Crafters creating their own handmade Pittsburgh

By Mitch Donaberger

Rebecca Morris of Lawrenceville runs a brightly-colored store front in Lower Lawrenceville dedicated to selling handmade crafts built by Pittsburghers – for Pittsburghers.

Wildcard, on Butler Street, is flooded with local flair – including a shirt that reads, “Black-and-gold is the new black.” Morris, a life-long crafter, said that she felt Pittsburgh needed an outlet for a new generation of crafters that were combining old skills with new ideas.

Handmade crafts are a growing trend in the City of Steel. More and more Pittsburghers each year are showing up to craft fairs in Pittsburgh, such as the Handmade Arcade or the I Made It! Market, to sell their wares and meet with other craftspeople.

Jill Chisnell of Point Breeze is one of the organizers of the Handmade Arcade, herself a producer of sewn goods. She noted that since the craft fair started in 2004, its vendor applications have surged from 60 vendors to nearly 250 by 2009. Only 90 of those 250 vendors were approved to participate.

When Handmade Arcade was established in 2004, its success helped establish Pittsburgh as a hot-bed for handmade culture.

“The show brought in over 8,000 people last year and is one of the largest shows in the region,” said Emily Levenson, one of the leaders of the Pittsburgh Craft Collective, a crafting advocacy group based out of the Pittsburgh area. Levenson crafts hand-bound books and more under the name of Subu, Inc.

The Handmade Arcade established Pittsburgh as a capital of crafting in the region, attracting craft groups and conventions from around the nation. The first annual Craft Congress – a closed-door, national summit discussing the matters of crafting – was held in Friendship in 2007.

Chisnell said that recently, the Handmade Arcade has attracted vendors from as far as Philadelphia and Baltimore. In 2009, Handmade Arcade housed vendors from eight different states in the Pennsylvania area.

In fact, Morris noted that she had the idea to open Wildcard while attending

Handmade Arcade.

“Look at how many people are here for this, I said,” Morris recalled.

Pittsburgh is a host to three stores that specialize in local crafts: Wildcard and Fresh Heirlooms in Lawrenceville as well as So Me in Glenshaw.

Morris, said that she felt that the community reception to Wildcard has so far been excellent. She notes that she has yet to have had to actively pursue vendors to provide wares. Originally, Morris said that she found vendors with the help of the Pittsburgh Craft Collective, of which she is a member. Since then, she has established a number of connections with local vendors.

“There’s more foot traffic than I imagined there’d be,” said Morris. “People are excited that they can walk somewhere and get unique crafts.”

Handmade doesn’t exactly mean cheaper – but in the midst of a recession, Pittsburghers are flocking to local craft fairs to buy more expensive goods over cheaper, big-box alternatives. However, Chisnell said that she felt that it wasn’t always about saving money in a recession: The human factor still trumps the characteristic stinginess of an economic downturn.

“Sometimes handmade crafts doesn’t mean inexpensive, but it gives people a chance to buy local or learn about the person who made it. That’s still important to people,” Chisnell remarked.

“There is a great deal of renewed interest in quality items, knowing who made those items, and really supporting the economy here in Pittsburgh,” Levenson noted. “I know that many crafters have actually done better because of” the economy.

Allison Glancey, the heart of local creative screen-printing powerhouse Strawberry Luna, said she feels that the person-to-person contact crafting offers is one of the most important parts of the transactions. With every order, she takes the time to correspond with the customer, as well as include a personalized, handwritten “thank you” note. Glancey also noted that she very often receives feedback that people are pleasantly surprised at the personal level of communication.

To shopper Derek Littlejohn of Wilkinsburg, knowing who made his crafts is an important draw to buying handmade.

“I think it’s important to know what the artist was feeling when they made the items they were selling,” Littlejohn said. “It’s nice to feel the connection and hear what they did in the process of making their crafts.”

More artists and crafters are finding that the Internet, too, gives them a market, while establishing a value to their skills, services and products. Chisnell remarked that some crafters have been so successful that they were able to quit their jobs and begin crafting full-time.

Glancey, for instance, ran very small art prints as a hobby. After quitting a job that was making her “miserable with stress” and fruitlessly searching for a job for months, she decided to try crafting full-time for a year.

“And here I am, 3.5 years later, still happily at it,” she said.

“Sites like Etsy have helped to give a venue for handmade artisans,” said Emily Levenson.

A Web site, buyhandmade.org, runs a tally for people that pledge to buy handmade goods as often as they can. The current tally reaches well over 48,000 individuals from all over the world.

The sudden popularity of crafting may be intertwined with the sudden popularity of the “green” movement currently sweeping the United States – and especially in Pittsburgh. Through a process the subculture deems “upcycling,” craft artists discourage waste by recycling miscellaneous scraps and skills into goods.

The push towards handmade goods “seems to mirror the push in the food industry to buy local and support the immediate infrastructure,” noted Levenson.