York Corner
We love it when farmer's markets or craft fairs give us a chance to learn a little, first-hand, from artisans.
At the York Farmer's Market two Saturdays ago, Debra Marino was selling her own hand-crafted glass jewelry - earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings and key chains - and we got to ask her about that art.
She starts with rods of colored glass imported from Murano, Italy, she said, and, in a process called lampworking, melts them over a propane torch that rests upright in a fixed position. Using a metal rod called a mandrel, coated at one end so that the glass won't stick to it, she's able to shape the glass, and to manipulate colors in it, to a form she desires. Slate tools, she said, also won't stick to hot glass, and mean that she can also vary textures, and even inject bubbles - but through a process she wasn't keen on our revealing, since it's a kind of trade secret.
The process is as old as fire itself, she said, with primitive lamp-workers creating a cone-shaped oven to concentrate heat at a fixed point above an open fire. Glass-working with larger pieces, she added, involves a different process and requires an oven.
Murano (the variation on Debra's name is just a little fluke of fortune) is a Venetian island famous for centuries for its glass works, she said, and for the presence there of the three chief ingredients of glass: sand, soda lime and potash. Variations in the relative percentages of these, she said, are what give a piece of glass its color.
She's been to Venice, Debra said, and seen glass made - but that was before she took up the craft herself. She was introduced to it by friends in British Columbia, where she says it's quite popular, when her husband Alex's work as a clinical psychologist took him there for a six-months stay. She's now been making glass jewelry for three years and selling it for the last year-and-one-half. Locally, you can see her jewelry at Gloria Gustafson's York Village Art Gallery, and at the gift shop at York Hospital. It's also available in Portsmouth at a shop called Puttin' on the Glitz, and will soon also be at a new shop there, due to open in about a month, Debra said, called Mainely New Hampshire.
Her next big boost, she added, will come from having a few of her works on display at the New York Botanical Garden at the same time that Dale Chihuly's works will be on exhibit there. Chihuly is acknowledged as a world-class sculptor in glass - perhaps the world-class sculptor; that New York exhibition is now on, we discovered by "Googling" Chihuly, and will be until October 29. (We recommend checking out Chihuly's web site, www.chihuly.com, for some awe-inspiring images.)
Dale and husband Alex, she told us, expected to be heading back out to British Columbia for a two-week vacation at about this time, so you won't see her this week at the farmer's market. She'll be back, though, she said, for the market coming up on the 15th, and we promised to say hello again then.
Two weeks ago, space constrictions here prevented us from revealing that one of the several appealing aspects of the new 421 Café in the center of York Village was the fact that it's open late on weekday afternoons when many other local eateries are closed.
Last time we checked, proprietors Susan Mogavero and Brian Kirwin were staying open Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., and from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. (and sometimes a little later) on the weekends. But they confessed that they were thinking of cutting back on those weekday afternoon hours if there wasn't sufficient demand.
So just a hint, here, to any persons cruising around at 4 p.m. looking for a cappuccino and something like a home-made raspberry turnover…
We also wanted to report a bit more about Susan and Brian - to extend condolences to Brian for the recent loss of a grandmother, but also congratulations for having a daughter, Jordan, 17, homeschooled and now checking out the possibility of studying linguistics in Italy, and a son, Bailey, 12, who has just been accepted as a viola player into the Youth Symphony of Portland.
And we'll conclude, in this season of family parties, with this tale from Susan.
Every other year on the fourth Saturday in July (and this is one of those years), her family gathers, something like 150 strong, at Prouty Beach on a lake in Newport, Vermont. They include the children and grandchildren of Susan's mother's mother, Germaine Moeykens, the widow of a Vermont farmer and the mother of 13 children, who is now 95 and living in Kennebunk ("and doing very well," said Susan.
At this gathering there are so many attendees that they wear colored-coded tee-shirts to identify which branch of the family they represent; the men play a horseshoe-like game the likes of which neither she nor Brian have ever seen elsewhere; there's a contest to determine who's come from farthest away - and once a woman who'd learned of the gathering on the Internet came all the way from Belgium.
And of course they eat - usually something like a cafeteria-style catered barbecue.
Susan, who is very much a people-person, is looking forward eagerly to this occasion, though saddened a little that Brian, tied to the new business, won't be able to go.
With the promise of summer now in full bloom, we wish her a grand time, and look forward to checking back in, come August, for a full report.
