When this sweet A-frame chalet popped up on my screen this week, I immediately stopped what I was doing to scroll through the listing and take a few moments to daydream about how nice it would be to curl up in front of the wood stove, cook a meal in the kitchen, or visit with friends around the fire pit. My life is hectic, so when I mentally escape, it’s to the quiet and nature…but comfortable nature, with couches and running water.

Located 90 minutes from both Concord and North Conway, this 1970 New Hampshire chalet has been stylishly updated, making it an ideal vacation home or rental (meaning I will have to keep dreaming for now), but it’s always fun to look! See if it makes you feel equally cozy.

A Cozy Updated New Hampshire Chalet in the Mountain Lakes District

What do you think of this New Hampshire chalet? See more of our favorite New England real estate spotlights!

Editorial Note: Yankee editors like to mosey around and see, out of sheer curiosity, what turns up when you go house hunting online. We have no stake in the sale whatsoever and would decline it if offered.

Home Details

Price: $379,000 • 1,632 Square Feet:  • Acres: 1.35 • Beds: 3  • Baths: 2
(Brie Stephens, Compass Real Estate, 603-819-8071)

The post House For Sale | A Cozy Updated New Hampshire Chalet in the Mountain Lakes District appeared first on New England.

In the heart of Nantucket, where coastal breezes carry centuries of tradition, a unique design legacy took root. Founded in 1968 by Andy Oates and Bill Euler, Nantucket Looms began as a humble weaving studio and has since grown into a beloved destination for handwoven textiles, distinctive home furnishings, and refined interior design. With its signature blend of timeless charm and seaside sophistication, the brand has long been admired by tastemakers like Jackie Kennedy Onassis and interior designer Billy Baldwin.

In Nantucket Looms: A Legacy of Style, their new book with author Linda Jane Holden, the island institution invites readers on a visual and narrative journey through its rich design heritage. From artisanal craftsmanship to the influence of maritime culture, the book showcases how this iconic studio has helped shape some of Nantucket’s most beautiful interiors. Featuring stunning photography by Matt Kisiday, it’s an inspiring celebration of classic design, natural materials, and the quiet elegance of island living.

Here’s a glimpse inside OutbACK, one of our favorite homes featured in Nantucket Looms: A Legacy of Style.

A Featured Cottage from Nantucket Looms: A Legacy of Style

Tucked away behind a tall privet hedge at the edge of town, OutbACK—a modern take on the classic Nantucket cottage—offers a serene, year-round retreat designed by Nantucket Looms Interior Design Studio. Built in 2021, the guesthouse blends timeless coastal style with handcrafted details, from soft organic textures and layered linens to natural wood accents and an airy, open-concept layout perfect for entertaining. With its cozy porch, stone terrace, and signature outdoor shower, it’s a gathering place for family and friends during island celebrations—from Daffodil Weekend to the Nantucket Christmas Stroll—and a true reflection of relaxed island living.

Is this your dream Nantucket Cottage?

Pick up Nantucket Looms: A Legacy of Style for even more island inspiration!

See More:

Watch! Meet the Women Behind Nantucket Looms on Nantucket Island
Nantucket Looms Is Weaving a World of Their Own

The post Coastal Charm Behind the Hedge: A Featured Cottage from “Nantucket Looms: A Legacy of Style” appeared first on New England.

Jess Kirby is a writer and creative whose deep-rooted love for New England is woven into everything she does. Born and raised on Aquidneck Island in Newport, Rhode Island, where her family has lived for five generations, Jess grew up pond skating, exploring the woods and beaches, surfing, and water skiing in Mackerel Cove, all of which instilled in her a lifelong connection to the outdoors and a strong sense of place.

Today, Jess, her husband, and their daughter (plus their dog) split their time between coastal Rhode Island and the Green Mountains of Vermont, where she’s found a slower pace and a community of like-minded people. Whether she’s savoring summer swims in Silver Lake, enjoying a maple creemee at Scoops in Woodstock, or appreciating the absence of billboards along Vermont’s winding roads, Jess is a New Englander through and through, making her the perfect person to capture the spirit of New England for our May/June cover.

What special stories or memories do you have of growing up in Rhode Island?

I have stories that go as far back as my earliest memories. I grew up on Aquidneck Island and spent summers as a kid in Narragansett Bay on our family’s little Whaler water skiing in Mackerel Cove, fishing, and going on harbor cruises. My entire childhood is filled with memories on the island, whether it was getting lost in the woods, pond skating, spending days at the beach, surfing, and just having a lot of freedom and independence to explore with my siblings, cousins, and friends. 

What is it about Vermont that made you want to move there?

Believe it or not, I didn’t really spend much time in Vermont until I was in my thirties, and the first time I came and stayed for several nights, I knew it was a place I would eventually call home. It’s a totally different way of life here, and it’s special and magical in so many ways. I think it’s why so many people come to Vermont every year. You get to Vermont, and it just feels different. The sense of community here is different from any other place I’ve lived. 

Nowadays, if you’re showing visitors around Woodstock, Vermont, what do you most want them to see?

There are just so many special things about Vermont. I always point out that we don’t have billboards, because it’s something you don’t see here, which is so nice. The country stores and general stores are awesome, the farm-to-table food, the farms, some of which have been in the same family for generations. When you drive around Vermont, you realize how special and unique it is. 

Given that you have been living in Vermont for a few years now, how would you describe what it’s like to spend the summer there?

Summer in Vermont is incredible. There is so much to do, from hiking and biking to swimming in lakes and ponds. There is such incredible energy and so much amazing food, festivals, music, and other events all season long. 

Is there anything about living in Vermont that you are still getting used to?

Mud season. It’s not my favorite. 

Do you have a favorite country store? Favorite spot for a maple creemee?

In my area, Gillingham’s is a great stop for a classic Vermont general store. I also love the South Woodstock country store, and they have a great breakfast and lunch. For maple creemees, you can’t go wrong at Scoops in Woodstock, or for a little scenic drive, check out Silver Lake Syrups in Barnard. It’s a family-owned spot right near Silver Lake, which is so fun in the summer. 

Favorite weekend getaway now?

We went on a trip to Martha’s Vineyard last September as a family. It was so incredible, what a beautiful and special place. We also did a weekend getaway to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, which was really fun. The beaches there and in Kittery, Maine, are amazing. We go to Newport a lot for the weekend because we still have so much family there, so it’s usually our go-to spot for a getaway as a family.

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Vermont is known for foliage, and it’s definitely our busiest time of year (for good reason). If you plan to make a trip, try to come during the week; it’s less crowded and you can have an easier time getting reservations and enjoying all the small villages throughout the state.

See more from Jess Kirby at The New England Guide or by signing up for her newsletter, A Common Thread.

The post Behind the Cover: New England Travel and Lifestyle Writer Jess Kirby appeared first on New England.

Blues like the deep sea, greens like the shallows. Dinner plates done in explosively imaginative designs you’d almost hate to hide with food. Vases prettier than the flowers they’re made for.

The pottery at D. Lasser Ceramics in Londonderry, Vermont, ranges from functional to purely decorative, from a full line of tableware to outdoor sculptural ceramics and even glazed garden orbs that make glass glazing balls look staid and old-fashioned. And through it all, color with a generous dollop of whimsy reigns.

“My personality is playful,” says founder Daniel Lasser, “and my personality is all over these things. You’re going to get a playful product.”

Every piece sold at D. Lasser Ceramics is made on the premises. The showroom fronts a workspace dominated by two enormous kilns, one for firing and the other for glazing, and displays of finished work spill out across the lawns. Situated on a gently rolling hillside, it’s an impossible place to miss on a drive along Route 100.

It’s surprising to learn that Lasser, 63, has been making ceramics for more than 50 years—but he got a grade school start. “When I was 11, an art teacher brought in a wheel one day so the class could try it out,” he recalls. “I never looked back. From then on, I knew just what I wanted to be.” He’s proud to show two cups he made back when he was that boy, and both look as if they’d find buyers in no time at all. 

Lasser studied ceramics at Alfred University, home of the New York State College of Ceramics, and he went into the business soon after graduating. Although he’s a veteran of the trade show circuit and formerly sold at several outlets, he’s sold his work exclusively at the Londonderry location and via his own website for the past 20 years. “I used to make things with a commercial purpose, repeating designs that were geared to sales,” he says. “But I wasn’t really in it; it was just copying. I went back to being myself.”

For Lasser, that means being focused on all the possibilities of color and on the pigments that potters use to achieve them. “My work is defined by an exploration with color,” he says. “It’s all about the chemistry, exploring what the colors can do. It’s like playing in your backyard—with a purpose.”

D. Lasser Ceramics isn’t a one-man shop. “There are usually four or five [artisans] working here, sometimes more,” he explains, “but they’re not necessarily trained in ceramics.” Lasser does the training, and all of the shop’s artisans work from his designs and color schemes.

The shop’s bestsellers are mugs and dinnerware. Pottery meant for outdoors might be second, including purpose-made large sculptural pieces—maybe even a fountain—sure to add a vibrant touch to patios or garden borders and backdrops. Decorative platters 24 inches across, too large for any but a baronial dining room, are perfect for wall mounting in a sunroom or along a piazza.

Lasser’s customers are as playful as he is. “People mix and match,” he says. “We seldom see them buying whole dinner sets with each place setting in the same pattern and colors—they buy different patterns, in different colors, and mix them up.” It’s easy to imagine a Lasser-enhanced dinner party, with guests taking seats where the table settings most intrigue them. 

It’s just as easy to suppose there are households bursting with enough Lasser ceramics to host dinners for dozens. “We meet people in the shop who tell us they’ve been buying our work for years,” Lasser says. “We’ve been here long enough that by now we have second-generation customers.”

On any given Saturday or Sunday at D. Lasser Ceramics, the number of browsers and buyers usually runs to a hundred or more. And if they miss the weekend, there’s almost every other day in the year: The business closes on just three holidays—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter, all days when countless feasts might boast a certain special splash of D. Lasser flair.

Looking back on his love affair with clay and color that dates to that day in grade school, Lasser sums up what has mattered most in his career: “My favorite thing here is sitting at the wheel. I’m a potter by nature.” lasserceramics.com

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If you were an apple, especially one plucked from an heirloom tree, you’d do well to be sliced on a JK Adams “Q-Tee” cutting board—a design that goes back more than 60 years—before being served with hunks of Vermont cheddar. If, on the other hand, you were a fresh-from-the-oven turkey, you could wind up atop something truly prestigious: the JK Adams maple reversible carving board, which for many years has been named the best of its kind by the experts at America’s Test Kitchen.

At a time when many bemoan the loss of U.S. manufacturing, there might be a lesson in this venerable family business just outside the village of Dorset, Vermont. Simply put: If you make something better than anyone else, people will want it.

Like all great American success stories, this one springs from humble origins. In 1944, Josiah Knowles Adams began manufacturing a small wooden pull toy dubbed the Speedy Racer in a small Dorset garage. His creation caught on, and Adams soon moved operations into a former icehouse located in the spot off Route 30 where his namesake company still stands today. 

Adams’s fledgling wood-products business added T-squares and slide rules to its line, and in 1949 an industrial engineer named Malcolm Cooper Sr. joined as a partner. A man of talent and vision who eventually became the company’s owner, Cooper had ambition that matched the country’s growing appetite for kitchen products that were both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

His son, Malcolm Cooper Jr., once told a reporter, “I don’t recall us ever talking about sports or political news around the dinner table. It was always about the business and how to drive the business forward.” (When asked why his father did not give his own name to the company, he chalked it up to Yankee thrift: It would cost too much to change the stationery.)

Using wood from North American hardwood forests—maple, ash, walnut, cherry—the elder Cooper designed kitchen products meant to endure and be passed down through generations. He was always tinkering: One day, frustrated by how awkward it was to pull kitchen knives from their holders, he cut the bottom of a wooden block so that it slanted at a 45-degree angle. Knives slid in and out of the block with ease, and the world took notice. He also created the first modular wine rack, as well as the rotating spice rack.

As JK Adams continued turning out wooden products ranging from rolling pins to carving boards and trays, it was bringing something new to the kitchen seemingly every year. Plus, Cooper knew how to build and keep a business competitive, and in time he was able to pass the reins down to his son, Malcolm Jr., the current owner and chairman.

Today, a visit to the company’s Dorset headquarters offers the chance not only to browse the on-site Kitchen Store, but also to peek at what goes into the company’s guaranteed-for-life creations. Daily guided tours lead visitors along a catwalk to an observation deck, which looks down on the action in the 40,000-square-foot workspace. The whine of power saws, the smell of cut hardwood, the roar of massive industrial fans—they’re all part of a steady thrum of creation. And as befits a company that owes its name to Yankee frugality, nearly every scrap of wood here goes either to heating the plant or into a useful part of something.

A few years ago, Malcolm Cooper Jr. told a reporter why he was confident that despite global market pressures, there would always be a need for the craftsmanship he saw at work every day.

“Wood has been used for tools, shelter, and accessories since the start of recorded human history,” he said. “It’s attractive, warm to the touch, and relatively easy to work with. People always come back to wood. Dad believed that if you build something that is functional and well made, people will buy it. We are going to hold on to that.” jkadams.com 

The post JK Adams Cutting Boards | Made in New England appeared first on New England.

The fact that Katrina Kelley has a tattoo of a needle and thread snaking up the inside of her left forearm isn’t that surprising. She is, after all, the designer and sole seamstress behind the buzzy Newcastle, Maine–based Amphitrite Studio.

What is surprising is that she did the ink herself. “I got the tattoo machine as a gift for my 30th birthday,” says Kelley, 44, perched on a chair amid antiques and sewing equipment in her cozy home studio. “The focus on the art took away from the pain. It was a weird cancellation of properties, so it became just like drawing on myself.”

The more you get to know Kelley, however, this act of visceral self-expression starts to make sense. She has a relentless need to create, a need that drove her to launch Amphitrite Studio as an Etsy shop selling women’s linen clothing in 2012. Over time, Kelley shifted her focus to linen napkins, towels, tablecloths, and other home and kitchen textiles, a metamorphosis that became complete the December day in 2019 when restaurateur Erin French from the Lost Kitchen—yes, that Erin French—called to order aprons for her shop.

As luck had it, Kelley had been working on a café apron prototype. “I was like, Shut the front door,” she says, with a laugh. “They found me, called me, and wanted me to make something because they saw what I was trying to do … that was a big confidence-booster.”

Since then, the Amphitrite Studio aprons—long or short half aprons or full length with a cross-back in saturated earth and jewel tones—have become Kelley’s calling card. They’ve also helped put her on the map: The 2022 design book Remodelista in Maine included her studio in a who’s who of the state’s artisans. “The aprons are the biggest hit, but also the biggest pain to make,” Kelley says, explaining that they require her to switch between multiple sewing machines, plus iron between each step. Still, she says all this with a twinkle in her eye, as if she always knew her meandering path would lead her here.

Kelley grew up in the Catskills, the youngest of four children. Her parents were hippies turned Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her mother, Kathlyn, retained an artistic streak and a homegrown ethos, making the family’s clothes, leading craft time, and teaching Kelley to sew at age 4. “My nursery was her sewing room,” she says. “I like to think that’s where I got my start.”

When Kelley was 14, she relocated with her mom to southern Maine, where the family had often spent summer vacations. She did homeschool and then trained to be a hairdresser, working as a colorist and also as a florist in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, before moving to a cabin in Damariscotta, Maine, in 2005. There, Kelley landed a job at a natural pet food store, which is where she met her now-husband, Jeff, a customer, who encouraged Kelley to start her sewing business in 2012 and get her online associate degree in business.

The name Amphitrite—the goddess of the sea and the wife of Poseidon in Greek mythology—was a no-brainer from day one, she says. “I originally chose it for the strong feminine vibe with ties to the sea,” she says. “I’ve always been drawn to the sea. When I was a kid, I actually drowned and was out for over a minute at Old Orchard Beach…. Ever since then, I’ve had a healthy fear of the ocean that’s turned into a reverence for its strength.”

It’s no surprise, then, that Kelley counts nature among her inspirations. Her art is also shaped by loss—including the loss of her brother Kieth Napolitan, an accomplished Portsmouth chef who died from an overdose in 2014. “My grief threw me into making things that other chefs could use,” Kelley says. “It was this natural progression of, this is where my heart already is. I’m going to keep making more kitchen-inspired things.”

Kelley spends her days measuring, cutting, sewing, ironing, and packaging her wares for shipping. She creates fresh patterns when inspiration strikes, like the vintage-leaning apron with thinner ties she’s currently working on. Looking to repurpose the fabric scraps and elastic left over from making masks during the pandemic, she designed one of the newest additions to her line: linen dish covers that are not only stylish, but also a sustainable alternative to single-use plastic wrap.

And in warmer months, Kelley opens her showroom—a solar-powered camper parked in her Newcastle driveway—to visitors. That’s also where she styles and shoots photos for her website, newsletter, and social media.

Amphitrite Studio is truly a one-woman show, and Kelley says she wouldn’t want it any other way. “I’m sure you can tell by looking around that I’m not a simple person,” she says. “This is what I live and breathe. I have no idea how to be anything but creative.” amphitritestudio.com   

More Made in New England Textiles

Feather your nest with these New England–made textiles.

American Woolen Company

In 2014, American Woolen bought Warren Mills, the last U.S. mill capable of producing both woolen and worsted fabrics. Today, it not only sells these textiles to domestic designers, but also sews them into preppy throws. Stafford Springs, CT; americanwoolen.com

Anichini

Local craftspeople stitch fabrics from Portugal, Italy, Turkey, and other far-flung places into shower curtains, meditation pillows, and kitchen linens for this Green Mountain State company’s “Made in America” collection. Tunbridge, VT; anichini.com

Bates Mill Store/Maine Heritage Weavers

When the 151-year-old Bates Manufacturing Company shuttered in 2001, its former president, his daughter, and a few employees formed Maine Heritage Weavers to continue making the venerable manufacturer’s shabby-chic matelassé cotton bedspreads and coverlets. Monmouth, ME; batesmillstore.com 

Bristol Looms

Set a sunny table with Maya Cordeiro’s coordinating brightly colored placemats, table runners, and napkins. Beyond the dining room, her handwoven baby blankets are especially sweet. Bristol, RI; bristollooms.com

Matouk

One of the last vestiges of Fall River’s textile-making past, the Matouk factory turns out crisp sheets and plush towels favored by celebs, high-end interior designers, and luxury hotels the world over. Fall River, MA; matouk.com

The post Katrina Kelley’s Premium Kitchen Linens | Made in New England appeared first on New England.

Sponsored by Country Carpenters.

To understand the allure of colonial New England, you can begin by taking a look at the work of Country Carpenters, whose handcrafted home and barn kits are inspired by the timeless architectural styles at the heart of this region’s identity. Founded in 1974, the family-owned Connecticut company offers everything from saltbox sheds to bigger designs — traditional structures that clients often put to innovative use. Here, Chief Operating Officer Josiah Loye shares more of the Country Carpenters story. 

Q: Country Carpenters is celebrating its 50th year. How did it begin, and how has it grown?

A: Our founder, Roger Barrett Sr., had a strong love for post and beam barns. With his son, Roger Jr., he started disassembling old tobacco barns and reusing the timbers to build post and beam homes. Inevitably, the owners would want a small garage or barn, too, so the business evolved to the point where we put our focus on those outbuildings. In 2006, we went back to the roots of our business and started offering reproduction 18th-century-style homes. This year, to distinguish the two sides of the business, we created Post and Beam Barns to join Early New England Homes, two distinct companies under the Country Carpenters umbrella.  

Q: What do you see as the special appeal of historic New England architecture?

A: It’s really part of the heritage of America as a whole. Many of the first Europeans to come here were boatbuilders, and they took their skills and transferred them to actually building the barns we have here today. They launched a new art form — an American art form. Today, we have a lot of New England clients, of course, but we also ship around the country and other parts of the world. We’ve sent kits to Canada, Ireland, England, and all the way to Australia.

Q: Why is handcrafting such an important part of the Country Carpenters process?

A: Representing New England style goes beyond design. When you buy a building from us, you’re getting a unique piece of art. When people see our buildings, they can really sense that. You’re not just getting some mass-produced product — you’re getting something that’s beautiful and well made, and will stand the test of time.

Q: After a barn or home kit is shipped to the client, how is it constructed?

A: Many people hire builders to do this, but we make it simple enough that many homeowners with minimal construction experience have put up their own buildings, especially the smaller ones like our cabins and one-story barns. Some people are inspired to get truly ambitious. One client who I don’t think had any construction experience built one of our largest two-story barns: He just called in his friends, offered them beer and pizza, and made it a party.  

The whole idea of the “barn raising” is a tradition we want to keep alive. If it’s requested, we’ll send out a crew and actually get the clients involved. They can invite their neighbors, and we’ll hand them a mallet and put them to work. You should see the joy and the smiles on everyone’s faces. People love how the work brings them all together. For the clients, they’re not just putting up a garage or a barn to store their stuff or cars. They have a building that’s actually a part of history.

Q: How are Country Carpenters’ clients using barn spaces these days?

A: We have a lot of car collectors among our clients. People have built breweries out of our barns, or used them as wedding venues. We had one client put a golf simulator in his barn; others put in a climbing wall for their kids. Then there’s the whole barn home, which has really taken off the last few years. “Barn-dominiums” — they’re a real thing.

Q: Along the same lines, how has Country Carpenters helped push the whole “tiny house” movement forward?

A: We have a model called the Country Cabin, which was created in 2011. The idea for it actually came from one of our employees who had land in Vermont that he wanted to put a small building on. Today it’s one of our most popular structures. It can be a tiny home or an art studio — it offers a lot of versatility.

Q: What kinds of opportunities do you see for Country Carpenters in the years ahead?

A: There are a lot more millennials who are looking to purchase our barns, which we haven’t seen before — that’s exciting. In general, more and more people are wanting to learn how to build things. YouTube has really accelerated that, and so we’re working on making how-to videos that accompany each product. The way we see it, if people can feel personally a part of what it is we’re building for them, they’ll love our buildings even more.    

Save the Date! 

Country Carpenters hosts its annual Hebron Colonial Day celebration on Sept. 21 at its headquarters in Hebron, Connecticut. Visitors can see the working life of 1750s New England, including blacksmithing and textile work demonstrations, while also getting an up-close look at some of the company’s signature building designs. countrycarpenters.com/colonial-day

The post Country Carpenters: 50 Years of Classic New England Style appeared first on New England.

The house stands alone, in the center of a clearing: a simple white structure with dark window eyes, open to the sunny glade. Behind, a mossy rock face, several feet high, creates nature’s own version of a stone wall, and the woods fan out for miles. The steep roof rises like prayer hands. Birdsong drops all around.

“I had this vision for so long about how I wanted this house to look,” says Britt Witt. “All the white, very reminiscent of the white steepled churches all over Vermont. We thought about it for what felt like years.”

The last time I saw Britt and her husband, Matt, was seven years ago, when they were ensconced in an expansive brick studio in Burlington, Vermont, making ruggedly beautiful waxed canvas bags under the name Red House. Since then, the former Arizonans have weathered Covid; cleared the land they bought in 2016 on this precipitous ridge in Weybridge, Vermont; built their elegant, spare home on 23 acres; and finally moved in full-time, in 2022. They’ve also (just) sold their namesake “Red House,” in Shelburne, where they raised their kids, half an hour north of here.

“This is the Vermont we longed for when we moved here,” says Matt. “We were always looking and pricing, but it was insanely expensive—totally out of our grasp. So we ended up in a little house in Shelburne Village, which worked out great, with the kids walking across the street to the school.”

When they expanded their search beyond Chittenden County, this was the first property they looked at: affordable, nothing but dense woods, with a treacherous driveway winding skyward, and a sharp, lunging turn they dubbed Dead Man’s Curve near the top. They eventually bought three of the five lots, and “dreamt on it, for four years,” says Matt. “We would come up here and have little gatherings with friends and set tables in the middle of the woods.” Britt points past the double glass doors, leading from the kitchen. “We homed in on that mossy rock wall. It was like Lord of the Rings, like Shire country.”

With a tight budget, they began talking to builders, getting quotes. “We drew this building on a piece of computer paper,” says Britt. “There was no architect. We had this vision of what we wanted. Then Matt called me one day, and he’s like, ‘Britt, I don’t think it’s going to work.’ The quotes weren’t in our budget, or if they were, they didn’t include electrical. Or a roof.”

And then, they found their guy; met him in Middlebury, over bagels and coffee. “We were sitting there,” Britt remembers, “and I asked, ‘So is the roof included?’ Yes, it’s turnkey. ‘Can we do marble counters?’ Yeah, no problem. ‘Cabinets?’ Turnkey. ‘Toilet?’ Yes, guys, it’s turnkey. And it’s like, yes, yes, yes.”

Their budget helped keep the design simple. Two or three interior walls. No closets. “It keeps you honest in what you possess,” Matt says. “Everything has to have a place or a function. If it doesn’t, it’s not necessary.”

For inspiration, they drove around, literally. “Britt wanted to create this great room to mirror all of the churches we were driving by. Three to four windows on each side, big double doors. And she’s like—let’s make our church out in the woods.”

So how exactly did they design a great room? They found houses that inspired them. They had to learn what a pitch was. “We just picked one and held our breath,” Britt laughs. “We had no idea what we were doing. But that’s never stopped us before.” The ceilings are nine feet high in the kitchen; 22 to the peak in the living room. They settled on six lights for the Marvin casement windows, but agonized over whether it should be 12. Or two. They studied other people’s windows, roof pitches. And hand-flagged the boundary of their future home in the woods, tracking the sun, figuring out where the front of the house would go.

They broke ground on June 1, 2019. The house was “done” by November. Hundreds of details were decided in those months. And that, they emphasize, is the crux of everything.

“We decided to be really intentional with the fixtures, with the finishes, with the trim and the molding, and the doors we picked out. To take this simple space and just give it an energy that almost doesn’t belong,” Matt recalls.

“It’s the details that make all the difference,” Britt says. But nothing was more important than the gooseneck sink fixture, its brass now aged, sitting proudly at the center of the kitchen island. It was the first thing the couple bought, before they even broke ground. The whole house is built around it.

Britt’s dad lives in England, and that’s where she first learned about DeVOL Kitchens, makers of gorgeous bespoke kitchens. The bathroom lights are also from DeVOL, but it’s this specific DeVOL faucet that sets the entire tone for a simple, elegant workspace, with a decidedly Shaker feel.

The kitchen floor is just as intentional. “I wanted something that looked like you brought in stones from outside, and that’s your floor,” Britt says. “Old, old English. I found a piece of quartzite, and knew this was it. When you’re building new, you need to have character. That’s why we did unlacquered brass on the kitchen faucet. The marble countertop gets a patina, too, and with the floor sometimes pieces chip off.”

Matt sees a connection to their Red House waxed canvas bags. “They age, too. A handbag that’s five years old looks totally different from when it was new. All this stuff as well. That was a shiny faucet; now it has character on it.”

Other details? The bathtub taps on a sprawling tub are from Waterworks, inspired by the Marlton Hotel in New York City, where they once stayed. And someday there will be an indoor shower, but meantime Matt has installed and hardscaped an outdoor hot/cold shower. “Shower season” runs May to November.

“It’s exactly what we wanted when we first came here,” Matt says softly, looking around the glowing space. It’s easy to imagine the seasons moving past these windows in a kaleidoscope of colors and images. Deer and birds. Foliage and snow. Light and more light.

They’ve planted fruit trees and blueberry bushes, built raised garden boxes. “We want to stand in the old ways,” says Matt. Then he grins. “We’re going backward. We’re not going into the future, into the meta. We’re standing in the old ways. Our end goal—we jokingly say—is that we want our whole life to become projects and chores, all the time.”

Last winter, Britt says, she gave up artificial light at night. “We had candles and oil lamps all winter.” Matt muses, finishing the thought: “It’s like we have 150-year-old people inside of us, trying to get out.” 

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The hobbit house burrows into a hillock in Morrisville, Vermont. Its round door is edged with a remarkable fringe of dark stone, the opening just tall enough to accommodate its creator, Thea Alvin, making it roughly 5 feet, 2 inches. Inside, the tiny domed space—the fruits of her workshop on how to build a root cellar—tunnels into the belly of the land. But this is not a story about height, or hobbits, or even strength, although for the record, this dark-haired, warmly funny stonemason artist can squat 460 pounds, she tells me without a hint of braggadocio.

This is a story about hands. What they can create, and how, and sometimes their ability to move literal mountains to make things of beauty. “My hands are so smart,” says Alvin. “They know what to do. They do it without me needing to direct them, spontaneously and independently. They do things I don’t have to anticipate or plan for.”

What they do is lift stone and place it in unlikely ways.

The Phoenix Helix spirals across Alvin’s front yard, a 100-foot-long-and-growing stony haven for chipmunks and the place where local teens come to have their yearbook photos taken. The continuous loops are like stone cartwheels, gravity-defying, awe-inspiring. The eye-catching helix follows the contours of Route 100, a roadway that is busy by Vermont standards—we are, after all, just nine miles from the slopes of Stowe. Which means that the casual Sunday driver, random visiting tourists, a New York Times reporter, and even Oprah’s people might be inclined to stop and explore Alvin’s sculpture park. Because she does call it a park, and there’s certainly much more to it: undulating walls that rise into Gothic arches or settle into circles; ponds edged in giant stone; a waterfall; a pizza oven modeled after the beehive-shaped trulli in southern Italy, where Alvin brings students to help repair those crumbing little structures. The soundtrack is provided by roosters and chickens, shaggy Angora goats, happy dogs, wind. “People stop on the side of the road all the time,” she says. “They tap on the door. Sometimes”—she pauses—“they come right into the house.”

The helix also tells a story with parallels to Alvin’s own life. It is a celebration of gravitas and astonishment, turns and spirals, explosions and joys. It is also tied to this wildly beautiful patch of land and its companionable buildings: an 1810 farmhouse, a wood-clad barn, a hobbit hole, a goat shed. She sometimes wonders whether the place is a vortex of energy, when she looks at her life, events, people, the creativity that seems to settle and swirl here.

“I grew up on Martha’s Vineyard,” she tells me, “and I ran away with a boy when I was 18. I married him, and we bought a camp in Wolcott, Vermont, and raised our kids out there in the wild. For 12 years we lived without running water, or electricity, and it was a hard, hard path.” But she credits that path with teaching her to work by “feel.”

“I lived for such a long time without electricity, so working in the dark has always been part of my way of doing things. What would it be like if I couldn’t see the stones? How would I manage them? Training my hands to see without my eyes has been a very important part of what I do.”

How to Make an Arch

Alvin learned the basics of stonecraft as a teenager, during the family’s yearly bouts of financial feast or famine, when her father would take on masonry jobs to pay the bills. Alvin, 16, was his helper. Later, she would build on that foundation, apprenticing with a stonemason in Stowe, and then taking on stone jobs for trade in Europe, with an organization called WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), gathering the skills that would ultimately pour into the massive sculptures, labyrinths, and stone “clocks” she is known for today.

When Alvin moved here 24 years ago, her stonework at the farm came alive almost from the start. She remembers sitting at the picnic table and crying, because “there was something about being able to buy this house. Some connection between me and the land. It feels like a sanctuary that allows me to express myself. An unconditional place where I can think out loud with my hands.”

We walk up a set of mossy stone stairs, past the hobbit door. “When I first came here, I wanted to make a sculpture on the highest ground,” she tells me. She points to a spot where old apple trees bend over a stone circle that looks out over the land like a benevolent eye. There’s a lot to take in, the cumulative work of decades: an apple orchard, a small vineyard of Maréchal Foch grapes, the blueberry patch, espaliered pear trees, beehives. There’s Aurora Pond, part of which Alvin built using an excavator. She topped it off with a waterfall tall enough to walk under, during that first year of Covid. “It was meant to be water security,” she says. “But look at that crop of tadpoles! It’s really frog security!”

Up here, surrounded by her handiwork, she explains how she taught herself to make an arch, because “anyone can study arch building, but I wanted to figure it out.” She began by stacking two columns of marble, wrapping her arms and legs around them, and guiding them together. The piles collapsed. But by summer’s end, Alvin had evolved a wooden arch to support the stones, and a system of wedges. That was the easy bit. “The challenging part is determining how big, and what shape, and how it looks—that’s where the art is.”

The tools of Alvin’s trade haven’t changed much since medieval days: a mason’s hammer (“brickie”) with a chisel on one end and a hammer on the other. “I don’t do a lot of what’s called ‘dressing’ the stone,” she says. “I don’t hammer it into submission. I like the rocks to have their natural edges. I don’t mind that a rock is rusty. The imperfection makes it feel comfortable, and it lets us explore it and accept ourselves with our own imperfections.”

All of her hammers have names, but her favorite is Karl, handmade in Barre, Vermont, a gift from a friend. And they’re spray-painted (a decidedly un-medieval touch), because “when they’re hot pink, they don’t get lost in the grass.” She tromps everywhere in her Crocs—footwear firmly planted in our times—so much so, that her feet are dotted with tan marks. Even so, as I relearn the differences between Gothic and Roman arches, it’s a little like time-traveling into the world of a medieval craftsperson.

“It would be pretty easy to look at me,” Alvin observes, “and make a judgment that would be 100 percent inaccurate. Unless someone looked at my hands, they would not guess what my capacity or skill set is.” She gives a quick smile. “And I really like that. I like that as a lesson for myself to not judge other people.” Her hands are rough and capable. Years of working with abrasive stone materials have worn her fingerprints off. But beyond that, her hands are never still.

As we wander, Alvin waters the goats, relocates a chicken, picks bugs off a vine, and gathers a few twigs to add to the “death tunnel,” woven from fallen tree branches, where she has buried her animals over the years: dogs and cats, chickens, goats, and pigs. These hands, she informs me, also do many other things. “I’ve been a tailor, a knitter, nursed quite a few sick animals. I’m a writer, I’ve done massage work, I prepare a lot of food. I tap trees, I make maple syrup in the spring, I paint, I plaster, I lay tile and brick. I can do any of the building things, and I know how to use all of the silverware on a fancy dining table.”

The rooster is absolutely screeching. Circling back, we pass by arching wooden forms, sunk in tall grasses behind the barn, waiting to shoulder their next load. “We’re kind of growing up together, too,” she tells me of this place. “And I’ve wanted, since the fire, to fix her and make her whole and beautiful.”

Fire on the Farm

The fire began at 3 a.m. on a December morning in 2017. It raged through the barn and studio, then jumped to the house, taking half of it. It killed goats and chickens, destroyed artwork, and left Alvin with such a heightened sense of hearing that she still wakes up at the slightest sound in the night. And then, not long after, she had to leave for southern Italy, to lead a workshop to help rebuild the trulli, in Puglia. “I feel like I have the most amazing luck and the worst luck,” she admits. “I feel super-lucky, but also like I’m a person with the widest span of paradox. The worst and best things happen at the very same time.”

When she came back from Italy, friends gathered from across the country to rebuild the barn—the post-and-beam raising, captured on film, is a stunning reminder of the goodness of people, who are not just raising up a building, but raising up someone they love. Slowly, over the next two years, she worked on rebuilding the house, too. “I wanted to make it a sculpture, not just a box, a standard house,” she says. She laid the brickwork where her woodstove sits; created a sliding chalkboard to cover the pantry doorway. An artist friend painted a garden on the new living room walls. She wanted a secret door, so she built one in the library, disguised as a bookshelf. The door swings open into her stained-glass studio—a craft she took up after the fire.

“I create something every day,” says Alvin. “And I teach a lot. But really, it’s by creating beautiful things every day that I’m able to combat what would otherwise be crushing depression with the things that I see: drought and poverty and homelessness and forest fire smoke. My mom has Alzheimer’s, and I care for her here. And watching her fade, and living through her fade—that’s incredible. I have to stay positive. I have to stay doing. Otherwise it would be overwhelming.” [Editor’s note: Thea Alvin’s mother passed away after this interview, in December 2023. “She was buried in a natural burial in my backyard,” Alvin says, “in a wicker basket and a shroud made from our goats, carried by her daughters and granddaughters.”]

She saves everything, knowing she will find a way to use it. Sticks from the lilacs, to make tunnels and treehouses. Old nails and shells. And stones, obviously. Because you never know when you’ll need more stones….

The Phoenix Helix

There’s a reason the dazzling spiral that sits in front of Alvin’s house is called the Phoenix Helix. It is not the first. The old one was destroyed two years ago in April by a street sweeper, when the driver fell asleep coming home from work. “It was 7 a.m. They were probably doing 65 miles an hour when they hit it,” she remembers. “It totaled the helix, it just exploded. Stone hit the house, hit the barn, went across the road.”

She heard it from the barn. Stones lay everywhere, shattered, unusable. “It didn’t really hit me until I came out and I was shooting video—I always have my camera—and I could see that it was destroyed. I burst into tears while filming. And I put that video on social media and the world just turned out, because the world knows me for the helix.”

Alvin’s sculpture park was already listed on the map for the Vermont Crafts Council’s Spring Open Studio Weekend, just a month away. “It was an emergency—I needed to show up for the state of Vermont,” she says, “but it was a very difficult technical structure.” Hundreds of people flocked to help, from masons and friends to novices, with Alvin directing every hand. In an astonishing three weeks, the helix was rebuilt, from new stone, on higher ground. The old, shattered stone was incorporated inside—at what is called the “heart” of the wall.

“Everyone asks, ‘How long did it take you to rebuild?’” She pauses, clearly bothered by a question that misses the point. “Sculpture is not like that—or painting or poetry. It’s the cumulative years that get you to the place where you are a master. Yes, it took three weeks of labor with a variety of people. And then the actual build was four days, with 20 people each day. But really”—she gives me a hard look—“it took 30 years of mastering my own craft.”

Going Too Fast, You Are

There is a signpost in Alvin’s backyard, not far from the pizza oven, with signs pointing off in all directions and the names and distances of every place in the world where Alvin has made sculptures, from West Tisbury, on Martha’s Vineyard, to Valle de Bravo, Mexico, to Suzhou, China. There have been multiple voyages to Domodossola, in northern Italy, to restore ancient stone houses through the Vermont design-build school Yestermorrow. And adventures restoring an old stone house in the Portuguese Azores, on the cliff face of a remote island called Flores.

She has created giant time sculptures around the United States. She calls them clocks—structures that operate on solstice, equinox, or birth/death dates. “I really appreciate time,” she says. “I feel like a tiny little sliver of it is given to me to pack some things into.” There’s In Good Time at Duke University in North Carolina; Time and Again at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont; Time Sweeps at Rowan University in New Jersey. And in Tennessee, there is a 1,000-foot-long labyrinth called Time for Love, marking the date a woman’s beloved husband died—on February 24, as the sun rises and angles through a window, it shines at heart level, above a bench in the center of the labyrinth.

“Someday,” Alvin remarks, “the romance and importance of that will be lost. And I love that the mystery of something as simple as one man’s birthday and death day will be completely lost. And people will wonder and ponder and try to figure out why some strange people built these strange things in this place. I love planting the seed of a mystery, because I love to solve the mysteries.”

Time goes hand in hand with stone. The ancient material is inherently contemplative, and so it seems completely obvious why there is a hand-painted cutout of Yoda attached to Alvin’s new barn’s rugged exterior, with the words proclaiming: “Going too fast, you are.” Stone, and everything about this place, is a reminder to slow down.

“When I’m tearing apart walls in Italy, I know that those people who built them 500 years ago were going through their own day-to-day things, just as I am,” Alvin says. “The stone carries the energy of those intentions, and you can feel the old hands of the old workers as they put them together. You can feel their thoughts. You can see it physically, when they were tired. It’s a story you can read.”

And it’s a story that brings us back to hands. When Alvin is working, she can look at the pile of stone, look at the wall, and the next rock is the only rock she sees. “It’s nonverbal,” she tells me. “And I pick it up, and I put it on the wall, and I turn around, and the next rock that goes on the wall is the only rock I see. If I come back with a rock that doesn’t fit in the hole, it goes in another spot. It doesn’t go back. It’s always forward.”  

To see more of Thea Alvin’s creations and to learn about her workshops, go to myearthwork.com/thea-alvin.

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Sometimes people belong to a place so deeply, they can’t imagine being anywhere else. Maybe it’s land where generations of their ancestors put down roots, or maybe it’s somewhere they’ve spent their whole lives searching for—either way, explaining exactly what that place means to them can prove elusive.

A few years ago, three women who shared a deep love of Maine and boundless creativity set out to show in words and photographs how the homes we choose not only reflect who we are, but also tell the story of a place that, to us, is unlike any other. Maura McEvoy, Basha Burwell, and Kathleen Hackett traveled the state’s back roads and waterways to produce The Maine House, which they said was inspired by “our desire to record the Maine of our childhoods, a Maine that is swiftly vanishing.” Offering an intimacy not unlike that of looking through the family album of someone you have just met, the book struck a chord with readers around the world.

This year, its sequel, The Maine House II (Vendome 2024), continues the trio’s quest. They drove thousands of miles, rowed or were ferried by fishermen, knocked on countless doors, and made new friends, all in pursuit of the question: What makes a house a Maine house? And beyond that, they wanted to show the indefinable qualities that—to paraphrase Burwell describing her own cottage—make a home our ballast, anchor, and compass.

In putting together their sequel to The Maine House, the authors looked for properties that have been preserved, restored, and sensitively expanded to show how vital it is “to rescue Maine’s quirky architectural history if we are going to preserve its singular nature, one that goes hand in hand with reverence for the land.” Fittingly, the home profiles are arranged by what type of land they occupy: inshore, inland, and island.

Inshore: The Falls at Crockett Cove

Nestled into evergreens on the rocky shore of Maine’s Deer Isle, the Falls at Crockett Cove is among a handful of cottages that survive from the nearly 50 that were designed or renovated in this area by Emily Muir, a self-taught architect and modernist pioneer. Built in 1968, the property has been restored and updated, but current owners Carolyn and Ray Evans have taken pains to honor Muir’s vision: painting cabinets in original colors, matching new flooring to the old. “What was important to her is now important to me,” Carolyn tells the authors.

Inland: Panther Pond

The Maine tradition of rustic family cabins known as summer camps lives on at Panther Pond, a birch-accented structure that reposes on its namesake lake in the state’s southern interior. It was built in 1907 by Robert Treat Whitehouse, whose wife, Florence Brooks Whitehouse, was a noted author, artist, and suffragist. Florence’s great-granddaughter, Anne Gass, is among the group of siblings who are now the property’s caretakers, and when she’s at the camp, Anne often thinks of the women who came before her: folding towels on the bed just as she does now, or turning the kids loose to spend all day in the woods.

And as with previous generations, Anne and her siblings often invite guests here. But whether newcomers are asked back depends on the amount of pioneer spirit they bring to staying in a 117-year-old lodge, where a chipmunk might hop onto your bed. Wildlife is a fact of life here, as is the rough-hewn decor that’s so old that Anne doesn’t even know where it came from. “What she does maintain, however,” the authors write, “is that it will never change.”

Island: The Lighthouse

“There is beauty and dignity in leaving things as they are,” the authors write. “And, perhaps, nowhere is that more compelling than in the lighthouse where Jamie Wyeth lives through all four seasons.” That lighthouse—Tenants Harbor Light, built in 1857 on an island in southwestern Penobscot Bay—was bought in 1978 by Jamie’s father, famed artist Andrew Wyeth, himself the son of another art legend, N.C. Wyeth. Jamie carries on the family legacy as a distinguished painter in his own right, although in making this lighthouse his home, he knew he would be living and working in a place that was among his father’s favorite subjects.

“My father pretty much painted it all,” Jamie says, adding jokingly, “I thought maybe I’d paint the bugs.” But instead he found endless inspiration in the island, the water, and especially the gulls that are his constant companions. “I could live four lifetimes and not scratch the surface of what this place offers up to me every day.”

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People might buy a house for its immaculate kitchen or sprawling green yard, but Doug and Cory Kallfelz bought theirs for its imperfect hardwood floors. The rustic fir boards inside the former 1890s one-room schoolhouse show scars from scraping chairs and desks and pounding little feet; those same distressed planks would later withstand being thumped and thrashed with toy trucks by the couple’s two young boys (now teenagers, with one in college). The floors tell the story of an evolving family in the house that they built on the corner of two streets, Bridge and Hall, in the maritime village of Warren, Rhode Island.

“These were the original floors when we pulled up the shaggy green carpet,” Doug says. “They have all these little patches and spaces where they’ve been infilled, by us or before us, and the planks and old handcrafted nails periodically pop out of the floor, and we whack them back in.”

Only three things from the original schoolhouse remain: the well-loved floors, the refurbished front door (sandblasted with the number 22 for their address and painted bright red), and a rectangular transom above the back porch door. Doug and Cory salvaged a few weathered planks and beams from the original structure—an 800-square-foot, one-story Greek Revival—which they’ve incorporated into their three-story, townhouse-style renovation and separate garage space to give it the classic look of a crisp Nantucket cottage. They added cedar shingles on the outside, which only look better with age as they fade to a silver-gray that provides an elegantly muted counterpoint to the blue sky and vivid violet hydrangeas.

The couple met while they were both studying architecture at Syracuse University. They moved to Rhode Island in 2002 and first settled into an apartment on the East Side of Providence while working as architects for Union Studio, a sustainable-design firm where Doug now is managing partner. They bought the Warren fixer-upper in 2004, when they were expecting their first child, Otto.

“We wanted a project, and we got one,” Cory says. “This location is particularly appealing, because it’s walkable to downtown and the water, and the bike path is a stone’s throw away.” The home is surrounded by their neighbors’ Victorian cottages, many of which Cory and Doug helped renovate.

“The base things were right: the site and location, the neighborhood,” Cory says, adding, “There was a slew of us who had babies at the same time. Some of those external things you can’t measure or design for, but they happen to influence why we’re going to stay and make these changes to evolve the house.”

After they had moved in and Otto was born, Cory eventually left Union Studio to create her own residential-design firm based at their home. Bridge Hall Design is named after the two streets that intersect at their nest. As they settled, they began nearly 20 years of transformations that would document the metamorphosis of their abode to suit their family’s needs.  

Like the floors, their family table tells a tale. They built the dining room around the dimensions of the rectangular wooden Scandinavian-style table sourced in Vermont. It was the first thing they bought as newlyweds living in the East Side apartment, and bringing it with them was mandatory. It became the centerpiece of raising their children.

“This had to be a workhorse space,” Cory says. “It still has remnants from art projects and the grime of small children.” They attempted to replace it with an upgraded table, but their younger son, Max, said it just wasn’t right, and the old table should stay. So it remains.

As well it should, since the midcentury-modern Thonet canework chairs surrounding the table also tell a story that might suit Martha Stewart. Cory discovered and purchased the set of 10 vintage oak chairs on eBay; they were then transported from the Enron boardroom in Houston, Texas, by a Greyhound bus to the bus depot in Providence. “They were in the hold where the luggage goes,” Cory says with a laugh. “Some of them still have an Enron bar code.”

It’s often a topic of dinner party discussion around their table, which dominates the space adjacent to the kitchen. Separating the dining area from the living room are twin white columns accented by crown molding at the ceiling. The home itself is a 20-by-40-foot column.

“It’s not hard to be cozy when the footprint is as small as this,” Doug says. “It’s one of the great assets of this house—just by virtue of the size of it, it’s inherently cozy.”

Changes they’ve made to the kitchen, dining room, and living room include heightening the first floor to accommodate 9-foot-6 ceilings, adding colonial-style trim to windows and walls, and constructing built-in shelves to store wine, books, photos, and keepsakes. They use every inch of a tight footprint. “We think of this home as the inside of a sailboat. You’re knitting things into corners and finding ways to make it as livable and useful as possible,” Doug says, “so that the space can live large.”

The sailboat theme extends past the second floor—with its large bedroom, guest bedroom, and home office—to the third floor, the former attic, which is now a small apartment for their sons. The stair railing is created from boat hardware, and Rhode Island landmarks are featured in the decor, including a sign for Newport’s Hammetts Wharf, which Doug designed with Union Studio. Hanging wall pieces pay tribute to local institutions such as Del’s Lemonade, Benny’s, and Apex (another site Doug is currently working on).

At the foot of the window-lined staircase is a school of bronze-cast fish, protruding from the wall, swimming in a pool of natural light. Several were brought back from the couple’s honeymoon in Greece, and Doug’s parents added to their collection after vacationing there. “We designed this spot for the light to hit, and you appreciate it every time you come down the stairs,” Cory says.

The new back porch provides a spot for winding down. “In the summertime, we have a couch out there, and it’s protected and private, and enclosed,” Doug says. “It’s a wonderful place to sit and hang out with people. Even just the two of us on a summer day.”

The family is satisfied with all the work, even though it took nearly two decades to complete. “If we had done this all at one time, then it wouldn’t be what we have today,” Doug says. “It’s because of how life unfolded—the fact that we did this incrementally, over 15, 20 years—we lived with it long enough to know what we really wanted, and the choices we made over time added up to something more than the sum of its parts.”  

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When Sam Hooper was growing up on his family’s farm in Brookfield, Vermont, he worked alongside his parents and brothers, haying, cutting wood, slopping pigs, repairing fences, clearing snow—a multitude of chores all done by hand. The rugged labor took its toll on his work gloves (“I’d go through five pairs in just a winter,” he recalls), until one day he put on a Green Mountain–brand pair. They were meticulously handmade from goatskin, a craft honed and perfected by three generations of the Haupt family and their small company in the nearby town of Randolph. And that day is when this glove story begins.

“I went, Wow,” Hooper says. “I was floored by them”—by how comfortable they were, how supple and flexible, and so durable that he could not wear them out. Hands down, they were unlike any he had ever worn.

Hooper eventually went off to college in Connecticut. Upon graduating in 2016, he returned home to work in the marketing department of Vermont Creamery, which was founded by his mother, Allison, and Bob Reese, and known nationwide for its butter and its specialty cheeses made from cow and goat milk. Soon afterward, he learned that Kurt Haupt Jr., the third generation to own Green Mountain Glove Company, was preparing to retire.

The company was struggling. A few years earlier, a major garden supply retailer that featured Green Mountain work gloves as a top-of-the-line product had been sold to a national corporation, which chose to offer cheaper, mass-produced gloves. Even the company’s core business—protective gloves made specifically for lineworkers, a product that needed to be flawless to ensure their safety—was under increasing pressure from overseas manufacturers. One of the country’s last local glove makers was fighting to survive.

Hooper, then 23, had long been fascinated by the manufacturing process. At the creamery he had seen raw milk become 4 million pounds of products sold to people who loved them. Green Mountain Glove Company had been in Vermont since 1920, and unlike young entrepreneurs who flock to start-ups, Hooper had this feeling, this optimism, that he might be able to stitch his ambition and vision to its existing legacy. In the summer of 2017, he went to see Kurt Haupt.

“I asked to be an apprentice,” Hooper says. “I wanted to know every step of the process that’s been perfected the Haupt way…. I asked Kurt, ‘How did you learn?’ He told me that one winter he needed gloves, and his father said, ‘Fine. I’m setting you up at this machine. Just get used to following the material. It takes a lot of time as you graduate to the next step.’”

For six months, Haupt and his daughter, Heidi, taught Hooper the intricate steps to make the best work gloves in the world, and also why each step mattered. And Hooper kept graduating to the next one.

He learned why the fibers in goatskin made it both supple and tough; how to look for the slightest imperfections in the leather; how to select and cut sections for thumbs, for fingers, for the back; why they sewed seams on the outside (so there would be more finger space inside); how to do the special double seams and the tricky thumb attachments. He also learned that the incessant clatter of the company’s sewing machines from the 1940s and ’50s was the music of skilled sewers, some of whom had worked on the machines longer than he had been alive. 

By the end of his apprenticeship, Hooper could make a glove that would pass as a Haupt. At night he did market research, figuring out whether he could—or should—make the leap from student to owner. He decided yes, and in early 2018, Hooper became the first person outside the Haupt family to own the company. Heidi Haupt stayed on as operations manager and sewing supervisor, as well as keeper of institutional memory.

Hooper knew the challenges. For one thing, the company’s factory was showing its age. Driven by an environmental ethic, he converted the coal burner to wood pellets, retrofitted the building with its first layers of insulation, and added solar panels. Within two years he had created a net-zero user of power.

He also needed to expand the customer base well beyond the time-honored utility worker. “We can’t lose sight that we make gloves for people where it’s life and death that they are made right,” he says. “The fact that we make gloves for utility lineworkers gives us leverage: ‘These gloves are made for people who trust their lives to them. Now they are for you.’”

His most delicate decision was to rebrand the entire line: Green Mountain Glove Company became Vermont Glove. “It was a bit scary,” Hooper admits. “They had a 100-year-old heritage. I did not want to offend the Haupt family. That name represented four generations of the best glove makers in the world. But I got their blessing. It was the right time, if we were going to be widely known to consumers and not just utility workers.

“And when you ask people outside New England where the Green Mountains are, many don’t know. Vermont has cachet—you aspire to its lifestyle. We felt being here for a century making these gloves gave us clout to use the name.”

But some traditions remained. For instance, many glove styles still bear names that read like codes, such as the most popular all-purpose glove, the AG47R0. “I have no idea where that name comes from,” Hooper says. “But it doesn’t matter. It’s always been that name. It’s kind of cool, really.”

And so, sometimes the young lead the way. The workforce has expanded, while the number of gloves that leave the factory each month is now more than 1,300 pairs. “But we have to be careful we don’t grow too fast,” he says.

Today, at age 30, Hooper works 80 to 90 hours a week. He lives in an old hunting camp on his family’s 67-acre homestead. He still works outdoors as often as he can. Still works with a pair of gloves made just down the road, as comfortable and as strong as the first ones that made him go Wow.

“We think about who we are, our value system,” Hooper says. “It does matter. We are time-tested. We are still here. That is a testament.” vermontglove.com

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