Founders and organizers Reba Maisel and Barbara Cerva will hold their third annual Harvard’s Artisans Multimedia Gallery Show and Sale Nov. 18 and 19 at the Congregational Church, with proceeds to benefit the Harvard Council on Aging. One-third of the more than 30 artisans live in Harvard, said Maisel, and three other participants grew up in Harvard and are daughters of women who were active in the arts. Sheila Cregar of Old Shirley Road has knit two wool afghans that will be given as door prizes.
From left: Event organizers Reba Maisel, Sheila Cregar, and Barbara Cerva. Cregar displays one of her two handknit afghans, which will be door prizes at the sale. (Courtesy photo)
On Saturday, Nov. 18, from 7 to 10 p.m. there will be a wine and cheese reception to meet the artisans, for which a $10 donation is appreciated. Indian Hill chamber music ensemble will provide background music, and there will be a silent auction, with most of the items donated by the artists themselves.
One of the door prizes Saturday night will be a Cregar afghan. Asked when she started knitting, Cregar said it was when she worked with her mom in the beauty shop in the family home on Old Shirley Road. “I’d knit while someone was under the dryer,” she said. She continues to “do hair” in people’s homes, and she brings a choice of cap or hood dryer and her knitting. On the day I met her, Cregar was off to visit a 97-year-old woman. And she was taking an afghan to work on while her customer was under the hood.
On Sunday, the sale continues from noon to 4:30, with fancy desserts for purchase. A second Cregar afghan will be given as a door prize, and the winners of the silent auction will be announced at the end of the afternoon.
This year again, the sale encompasses a wide range of artistic mediums: glassware, jewelry, photography, pottery, quilting, weaving, watercolors, woodworking, and more. The three artisans representing another generation of Harvard artists are Eleanor Brown Pickard, quilter; Sylvia Brown, leather-craft artist; and Elizabeth Garrick Knaplund, knitter.
Pickard, daughter of the late Nancy and Charlie Brown of Old Littleton Road, said in an email that she grew up “in a home surrounded by the arts.” She started sewing when she was very young, had her first instruction in junior high, and by the time she graduated, she had made her own wardrobe, which she wore to school. After college, she moved to California and worked at North Sails, making sails and spinnakers for racing boats and yachts. It was there that Pickard made her first quilt, a scrap quilt, using fabric saved from her school days. When she returned to Harvard, she made drapes and slipcovers for customers in Harvard and surrounding towns.
A passionate quilter
In 1975 Pickard married and moved to Littleton, where she rediscovered quilting and became passionate about every step of the process. She is currently a member of the New England Quilt Museum and the Concord Piecemakers Quilt Guild. Her work has been published in McCall’s Quick Quilts, a national magazine. At her home studio, she takes in customers’ quilt tops and machine quilts them with her long-arm sewing machine.
Pickard said that her more recent challenge has been to bring her piles of scraps and fabric under control. The result is what she calls “mini-quilts in the form of postcards.” They are small, she said, not quickly made, and create more scraps! She said she has been known to soothe herself with the dilemma by buying yet more fabric. She will bring a quilt and quilt cards to the sale.
Another daughter of Nancy and Charlie, Sylvia Brown, lived in Harvard for half her life. In addition to having the family house, her dad raised cows at a farm on Murray Lane, now a property of the Harvard Conservation Trust. Fittingly, Brown now lives with her husband at the old Twin Dairy Farm in Petersham, where, she said in an email, she maintains a herd of 15 llamas and enjoys gardening and living close to the land. She and her husband converted the dairy barn to office, shop, studio, and showroom spaces.
A designer and leather crafter
Educated in the arts, Brown’s life’s work is as a designer and leather-craft artist. For several years she worked in the leather industry creating racing suits for flat-track and road-racing champions. A founding member of the Cambridge Artists Cooperative in Harvard Square, she currently works as a promoter in the American art-craft movement. This season, Brown said, she is presenting a line of “finely crafted contemporary classic handbags and accessories.”
Maisel said Brown told her she is happy to participate in the artisans show and to give back for all that the Council on Aging did for her mom.
Elizabeth Garrick Knaplund, daughter of Joyce and the late Will Garrick, described herself as “a Harvard-raised girl who really likes to knit.” She said she started knitting in a home economics class at Bromfield, inspired by her mother’s knitted Mary Maxim sweaters. She enjoyed the years her father had sheep, when she learned about shearing, carding, and spinning wool.
Knitting on and off over the years, Knaplund started knitting every day after she left her job. She knits shawls, accessories, and things for her grandchildren from ethically sourced and dyed wools. She said when she’s not knitting or dreaming of the possibilities that yarn and designs inspire, she enjoys time with family and friends. She will have shawls and scarves for purchase.
