Samantha Van Pelt

Truth Soap Co. 

Gulf Breeze, FL

truthsoapco.com

RN Background Inspired Samantha Van Pelt to Create “Truth Soap”

Truth Soap Co was birthed by Samantha Van Pelt “out of a desire to have safe, healthy, options to put on our bodies,” she says. “As a registered nurse, my hands cracked and bled.” What helped “was oily, greasy, and toxic. There was absolutely no way I was putting that on my skin.”

She created Truth Soap Co., out of Gulf Breeze, FL, featuring “Deception Free,” all natural bath and body products like the Mango Butter Lotion Bar, her number one seller. “It protects the hands through multiple washings and is not greasy,” Samantha says. “All our products are lovingly hand poured, using butters and oils sourced from around the world. They are 100 percent natural.”

This is Samantha’s second Market Days. “We absolutely loved the show last year and were treated wonderfully by everyone putting on the event,” she says.

She has traveled as far as Newport, RI participating in the Rose Cliff Mansion Festival of  Flowers.  “We even met Martha Stewart and she has our Peppermint Lotion Bar.”

Mockingbird Forge

Jeff Mohr, Blacksmith

Crawfordville, FL

mockingbirdforge@peoplepc.com

Crawfordville Blacksmith’s Clients Included Kenny Rogers, Evander Holyfield

Jeff Mohr of Mockingbird Forge in Crawfordville has studied his craft with the best  blacksmiths in the U.S. and in Croatia. Jeff, who has been a Market Days regular for 30 years, is one of three featured artists for the 2023 Tallahassee event.

In 1999, Jeff traveled with a University of Georgia-sponsored group of economics professors and craftspeople to Croatia. He was humbled to see “how practical” the blacksmiths in that country work “while enjoying a rich life full of family and traditions.” Now a noted instructor of blacksmithing on his own, he has taught at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, and the New England School of Metalwork in Auburn, ME; and was given an honorary doctorate of medal arts degree by the Florida Artist Blacksmiths Association.

“Since 1981 I have been making my living running my own blacksmith shop. I participate in fine arts and craft shows around the country. I enjoy selling my craft directly to the public,” he says.

Many of his pieces are commissioned by individual clients in interior and exterior architectural iron. His clients have included Evander Holyfield and Kenny Rogers. He designed, forged and installed the entry gates for the Botanical Gardens of Georgia located in Athens in 2012.

When Jeff makes his products the steel is heated in a coal forge to about 2000 degrees Fahrenheit and shaped with various hammering techniques on an anvil.  “I use traditional tools and techniques and blend them with modern methods,” Jeff says. “With each work I strive to make it functional decorative and affordable while still preserving a bit of tradition.”

Jeff’s hand forged iron work being featured at Market Days includes dozens of items from fireplace sets, to brooms with forged handle, and to flowers, leaves, vases and other ornamentals.

Karen  & Leo Villaroman

Port Richey, FL

Husband & Wife Team Producing Hand-made Functional Stoneware

Market Days exhibitors Karin and Leo Villaroman have been creating functional stoneware pottery for 30 years.  The Villaroman’s pottery is nature oriented – birds, gators, frogs, fish, shells and leaves. It is oven, dishwasher, microwave, and food safe.

As Florida CraftArt has noted, the Villaromans create “decorative functional pottery. Using both hand-building and wheel-throwing techniques, their work incorporates basket textures and leaf or shell pressings to create festive yet functional decor. Their clay is high-fire earthenware”

Leo was educated in Japan and Philippines and taught in Australia and the Philippines. Karin is self-taught. Leo and Karin are originally from Atlanta. They now live in Port Richey and exhibit their stoneware throughout Florida throughout the year.

“We were long-time exhibitors at Market Days before  the Pandemic and  always  loved it,” Karin says. “Health problems  got in the way, but we are back. It is always a great show at the end of the year, and it a great place to go Christmas shopping.”

Scott Mattison,

Newman, GA,

Hand and crafted heirloom furniture and other wood items

http://mattisonwoodworks.com/

Madison Woodworks on Facebook

Princeton University Architect Carries on Family Hand-crafted Furniture Business

Scott Mattison is a Princeton University-trained architect utilizing that background as he works in the family business producing hand-crafted heirloom furniture. Scott and Mattison Wood Works, founded by his father, George, in the 1950’s, is a featured artist at the 2023 Market Days.

Did Princeton influence his woodworking? “Design work is design work and it is all in the details. Furniture is just another extension of designing and creating things,” Scott says. Another major influence was his father George, who worked as a high school shop teacher. Scott never took a class from his dad, “but some of it dripped off on me anyway.”

Furniture-making is not his full-time job. He still does architectural project management work in the Atlanta area. His 87-year-old dad continues to make cutting boards and other items.

Scott uses only North American hardwoods – walnut, cherry and maple. He does not use imported woods.

He will be offering cutting boards, charcuterie boards, an old fashion maple chopping table, Quarter Sawn white oak items and other shaker-style pieces – “I like clean, straight lines.”

Scott has been a Market Days regular for half-a-dozen years. The Tallahassee show “is special because it is so close to Christmas,” he says. “And I see people from past shows who say, hello, and tell me about something they bought and how it is holding up. It’s good to see people who have become your friends.”

Connie Bennett Farish / Connie Bennet Collection

Shelby, AL

Glass Artist

Facebook and Instagram

@ ConnieBennettCollection

Glass Artist Drawn to Market Days by her Customers’ Grandchildren

“There are generations of families that by tradition come to Market Days each year. I end up selling to the grandchildren of the original customers,” Connie Bennett Farish explains. This is the 20^th Market Days for the Shelby, Alabama artist, who creates glass jewelry, vases and other items.

“My love of fashion and color inspired me to develop techniques to incorporate glass into jewelry,” Connie says. “I discovered the profound effect color has on a woman’s mood when she puts an outfit together.”

She created a Connie Bennett Collection with most of the line “fired in a kiln by layering glass and film.” “I love to take images from nature and give it a new spin with sparkly, outrageous colors,” Connie says.

She has experimented with glass vases the last couple of years and “I have made some special designs to bring to Tallahassee this year;” partly for her customers’ grandchildren.

Tim Kuhlman

Kuhlman’s Rustic Cedar

Pensacola, FL

Kuhlman’s Rustic Cedar

Pensacola Woodcrafter Salvaged Wood After Dutch Elms Disease, Hurricane Ivan

Pensacola woodcrafter Tim Kuhlman, returning once again to Market Days, gets his salvaged cedar and other woods wherever he can find it – as in Minnesota following a Dutch Elms disease outbreak in the late 1970’s or Pensacola area forests after Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

“In 1978 I was working for a landscape company in Minneapolis, MN, when Dutch Elms disease devastated thousands of 100-year-old trees,” Tim says. “Nothing could save them, they were all cut down. I took one of the logs home and made an outdoor table.”  Tim used skills he had learned in Shop Class in high school.

Tim and his wife, Renae, started Kuhlman’s Rustic Cedar, now their full-time enterprise,  with a piece of salvaged wood from Hurricane Ivan in 2004 in Pensacola. “We began making cutting boards and other pieces and sold them at a local festival in Elberta ,AL,” Tim says. “We are the only vendor that we know of that salvages, planes and cuts our own wood. We were green before it was fashionable.”

Tim and Renae have been Market Days regulars for 10 years. This year, they are featuring kitchen trays with deer antlers and cheese slicers, along with many other cedar items. “Also something new this year is using resin colored fill which is becoming more and more popular,” Tim says. . “We are pleased that we have been invited back this year and excited with some of our new pieces.”

Holly Veres

Babette’s Bees & Teas

East Palatka, FL

babettesbeesnteas@gmail.com

Holly’s Honey-Based Products Inspired by Her Mom, Babette

Holly Verse’s honey-based

sweets, teas and beeswax products were inspired by her now deceased mom, Babette Veres. Holly, who named her East Palatka-based enterprise Babette’s Bees & Teas, is a featured artisan at the 2023 Market Days.

“I have always loved tea and honey, something I shared with my mom. When she passed, I was completely lost. I tried every to cope, and nothing helped,” Holly  remembers.

Holly had “dreamed of having honeybees and a large herb garden” and she made an important connection. Beth Murphy, of Sweet Southern Bees in High Springs. “Wow, how much I learned on my first day! I learned something about myself that day besides just bees. I found I felt calm when with the bees. I felt my mom was right there beside me.”

She works full time as a small business bookkeeper, but must still find time for Babette’s Bees & Teas. “I like to blend my own teas and honey infusions the most,” she says. She also makes all of her own candles, lip balms, hand balms and beeswax wraps.

Holly’s products at Market Days will include infused honey, creamed honey, honey marshmallows, honey candy and honey fudge, teas and candles, lip balms, hand balms and beeswax wraps. Honey marsh mellows, a specialty, is now her best seller.

Her calendar of arts and craft shows has grown substantially the last couple of years. In March, she was the sole honey vendor at the University of Florida’s Bee College. She often heard Tallahassee’s Market Days and friends kept saying “You have to go there!” It became “a bucket list kind of thing…And Wow, I finally got in. I feel like I have won the lottery.”

Mary Jo Spector

Tallahassee, FL

www.mjspector.com

Tallahassee Pen & Ink Artist Remembers as Eight-Year-Old Drawing Her Cat

Mary Jo Sector, in her eighth year as a Market Days presenter, has been drawing since elementary school and learning as she chased her cat.

“I stayed home sick from school one day when I was about eight and remember chasing the cat around the house, drawing it in different poses,” she says. Mary Jo also drew on family vacations, “something I continue to do when I go to Europe and other places.”

Mary Jo works primarily in pen and ink, “but I dabble in other media to keep my work fresh.”

She has been “working on my travel drawings this year, returning to places I visited and developing fully realized drawings, in particular Ireland.” She will be bringing drawings, limited edition prints, and note cards to Market Days. She also will be offering holiday ornaments and dragonflies from wire and rice paper.

Art is not her full-time job. An architect by training, she is a facilities planning project manager at Florida State University. Her art, however, is “a very necessary, essential” hobby. “It is an outlet for my creative energy. And meeting new people and selling art is always challenging and invigorating…”