[leaves rustling in wind] [leaves rustling in wind] [birds chirping] [wind chime rings] [waves crash] [seagulls calling] C’mon guys.

[keys jingling] [door opens] C’mon guys!

Up, let’s go!

[paws patter on floor] [footsteps] [plug enters socket] [footsteps] [light switch flicks] [door creaks] [switch flicks] [pencil scribbling] [sewing machine whirs] ♪♪ [loud clap] Now, my dogs have just said, where's mom?

What did I do?

[laughing] ♪♪ I'm Donna Zils Banfield.

I'm a wood artist.

My name is Richard Roth, and Woods and Water Pottery is my company name.

Hi, I'm Robert Burch.

This is my daughter, Kate.

I'm a glassblower.

My name is Caitlin Burch.

I am a second generation glassblower and a self-taught lampworker.

Hi, my name is Caleb White.

I am a professional knife maker.

I'm Vicky Elbroch.

We've lived here 17 years.

I'm Lawrence Elbroch.

I go by Larry.

We happen to live together, so- my name is Alan Carruth.

I am a luthier.

A man who makes stringed musical instruments.

My name is Kate Kilgus, and today we are in my home workshop.

I'm Sharon Dugan, and I make ash splint baskets.

I've been making ash splint baskets for 37 years.

I love New Hampshire, I love the trees.

And this is where I've always dreamt- This is the life that I always dreamt of having.

And I'm very happy.

[wind chimes ring] [rain sprinkling] Sam comes from Apple Creek, Ohio.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

[gate sliding] Sam and friends.

You can come back they're not going to do anything.

I've always been a farmer at heart.

I'm happy when my toes are in the dirt.

We have a garden and guinea hens and a horse and a pony and as you can see, we live off the road as far as we could get off a dirt road.

He thinks it's supper time.

[gate sliding] [gate locks] I’ve had kind of a varied life.

This is the seventh state I've lived in.

My dad worked for the steel industry, and so growing up, we would go to wherever the steel plant was, whether it was, Western New York or Pennsylvania or Indiana.

I ended up in Michigan to go to school, University of Michigan.

That's where I met my husband.

Yeah, we just kind of bounced around for a long time, but we're hoping this was our last bounce.

We're hoping that we can just stay here.

[chuckles] And, I told my kids they can put me in a pine box and put me out by the Harrisville Pond when the time comes.

But, yeah so we we'd like to think we've finally landed.

♪♪ Harrisville is a very small town in the Monadnock region.

We're in the southwest corner of the state.

And, last I knew, we have just under a thousand people living in Harrisville.

But it's home.

It's been home for about four years now, and my husband and I love it.

♪♪ Basically a nice part of the country to be in, I have a lovely view out my window, so- [laughing] ♪♪ My wife is primarily what brought me here.

I grew up in Texas with a bunch of cowboys and stuff like that.

And then I joined the Air Force when I was 18 and ended up going around the world for about ten years.

In that time, my sister, who had gone to Gordon College up here in Boston, came to live with me, and her best friend is now my wife.

We got married.

I just decided to move down here to New Hampshire and start college.

Winter is nice I think it's a nice change from growing up in West Texas where it’s hot and dirty all the time.

There's like a bunch of trees up here I hadn’t really seen any of those as a kid, so, you know, it was a different environment but I really, really enjoy living up here now ♪♪ We live in Vermont and it gets, a little bit chilly in the winter.

We both have, this sun and flame and warmth, and a lot of times it's like 85, 90 degrees in my shop.

It's just so, so comforting.

If you go out there, you have a head cold or you got a muscle pull within a half an hour that's gone and it's gonna, it's gonna fix it.

It's amazing.

And if you're in Texas in that kind of heat boy [sighs] it's going to be really hot.

So Vermont’s a good place to blow glass.

It is-the heat is so, it's so comforting.

It's such a, friendly warmth?

Actually, when I work on my torch, I wear sunblock as one of my protective measures.

♪♪ [waves crashing] [pen scribbling] [waves crashing] [waves crashing] [pen scribbling] If you hadn't noticed, Vicky was born in England.

I was born in New York City.

So I'm a city boy.

But I love the country, you know?

I love the countryside.

I love nature, Vicky loves trees.

So we're-try to be in nature whenever we can.

I love it here.

It's near to the sea.

We could go and breathe that air any time we like.

My daughter has a lovely Labrador.

We can go walking, and we are very, very lucky.

♪♪ ♪♪ [drawer sliding] ♪♪ ♪♪ [pen scrawling] ♪♪ [inaudible speaking] ♪♪ ♪♪ [mechanical whirring] ♪♪ [whispering] -check the balance here- ♪♪ ♪♪ [camera shutters] ♪♪ When I was 16, my mother had a friend who was a professor at the Central School of Art in London, and he told me I could bring a portfolio.

And I went up and visited with him, and he looked at my drawings and he said, if you draw all the time, you might make it.

He said, draw when you're sitting, with your friends, draw your feet, draw your friends, draw your hands, draw the room, keep a sketchbook and just draw.

And that's what I did.

And I found that people were very, very amused by them.

You know, I did all kinds of sketches of friends and in every situation.

I've been taking photographs since I was a teenager.

And the first camera that I bought myself, this little camera here, which I still have today, I call it my spy camera, little Minolta 16 millimeter.

And, I used to just sit and look for something interesting and then shoot with it.

♪♪ I didn't actually start making knives until I got out of the Air Force, which is around 2009.

I had been introduced by a sergeant I had in the military to the craft of knife making, and I instantly fell in love with the idea of the concept.

I grew up completely fascinated with knights and armor and swords and stuff like that.

Science fiction, fantasy, I mean, I read endlessly, I'm a major bibliophile.

I think it's the dragon slayer in you, as a kid, as a young boy growing up in West Texas, I wanted a sword in my hand.

I just the first time I put a real sword in my hand too I was just like, [grunts] this is-that's- I mean, that's all of history's been written with steel.

[forge roars] ♪♪ As a child, my great grandfather had all manner of tools and stuff like that.

And he had actually this dagger that he made around 1915 to 1917 when he was a teenager.

And so this fascinated me as a child.

And it just really kind of spurred my imagination for the blade.

♪♪ Did I ever consider photography being my profession?

No, I didn't have any thought in that regard.

But I guess you can say I married into the profession because she being an-an artist, a craftsperson.

Most of our vacations are at art shows, I was always doing work for her when I came home from work and on weekends so I was just-it was like a natural progression.

It's not that I just chose to do this and stuck with it out of stubbornness, I was made for it, you know, like there was something inside me that was made to do this.

There's nothing you can’t make when you learn how to move metal In the grand scheme of materials in the world to work metals the hardest.

And if you can master it, you can master how to turn metal into whatever you want.

Everything else seems a little easier, you know?

[music fades] [bandsaw whines] [router whines] [sander whirring] [sander screeches] Didn't have time to- to get out another piece of wood.

Start over.

One thing that can help, one second.

Is to have a back strap.

If you just take this piece of aluminum.

Hold that against it.

Kay?

So what I'm doing is I'm actually pulling on the piece of aluminum, trying to put my pressure on that.

And the aluminum will help hold the wood in and keep it, hopefully, please God, from splitting out while we’re, while we’re bending it.

This curly wood has a bad tendency to split out because the fibers are diving in and out of the surface- Being at the end of a dead end road with five kids, my mother got real good at figuring out ways to keep us busy.

The-one of the things she used to do was to give us, on a rainy day, she would give us a bar of Ivory soap she’d cover the whole table with newspaper, give us a bar of Ivory soap and a not too sharp knife.

And we would carve soap.

See, she needed soap flakes for my little sister's diapers.

So as, for as long as I can remember, I've been making things.

There was something that clicked with working with my hands and working with the wood, and it was something that I really had to do where I was gonna go, I didn't know at the time, but I had to do it.

While I had always known that I loved wood and I loved texture, in the early 80s, I went to an art exhibit at Plymouth State College, and, there was a new Shaker basket, ash splint, Shaker basket.

This was the first time that- that it all came together.

My eyes fogged, the room just disappeared, my heart was pounding.

It's like, this is it!

This is it.

And I think many people will tell you that whatever they're doing, they don't get into it to, to make money on it, or to, to have it become a business.

It's, it's one of those things that that comes about because they just enjoy doing it.

When you find something that you want to do it every waking minute of the day and are willing to lose sleep to do it, it's, it just comes naturally.

It certainly came natural to me, and, I had to do it enough that I didn’t wanna practice law anymore So I closed my practice in the beginning of 2004 to do this full time, and I've never regretted that decision.

I came to weaving after having left my professional career as a librarian with two very active little boys, aged one and three, and I was kind of starting to lose my marbles.

And so my husband gifted me a six week weaving class.

I just fell in love with sitting at the loom for the first time, and I just loved every part of that process from, you know, learning how to select fibers for a project or how to plan a project.

And then once you, you know, once we were able to actually wind a warp and, sit at the loom and engage with that machine, I just knew I wanted to keep doing it.

I did it just as a hobby for a number of years while the kids were small, and I would work at it at night after they went to bed and just kind of kept trying to learn.

And I did a lot of independent learning because, you know, it's hard to get extended time away when you have two tiny humans to look after.

I can honestly say I've done something weaving probably every day since then.

♪♪ [loom creaks] ♪♪ [shuttle clacks] ♪♪ ♪♪ [loom creaks] ♪♪ [shuttle clacks] ♪♪ [music fades] Weaving for a lot of people, they always see the person throwing a shuttle and sitting at the bench of the loom.

And this beautiful cloth appears right in front of them.

But what people don't see is the preparation of the work.

And that's really the work of the weaving.

The weaving is your reward.

After you've done all that fussing with the huddles and the planning of the design.

[wind blows] [birds chirp] Well, the basket starts with the tree.

So I did find loggers who had ash trees and I would bring them home in my truck and take my draw knife and take the cambium and the bark layers and all of that off the logs, and then beat on them until I could pull the tree apart.

Growth ring by growth ring in long strips.

[wood strips wobbling] These braces are just too big.

[wood shaving] And I may have to remove a fair amount of material before I get anywhere- You're going to pick a set of wood that’s gonna get you pretty close to what you want.

And then from there you want to learn how this set is different from all the other sets you've ever worked with.

Now, there are a number of ways of doing that, you could- you can take that piece of wood and hold it and tap it and flex it.

And some people are very good at that.

I come at this from a more tech, orientation.

So what I'm going to do is measure those properties.

♪♪ After that, the, pieces of splint are rough on both sides there's-what you're doing is you're crushing the early spring growth between each year.

So when I have these pieces like that, I have to, peel them one or more times to expose the sat in the inner, face of the splint, which is the nice shiny, feeling- and sand the rest off the- rough stuff off the back, and then just slice it with knives down to whatever I'm going to weave.

And, the patterns, ♪♪ I doodle and draw patterns and just all different kinds of ideas and just throw it all in there to see what sticks.

You're going to pick the size and shape that will have the characteristics that you want.

Okay, with the guitar, it's easier to make a powerful small guitar than a powerful big one.

It seems counterintuitive, but that's the way it works.

Okay, because the small one can be made lighter.

There's less for the string to have to move, so it can be more powerful, but at the same time, the small guitar is going to tend to have a more high frequency focus [lowers voice] than the bigger one.

I weave around and around and around.

I don't weave one row then the next row, so a pattern has to flow and sometimes it doesn't want to, and I have to kind of fudge it to make it work.

[basket rustles] I went to a meeting of Glassblowers and there was a physicist he basically asked the group, how many of you worked with striking glasses and two of us held up our hands and he looked at us and he says, you're crazy for even trying.

I mean, it's like a puff of wind changes the colors dramatically.

Humidity, if it's a rainy day, temperature it all changes it so, it'll make you crazy.

You do the same thing, exactly the same timing, one after the other, and it'll come out completely different.

It's exciting and frustrating, at the same time.

[flames crackling] Yeah, to catch that moment of fluidity and to capture it and to keep it is a really special thing.

[blowtorch hissing] [flames crackling] [metal clashing] The fact that this glass has a different viscosity probably means that it's gonna mess with the colors big time.

Might make them better, might make them worse.

[metal scraping] [flames roaring] We’ll soon find out.

Now, most of my wood starts with a tree that, has been removed from urban development or disease.

I create the form using a wood lathe.

The wood lathe holds the piece of wood and spins it while I'm you-holding tools to cut the wood, and then from that point it goes to a number of places in my studio to do carving on it, wood burning on it, painting using, paint brushes or air brushes, and then the final finish.

♪♪ [can spraying] Then after the basket is woven, I dry it and pack all the weavers down so that it's really tight and it's a solid vessel.

♪♪ Then I put a binder in and fold the uprights down off the binder, and then the rims are put on and then lashed to that.

♪♪ The foundation for me is drawing.

I start everything on pencil and paper, I design-every knife I've ever made I have at least one design of.

I actually start with colored pencils and a piece of paper and I'll sketch out like, for example, I want to make a placemat and I want to have two colors in that placemat.

And I'd like them to be organized a certain way.

And then what I'll do is I'll go over to my yarn stash, and most of my yarn is stored on cones, different thicknesses.

I'll try to gather a couple colors together to see what might work.

♪♪ In my mind, I try and get some type of a concept of what this is going to look like, and sometimes it'll start with a species of animal, for instance so I want to do, you know, a green heron, I want to do a woodcock, And now I think about the shape of the animal, and we say, okay, that that's going to work well with a fat little pot with a cover on it, and we're going to put the woodcock on the cover and in my mind, I'm seeing this round little piece with a round little bird on it.

And I-that works together.

Shapes are what I'm looking for.

Then I'll take my design after I've drawn it out, I'll cut them out and put them on hard poster board backing or whatever, and kind of mock up just to see how it overall length, width, depth, you know, like, okay, that works for the category.

This is something that somebody using a camp knife, hunting knife, field knife, kitchen knife, whatever would work.

[blowtorch hissing] Once I've committed to a new design, I'll go and find out which glass pieces I need, and I'll make a couple hundred of them.

Those beads, I match them for color, shape, pattern, and I can do my assembly from there.

♪♪ After that I go to steel.

I go straight to the steal.

I get my raw bar stock, and then I trace my designs on there, and I start cutting off what I don't need with the bandsaw or a hacksaw or whatever.

Drill my holes for my pin stock.

I get the drilling done, and then I go to my grinder and I actually shape the primary profile first.

Then I start thinking about, well, how big do I want this placemat to be?

Do I want it to be maybe 18 long and maybe 11 high?

And then I have to think, well, how many placemats do I want?

Do I want just one or do I want six?

And then I have to do some calculations about how long my warp threads are going to be, because those are the threads that go through the loom and intersect with your warp threads.

So it's through- there is quite a bit of planning involved, and I almost always have to redo my calculations just to double check, because you want to get them right the first time.

If you can.

♪♪ So I'm using a lot of, traditional techniques, you know?

I generally work with like one small metal paddle.

It works like a dental tool.

I don't use many tools, I use gravity, I use heat- ♪♪ [forge roars] So now I have the soft steel, It's nice to work with you can drill it easy and you can grind it easy, but it's not a usable knife.

You put an edge on it and start cutting stuff, turns into a butter knife real quick.

So I have to harden it and depending on the steel type, that is when I will take it up to-with the high carbon steels, they go up to about 1450 to 1500 degrees, and I do that with a forge, get them up nice and hot and then I dunk them in oil quench it, the stainlesses and high alloy steels, I get them closer to 2000 degrees and they're actually plate quenched between two plates of aluminum.

And what you're really trying to do is get them up to that really high temperature and that high temperature restructures the molecular composition of the steel, getting it into an austenitic state is what they call it.

And then the quench, either oil or air or plates is what brings it down fast enough out of the austenitic state, that it forces all the austenite out of the steel and forms what is called martensite.

Martensite is hardened, high carbon content steels.

So that's what you're looking for in nice steel, that means a uniform like honeycomb kind of grain structure within the steel.

It's very fine and refined so that it will take an edge it will hold an edge.

And it's tough enough to take lateral stress and stuff like that.

♪♪ It's a highly addictive activity.

It's-[laughing] people- nobody ever makes just one.

[sticks grind on wheel] [clay squishes] [Richard sighs] [machinery whirring] [lathe spins rapidly] [wood chattering] Before woodturning, my obsession was photography.

And when I moved to New Hampshire, I have, I always had my- at the time, it was a film camera with me.

So I've got a lot of images, of camping and hiking in the White Mountains.

And so that is a foundation for some of the memories that I use to create the work.

♪♪ Most of the inspiration comes from, my background.

My father worked for the Audubon Society, so I kind of grew up with that.

Always loved animals, you know, when I should have been doing my homework, I was out in the canoe on the pond and chasing turtles and doing all of that kind of stuff.

I'm sure that's why I never did much academicly- [Richard chuckles] but it did allow me to look at those things and, and see, you know, that I wanted to to recreate nature as best that I could in, in these pieces.

♪♪ And then today, images that I take out in my backyard or on walks, Robert Frost’s Farm is a place I've been going lately.

I have a series, of a body of work that is influenced by the New England landscape.

♪♪ I love sunsets and sunrises, and I love the appearance of twilight.

And I'm trying to recreate that.

Those images on the wood that I, that I make, and by the time I get finished, you might not even see that it's wood anymore.

♪♪ You have to take that little piece of clay, for all intents and purposes, and and make it look, natural.

♪♪ And a lot of it has to do with understanding the animal itself, the nature itself, you know?

What kind of nuts and leaves am I going to put into this piece with a woodcock?

Well, where do you find them?

You know?

You have to take all that stuff into consideration to make it look as natural as possible.

You're not just trying to put that animal into the piece.

You're trying to put the animal's behavior into the piece, and that's what really brings it to life.

So, you know, watching these things really makes a big difference.

♪♪ I think one of my biggest inspirations comes from music.

And as a classically trained musician, I learned how to see things in little groups, like a chord to me is very analogous to, tying up the treadles on a loom.

And I even have eight harnesses, just like you have in an eight note scale.

As far as color, I would go to, some of my favorite works of children's literature, and maybe it's because I like reflecting at those times.

I used to read to the boys when they were small, you know, I'll go to Doctor Seuss and The Lorax, which is one of my my youngest son's favorite book, or Beatrix Potter or, you know, Make Way for Ducklings or something like that and, you know, they really knew how to capture the attention of the reader by using color.

♪♪ I think probably if I had to pinpoint any one specific thing that has inspired me in more ways, especially when it comes to making folding knives and stuff, would be World War Two aircraft.

The way they look, the lines, the shape, the design of them, they just there's something about it.

It's flight, it's movement, and whatever type of knife I'm making, I try to impart some elements of both the fantastical science fiction and movement, shape, form, you know?

And I don't like overly complicated forms and shapes.

I like it to be clean, simple, but dynamic at the same time.

And if I can capture that in the blade, regardless of whether it's a kitchen knife or a paring knife, or a little bird and trout field knife or a sword, I that's what I go for.

The one thing that I like to do more than anything with my work is to not follow the crowd.

So people who look at my work, sometimes they-they're never even aware that it's wood until they pick it up or until I tell them it's wood.

I get my inspiration not from seeing other people's wood or wood turning, but I get inspiration from looking at glass, fabric, baskets, jewelry, or ceramics.

I can make my work look like more like theirs, but not because the structure is completely different.

So I find that challenging.

I find that exciting.

♪♪ At the beginning of it all, I was kind of going towards it as a traditionalist, looking at traditional designs, looking at what other people were doing, and I realized I'm different and that's the way I need to be.

Like, I can throw- I don't have to do it the way somebody says I have to do it.

I don't have to do it the way that it's supposed to look.

I can do whatever I want.

♪♪ One of my mentors, a long time ago had told me.

♪♪ When you make work, don't make a copy of someone else's work because you you don't want to be someone who can make good copies.

What you’d like to have someone do is be able to recognize a piece that you've made from across the room, and know that it's distinctly your signature.

So that's what I've always strived for.

And and it takes a long time to meet that signature work.

It takes a lot of making the same thing over and over and over and over again until you've perfected it to the point where everything you do has that particular flavor.

So that's what-that's what my goal is to make a piece that looks like a Donna Banfield.

♪♪ And then I hand it to a player.

So partly to the point where my hearing is at the point where I don't trust it, and partly because I already know what I think this is going to sound like, and I'm going to hear what I think I'm going to hear.

♪♪ So rather than that, I will hand it to some musician and say, what do you think?

It's interesting what I do when I hand a guitar to somebody, I don't usually listen to what they say, very much, partly because most people will try to be polite and say something nice and, you know, but you watch very closely what they do, okay?

And basically, you know, you got it right when they get that smile and they won't give it back.

[Alan laughs] You can make pretty pictures all day.

You can make wonderful, cool looking, fantastical knives and all these swords, and I love drawing that kind of stuff.

Most of it's not practical, but when you hit on the vein of something that is practical and will work practically in the size, shape, and dimension you need it to, but also fits, you know what you like to say as an artist, man that is like, just do that and do a lot of it because people will see it and they'll love it, and they'll be like, yeah, that's the one.

So there's the main frame for the framework.

Backspace are carbon fiber, handle is a titanium, the rest of it's machining and shaping, which is a really annoying process y’all don’t wanna see.

Art is work.

I try to work a regular schedule, and sometimes if you have a a customer who's in Australia or Europe, you- you have to be available at a very unusual time.

But I do try to reserve weekends for taking care of my family and-and our home here, our garden, and to make sure that I have time to enjoy, what this part of New Hampshire has to offer, whether I'm able to get outside and swim or ski or run, you do have to make sure that you're cognizant of establishing boundaries, for your time, because it's very easy, I think, to fall into the trap of working around the clock, especially when you're working at home.

And so I think if you're going to have any kind of longevity to it, you do have to make sure that you take breaks and limit yourself to treating it as a job, because you can burnout if you don't limit yourself, nobody else is going to do it for you.

[wood scraping] My studio was built by my husband and I, and some members of the woodturning community over a three year period.

We built it from the tree down and we literally felled some trees, hauled them over to our yard, and we had a sawmill set up and we milled the barn board and the beams, and my husband and I cut the mortise and tenons and the structure, that I'm in is my studio today.

Without the help of the woodturning community, I would not have this without the help of the woodturning community.

I would not be the wood turner that I am today.

[machinery whines] [tool scraping] [indistinct chatter] ♪♪ I had a few things that I thought maybe I could sell at a local art show.

And the lady who was doing the art show said, well, I really like your things, you should try The League of New Hampshire Craftsmen.

And so I was like, oh, okay.

It was really nice to have a tribe, [Kate chuckles] because sometimes those of us working independently feel a little separate from, people that have regular jobs.

♪♪ My wife, she talked about the Sunapee Fair, the fair in Sunapee for League of New Hampshire Craftsmen- it’s a bunch of local craftsmen and artists.

I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, that’d be fun, do a weekend thing.

So we went up to Mount Sunapee for the fair one year and I met Zach, who was a knife maker.

And so I went up there and I introduced myself to him and talked with him a little bit and got to see his work and after a couple of years of just kind of watching, and thinking about it, I decided to apply and got juried in.

To me it seemed like a really great thing to get involved with the local craft and artisan scene and just really, maybe, maybe help the business a little bit, as originally when I approached, it was like, maybe, you know, maybe it's time to get some business so I can get a few more sales, get some more materials, and start working on building some tools up, but I wasn't going full time at the time.

I hadn't done that yet.

But then I got juried in and we did our first show and it was awesome and the experience was kind of overwhelming in some sense, because, I mean, you're surrounded by all these really great craftsmen that have been doing this for a very long time, just meeting everyone and all the people who administrate it and all the other artisans.

It's like, yeah, this is the place for me.

This is where I want to be.

These are the people that I like you know, that I'm I can-I can get along with that I-that I understand.

And so I went all in after that and then very shortly after that we bought this place and went full time.

Once I went full time I haven’t looked back since, it's like this is it for me, you know?

And it's-it's a struggle, but it's worth it.

Don’t have to punch a clock anymore.

[Caleb chuckles] You know?

♪♪ I think that we enrich the community by providing a different perspective.

We are showing the glory of our world rather than, than our local environment, but we bring it locally, and share it locally.

A tremendous lot of my customers become friends of mine.

My work has always been collectible.

It looks good together.

And that's been extremely important to my career.

I do make a real point to thank people, to write to them, to, send gifts if they buy an enormous amount of work.

So it's-it's been a, a real give and take thing.

♪♪ The more I travel, the more I realize that people are the same all over the world.

They want the same thing for their families and children.

When I first went to India, I was nervous and anxious and I got through that.

It's really all about the people.

When you go to these places.

♪♪ When you see some of the work that other league members do and it's so good, it's so, you know, fantastic to see these things.

It definitely humbles you.

It makes you I remember walking around and looking at other people's work going, wow, you know, I can't compete with this, but you have to look at it in a different context.

You're not competing with these other people.

Your work is so much different than other people's work.

It is the quality that's there.

And the fact that the league members, it may just have to do with the fact that they have a, you know, a higher standard when it comes to jurying.

But the fact of the matter is that the work out there that the league produces is just fantastic.

Yeah.

Lacy!

♪♪ [parrot chirping] Hey!

♪♪ ♪♪ [indistinct chatter] ♪♪ [Vicky speaks indistinctly] ♪♪ And then when you see us, [child mumbles] ♪♪ When I was making my pure shaker baskets, there was one that was about a nine inch round basket with an overhead handle, and I had brought three of them, sold two in the last- I brought the last one out and I looked at it and I felt emotional.

There was just something about it that just really touched me.

And I thought, at that moment, I'm going to keep this one for me.

There's just something some essence that it has, I can't explain.

A woman came into my booth, walked right over and picked it up, and she said, I want this one.

And she came to my stand.

I actually had tears in my eyes.

So I wrapped it up and I wrote up the slip and I said to her, you know, when the shakers visited one community to another, they would bring a gift and this particular basket would have been such a gift.

There's just something that it has, and it would have been such a gift.

She just looked me in the eye and she said, I know, I feel it.

I'm like, [sniffling] Yeah- and I was in tears when she walked out with it because I can make ten of that one basket, but there'll be one that just has something you can't put into words.

So I hope people feel that, I hope they smile.

I hope it enriches their lives.

♪♪ I know who owns every piece.

I keep a journal of what happened every day.

What pieces sold, who bought them, and the names of the people who bought them.

And I remember what they bought, and I remember their names, because it's important to me that they own a piece of my soul, and I like to know where I'm living.

♪♪ I had one customer who came to my booth, and she, she bought a couple of kitchen towels that I had made.

And, you know, I'm making small talk and everything, and and this woman became rather emotional.

And she, she kind of broke down and she said, these are the first kitchen towels I've- I've bought that were handwoven.

My sister used to make all of my towels, but she died from breast cancer.

And, it was just almost implausible to me that somebody would share something that personal and be that-make herself completely vulnerable with a total stranger But she felt like there was a connection between something I had made and with a sister that she had lost so unfairly.

♪♪ So ordinarily I would center- center- ♪♪ I've always hoped my work, whether it was like a kitchen towel or something or a scarf, that it would just last, that it was built to last.

Whether you used it in the kitchen with your family, or only just on special occasions, that it was just that it was made carefully enough with the good materials to stand the test of time.

I hope that it inspires people like that’s beautiful I would love to just just look at and and engage with it and just, you know, wow, how do they how did they do this?

Man, that's just wow Knights in shining armor and the whole thing.

Oh my gosh, I want to go on a quest.

That's really what I would like I don't care if my name is gone.

Put it to work you know to see what it does for you.

I hope it works for you.

Ultimately, what we're doing as instrument makers, we're making tools.

Okay?

What, what I do is not as important as what the player does.

I if, if, if the player can't do what he wants to do, I didn't do my job.

So I'm trying to make the best possible tool for somebody.

And if I can put some of my own personality into it, if I can have some style of my own in there, you know, so somebody looking at it can say, wow, that's really cool that he put all those thousand leaves around the edge of this guitar That's nice, you know?

But it's still no good if it doesn't work.

♪♪ What I hope that somebody sees 100 years from now when they see that, is the personality of the animal and they can say they can look at it and say, oh, that's, you know, that's a Richard Roth.

Well, initially when they look at it, I hope it makes them smile.

And then if they pick it up and hold it, I hope that they feel that same sense of awe that I felt that day I picked up that first shaker basket at that show in Plymouth and I hope that that maybe they would say, wow, this person really cared.

♪♪ I'm going to put things out there in the world that I just know are going to last and, in a-in a variety of ways that can be enjoyed and worn and given and kept and cherished.

Such a joy to be able to do something you love.

It's so important.

♪♪ Maybe 100 years from now, they will see in me, in my work, that I was the foundation for someone who looked at my work and made it better that they made their own signature piece, but used my work as the inspiration to create their new art.

So that's why I teach, that's why I encourage people to jury into the league, that's why I'm a wood-juror, because it's important that this stuff continues to live on.

Beyond my life, beyond my students life.

And I hope that, it continues to live beyond, when we're no longer on this planet.

♪♪ As I say, this is an addictive activity.

I remember reading that a characteristic of any addiction is the rush, the rush when you're making instruments is you pick up a set of wood, and if you do it right, if you don't make any mistakes, this could be the greatest instrument of the earliest 21st century.

But invariably you make a mistake because what's right for this instrument is not going to be right for them it’s a different set of wood, you know?

So you make it, you do the best you can, and you say, next time it's like the Red Sox, next time.

[Alan laughs] ♪♪ [loom creaking] [Kate whispers] So that's one of my favorite tools.

When I was in high school, my typing teacher came by me one day and I was doodling.

What else?

Horses.

And she said, you're going to make your life as a-as an artist someday.

And I thought, yeah, right.

I wish more teachers would encourage their kids to do that, because in a sense, I am making my my living as an artist not by drawing, but by creating artworks.

[indistinct chatter] So it has to be up here like that.

[paper creases] So that's how I- stop and start the next row.

And it will all go around.

♪♪ I would definitely encourage people to try weaving and you do not have to invest in a 45-inch wide eight harness loom to enjoy weaving.

I have-the tiniest looms can, can create beautiful cloth.

And so, you know, if you're constrained by either finances or space, there are a lot of ways that you can, learn this craft, I say find somebody who knows what they're doing, to help you answer some of the early questions, like, what tool do I use to do this?

What finish technique do I use to do that?

Just so you can make the basics.

Research people who are doing whatever it is you're interested in doing.

There are classes everywhere that you could take, and you could try a little of this and a little of that to see what really clicks.

People have learned through books, and now people you know can go online and you can take a class online from really, really good teachers.

♪♪ It's important for me to know where I began, especially because I teach woodturning to beginners and intermediate turners.

And they look at my work and they're saying that they’ve said themselves I will never get to that point.

And that's not true.

They have the ability to do that.

If they put in the time, they'll never just take one thing design it, pop it out then be like, ta da!

I’m going to make a million of these and I'm going to be a millionaire.

No you’re not sorry, that first time you're going to suck.

You know?

Like, just understand that you have to give yourself time as an artist and a craftsman to grow, and a lot of it is going to happen naturally and organically.

The more you do, the more pieces of artwork you create, the more knives you make, the more paintings you do, the more drawing you do, the more design to do, the better you're going to get naturally, it's a natural progression.

I haven't really met anyone that does the same thing for 10-20 years and doesn't get better at it.

I do, I have met people who aren’t committed to the 10-20 years, though.

That makes a difference.

You have to put in the time, to be able to know what forms to make.

You're going to have to learn to suck at it first and then why this is not good and why what can be better?

And then improve that, and then do that a thousand times, and then you're going to have something figured out.

Then you're gonna be like, alright, now I know what I need to do to really start learning.

So- and it's important for me to keep-remember where I started so I have my very first pieces I made, and I have them in the studio sitting on a shelf to remind me of where I started, how I began, and how far I've gone.

♪♪ Can’t imagine a world not doing it, me not doing it.

I could give it up if I had to, but I have to find something to create.

You know?

I'd have to.

This just makes more sense to me than anything else.

♪♪ When I was about 20 years old, I had done a few different jobs, actually working and getting paid for it.

And what happened for me was I really decided that I didn't want to work for a living if I didn't want to sell my time.

And so I saved up $18 and retired.

And then I did whatever I wanted, and I became a glassblower.

But it's such a joy to be able to do something you love.

It's so important.

So if you don't like working, you know, I mean, you're going to spend a lot of time working your butt off, but the process of creating is a wonderful way to spend your life.

♪♪ It is so satisfying, to make something with your own hands and see the smile on people's faces when they pick it up.

It is just so satisfying.

It's, it's, it's worth it.

It's worth it.

Anyone can do it.

If they find something that they really like to do, do it.

Just follow your heart.

[Sharon chuckles] [wind chimes ring] [various machines whirring] [wind chimes ring] [wind chimes ring] [leaves rustling in wind] [birds chirping]