jobs, mostly just to get me out of my Mom’s hair. So from a tender age I received a first-hand education to the world of small business. He shared all his little wisdoms with me, mostly standards like “The Customer is Always Right.” I learned by example that you could do right and do well at the same time.

I was well into adulthood before I realized how much I had been given, and how rare his selflessness was.

My hard-working Dad

Make Your Own Damn Sandwich. A Father’s Day post by Maud

This year, we have been sharing our Labor of Love stories with you. Some have been about products and some have been about personal experiences, but they’ve all reflected on our appreciation for the handmade, the hard-won, and the heartfelt.  For Father’s Day, we’re honoring the people who often work the hardest for the least amount of praise — dads.

For years my dad did most of the cooking in our house.

A voracious reader, dad would often base his meals on whatever type of books he was reading at the time. So, if he was deep into the Russians, for example, dinner might be borscht or beef stroganoff, served up with a big wooden spoon and a thick Russian accent.

Also, as a collector of hats, he was able to add to the effect by wearing an appropriately matching hat, in this case, one of those Russian fur hats with the ear flaps so popular these days, but decidedly rarer in the 1980s.

When he began to teach himself Chinese, he naturally became obsessed with making traditional Chinese food, right down to the elaborately carved vegetable garnishes. Three or four different stir-fried delights would be served with a variety of radish roses and the occasional carrot-dragon.

Naturally, also a hat.

Of course, all this effort over the perfect dinner would sometimes wear him out, and he would get grumpy. (Or, grumpy-ish, really. One of my father’s fine qualities is that he is quick with a smile, joke, or song, but very slow to anger.)

About once a month, when dad had had it, everyone’s favorite dinner would come along: Make Your Own Damn Sandwich. For this meal, dad laid out every bit of meat (roast beef, ham, turkey, meatloaf), veggie (lettuce, tomato, olive, radish, celery, sauerkraut, pickle, onion), condiment (mayo, mustard, Thousand Island dressing), and bread (rye, pumpernickel, wheat, dinner roll, hot dog bun) he had on hand, covering every available surface of the table with foodstuffs. Then he’d call in the troops by yelling, in as loud a voice as possible, “Get in here and make your own damn sandwich!

And we would. And it would be delicious. Unlike the other dinners, dad served this one on paper plates so he wouldn’t have to do dishes afterwards. (In retrospect, the rest of us were really very little help when it came to dinner and its attendant clean-up. Sorry dad.)

My brilliant and hardworking father knew that even the most mundane job, when approached with curiosity, humor, and love, provides an opportunity for joy and connection. I thank him for sharing that valuable lesson. And for teaching us to make our own damn sandwich.

Getting Muddy: Our New Porcelain Pieces

When we decided to recreate porcelain fixtures and bath accessories for our Period Basics collection, we knew we had to get every detail just right. (Of course, we feel that way about every item we make…) These pieces had a long life before they made their way to us—the fixtures originated in 1930 and the bath accessories in the early 1900s—and we wanted them to have a long life after they left our hands.

We could hardly believe our good fortune when we discovered a clay studio just over the river from our Portland facility. And not just any clay studio, but one dedicated to traditional artistry and American manufacturing, whose owners were willing to tackle the challenges of maintaining historical accuracy and upholding our exacting design standards.

Our engineers and designers, and the studio’s ceramicists ended up spending quite a bit of time together as they found ways to marry techniques from the past and the present. It may have taken two months and many trips across the bridge just to perfect the color and sheen of the glaze, but in the end, getting muddy was well worth it.

Here’s a little behind-the-scenes peek at the process.

Although some of the process is mechanized, a whole lot of it is done by hand.

Two pieces that were cast in molds are joined on the wheel.

A ceramicist carves off excess clay where two pieces were joined so that no seam shows.

The twice-fired fixtures—bisqued first, then glazed and re-fired—are ready to be sent back to Rejuvenation for wiring.

My Mother Joined the Circus, by Maud

This year, we have been sharing our Labor of Love stories with you. Some have been about products and some have been about personal experiences, but they’ve all reflected on our appreciation for the handmade, the hard-won, and the heartfelt.  To honor this weekend’s holiday, we wanted to pay tribute to the biggest labor of love of all: motherhood. We hope you enjoy our stories—and feel inspired to share one of your own with us. Or, even better, share it with the special ones near to you.

While my brothers and I were growing up, my mom, like most moms, was always working. A whirl of activity from morning till night, she’d leap out of bed, make our breakfasts, pack our lunches, and get us—and herself!—off to school. For years she worked as a teacher’s assistant during the day and went to college at night to earn her teaching degree. Later, as a classroom teacher, she continued to pursue higher education and received her master’s degree as a reading specialist.

But all along, through all that work, she had a dream. She wanted to join the circus.

Her father had also loved the circus, and whenever it came to town he would do a neighborhood sweep—any and all available children were invited to climb into the bed of his pickup truck and go to the big top. My mom adored everything about those mini-vacations: the elephants, the clowns, the strong men, the trapeze artist… And that dream stuck with her.

Once she had children of her own, she would take us to the park to swing. As we flew back and forth, she would sing: She swings through the air, with the greatest of ease, she’s the daring young girl on the flying trapeze!

When Mom retired from teaching, she promised to take a year off. No working! We wanted this for her very badly. (See paragraph 1, re: always working.) She agreed. But like that daring young girl on the flying trapeze, she doesn’t like to sit still. About six months in to her mandatory year off, she informed her children she’d applied to be the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus teacher. Moreover, they’d offered her the job. Dad knew and was on board for the adventure.

Naturally, we were agog. She and my dad rented out their house, packed a suitcase or two (there wasn’t much room on the circus train car), and joined The Greatest Show on Earth. She taught the performers’ children. He sold concessions. His voice was the first you would hear upon entering: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages! Her voice, behind the scenes, was the one every kid needs: that of a consistent, capable teacher.

Mom and Dad traveled with the circus for almost six months. And guess what? It was hard work. Really hard work. But man oh man, did they have fun. They got to know the elephants, the clowns, the strong men. And my mom, after all these years, got to know the trapeze artist. Not the one in the circus, but the one she’d kept inside for all those years: herself. I saw it. I saw her stand with my dad on the platform called Regular Life and leap onto the swing known as Following Your Crazy Dream. With the greatest of ease, she was then, is now, and always will be our daring young mom on the flying trapeze.

A weekend getaway in Southern Oregon, halfway between Ringling Bros.' San Francisco stop and Portland, OR.

A Labor of Love: The Making of the Wildwood, Broadleaf, and Blackstone

We’ve always loved the Arts & Crafts movement, born as it was from a desire to return to the tradition of making things by hand. That’s why we were so excited when an old iron Arts & Crafts fixture with a gorgeous three-leaf canopy (complete with curves, grooves, and beveled edges) found its way for our new Arts & Crafts fixtures. Though we should have probably known better, we first tried using modern 3-D rendering software to create the form for the canopy mold. But, of course, we should have known the software wasn’t subtle enough to get the deep grooves, beveled edges, and natural curves we wanted. So we did it the old-fashioned way: by hand.

Our three new Arts & Crafts fixtures — the Wildwood, Broadleaf, and Blackstone — should help dispel the notion that Arts & Crafts is all about angles and straight lines. In truth, many Arts & Crafts pieces favored curves that showcased a craftsman’s skills.

To give you an idea of the labor of love involved, here’s a glimpse of how Pacific Northwest wood carver Steve Pancoast brought our beautiful trefoil canopy to life. I was lucky enough to get to go to his wood shop and watch him work a little bit on the carving. He was on hour 20-something, and had a good long way to go.

First of all, you should see his tools. They’re exquisitely simple. Makes sense — they were perfected over 500 years ago and are still made the same way today.

This image lets you compare the computer-made version (on the left) to the wooden mold Steve made. It’s kind of hard to tell here, but there were barely any distinct grooves on the computer-model. Ick.

The wooden mold is used to make a sand cast, from which the trefoil canopy is formed. If those grooves are going to actually show up on the final product, they have to be really pronounced on the mold.

“Wood carving is a very holistic experience,” says Steve. “There are qualities of sight and touch and sound when you’re carving — all your senses are engaged, so you can really get lost in what you’re doing for hours at a time.”

He does take breaks to feed his chickens and roosters, and to care for his numerous fuchsia plants, all of which thrive on his secluded Oregon property.

We couldn’t have been more pleased with the Wildwood, Broadleaf, and Blackstone turned out. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the skill of a Master Craftsman like Steve Pancoast.