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I’ve Been Making Maine Sea Salt for over 20 Years. We wanted to start a Maine business, and make something. One day I was in a health food store, and spotted some sea salt on the shelf.
I was unemployed, Sharon and I talked about making something to sell at farmers markets. I couldn’t see myself making soap. How about jam? I was in a health food store one day and there was sea salt from France on the shelf. I thought to myself, we could make salt! No one in Maine was making sea salt. Not since the American revolution has salt been made in Maine. We had no idea how to go about making sea salt. I tried several methods in the beginning. We used a pan and boiled sea water. That was expensive. Eventually with research decided solar was the best way. The sun’s energy was free! Solar is all so the best method for salt crystals to form. My father helped me build solar tables from plywood and two by fours like a pup tent. I put a liner to hold the pool and covered with greenhouse plastic. It worked great! Eventually I had over eighty solar tables. Soon found out that wouldn’t work, too much work. Harvesting each house, filling with sea water, opening and closing the doors on each end. Today we’re in Marshfield Maine. Evaporate sea water in ten, 15 foot by 200 foot greenhouses. Still a lot of work, but we manage to sell all we make each season.
Our first product, was a 1 oz size for cooking lobsters. The Packaging, was a handmade envelope with the salt inside and directions on the back. I took the “Maine Sea Salt for Cooking Lobster” to the area fish markets to sell. The reaction was, “are you crazy?” I begged them to try it, free, give it a couple days. It wasn’t long before they started calling and asked for more. That’s when I knew it would succeed.
Our salt works took off. Maine Sea Salt is throughout the United States, in Health food stores. Specialty food shops, and high end restaurants. Our packaging has expanded from the 1 oz bag. Maine Sea Salt is in convenient, refillable glass grinders. Our fancy gift jar is for special occasions. The 14 oz wide glass jar is our bulk, perfect to keep in the kitchen. My newest, is a 3 oz Salt Shaker, with a easy flip top lid. Has large holes for easy shaking. It’s great!
The Sea Water Comes From Buck’s Harbor, Maine. Visit our website to learn more of the process.
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I have two distinct lines. My Whimsical Wall Whales are wrought from repurposed pine boards ,and employ my excellent drawing and carving skills to bring soul, texture and animation to these whimsical anthropomorphic wall creatures. Each one is unique in character, some employ the old layers of paint in the detailing.
My Fine Line Shells feature my highly detailed pen and ink drawings in limited edition prints on Maine Scallop Shells. The images recall the traditional, nautical art of Scrimshaw and feature many local lighthouses ,Maine schooners, and New England sea creatures. A brass style easel is included with each shell. Each piece has hand drawn detailing and is signed and dated by the artist.
I am a graduate of the Massachusetts College of Art . I earned a B.F. A. in 1978 and moved to Camden that same year. I was fortunate to find a house on idyllic Hosmer Pond with a view of Bald Mountain. Here I married a British sailor and raised two sons who had a beach for a front yard. I worked in a fine artisan craft store and art gallery for 35 years in downtown Camden .
My fine art and illustration training enables me to work in different mixed medias ,which I continue to explore on large and small scales. I am primarily interested in the power of line to describe emotion, movement and the ephemeral nature of reality. The natural world in its complexity and extraordinary beauty, is a constant source of wonder and inspiration.
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Maria Kokenos is the maker responsible for Silybum creation. Her soul lives in the tip of a pencil, her dancing feet and in the dirt under her fingernails. She sources meaning from passion, and dedicates her days to practice and creation. She is empowered by the versions of Self that she has invented and is constantly inspired to meet the parts that develop next. Everyday is full of uncertainty and intention. Her art is deeply infused with imagination, earth, and soul.
Silybum Arts is a Maine coast art studio focusing on sculptural ceramic. Maria sources inspiration from the deep, whimsical pockets of Maine woodlands, mountains and coastline. Her creations represent a curious and youthful nature that we are all drawn to. An item that connects you to a wild space, moment, or idea. In an effort to express the human experience through her sculpture, Maria also incorporates a lot of figures depicting different emotional weights and release.
Silybum Arts used to house both Maria’s dried floral design and ceramic, but flowers have officially branched off into “Fogwood Gardens,” and now Silybum will just be ceramic.
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Jenny is a Midwestern girl who unexpectedly found herself living long-term on the East Coast. Frank was born and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts (so it is a complete mystery how he ended up living a rural lifestyle). Both Jen and Frank are health care providers by training, but somewhere along the line realized they are happiest living, playing, and working close to nature, and sharing those experiences with others. We both share a love of New England history and traditional skills as well as the day to day rhythms of living on a 1700s era Maine farm. We have been making maple syrup for the last 10 years in the traditional fashion via a wood fired evaporator and classic, 19th century styled sugarhouse. Frank has long appreciated the beauty and uniqueness of wood and during the quiet times makes wooden gifts from wood sourced mostly from the farm. It has been a joy (and at times a struggle) to learn how to build a small farm business from the ground up without the benefit of having generations of family on the farm preceding us.
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I have been painting for over 50 years. I have just felt most myself with a paintbrush ever since I met one when I was 5 years old. I went to quite a few art schools before setting off on my own course. I moved to Maine in 1987 to be closer to nature and have a garden where I could grow a lot of flowers. Flowers and nature are my inspiration, I see nature as a whimsical being, and I portray her as such.
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Portland Boat Mattress was born out of our sister company Portland Mattress Makers. Since 1938, Portland Mattress Makers (originally Maine Bedding and Furniture) has been handcrafting mattresses and box springs in our factory in Maine. Being on Casco Bay, we received many requests to build custom mattresses for many of our customers’ boats. Over time, we were making so many boat mattresses we decided to start a new company.
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I have been a full-time professional sculptor working exclusively in hardwoods for the past 40 years. There have been several phases of subject matter for this work. For several years, the concentration was on sculptural lamps, clocks, vases, candelabra and other home accessories. During another period of about eight years, the focus was solely on sculpture in the round of a floral motif. After a twenty-two year period spent creating a line of highly-finished, sculptural, gourmet cooking utensils, my focus has returned to drawing inspiration from all things botanical. The process consists of hand-guided band–sawing, hand-carving, and sanding of solid pieces of wood. There is no bending of the wood in any way. To my knowledge, I am the only person doing this type of work to this degree of finish.
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In 2020, Islandport Press celebrates its 20th anniversary and we couldn’t be more proud given the radical and disruptive change that has swept through the book industry since we published Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island in the spring of 2000. Publisher Dean Lunt started the company in his Yarmouth basement and shipped early book orders from his garage, at times in temperatures so cold he had to plug in spot heaters so the tape would stick to the cardboard boxes. Today we have published more than 200 titles, not only original books, but also out-of-print books that we have revived and brought new attention to both the book and the author. Finding hidden gems whether in the guise of a new author or a forgotten classic is something we treasure and take great pride in doing.
Islandport now employs five full-time staffers—Dean, Holly, Shannon, Teresa, and Piper—and work with a host of contributing editors and freelance professionals. One thing that hasn’t changed is that from the beginning we have been dedicated to this mission:
Islandport is a dynamic, award-winning publisher dedicated to stories rooted in the essence and sensibilities of New England. We strive to capture and explore the grit, heart, beauty, and infectious spirit of the region by telling tales, real and imagined, that can be appreciated in many forms by readers, dreamers, and adventurers everywhere.
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I endeavor to create paintings that evoke a sensory feeling associated with place, nature and experience. Paintings evolve from a process of applying layer upon layer with multiple glazes to create movement, translucency and depth. A painting becomes completed for me if it reaches a point of evoking an experiential feeling, with multiple viewers connecting with their own individualized interpretation.
As a process painter, one who mixes spontaneity of expression with reflective development of each painting, my work broadly falls within three themes of often overlapping but abstract experience: works that evoke a memory sense of experience of the natural environment; works that evoke a connection to personal action and movement; works that splash with color, texture and line, evoking a reactive feeling followed by visual movement through the work. Generally, I prefer to work on larger pieces so the viewer feels she is walking into the work, with details that unfold the closer she gets. This is achieved by using a combination of old techniques of glazing and layering while also incorporating contemporary staining, field, splatter, hard edge, and bold color techniques. The bubbling found in many paintings is one that I’ve developed over the last six years, and it moves in and out of my work. I paint, reworking the piece until the work resonates a feeling of a place or experience or wonder that I enjoy.
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I was knife obsessed from the time I was about 6 years old. I think that the swordplay in the classic movie “A Princess Pride” made me first start thinking about the fact that someone had to make those swords. Inigo Montoya’s father was a swordsmith, so cruelly murdered by the “Six fingered man”. I thought that having the ability to design and then produce any knife or sword I could imagine would be the coolest job imaginable. I was lucky enough to get a job at a retail knife store when I was 15 and that introduced me to a world of talented, supportive craftspeople. I made my first knife at 17 and was hooked. I taught my first Knifemaking class in 2006 and eventually started a Bladesmithing program at the New England School of Metalwork where I stayed for 9 years before striking out on my own.
