Hanna Dausch, Four vases, 2020
Locally Sourced showcases the following contemporary producers in and around Pittsburgh’s three rivers. These makers are generating business opportunities through a combination of trade skills, strategic planning, and an ever-evolving product line, redefining craft manufacturing in the Steel City. Learn more about this maker network below, and enjoy the makers’ specially curated Spotify playlist.
And check out the museum store Locally Sourced Pop Up Shop, too!
Started in the second-floor bedroom of a carpeted apartment, today Bones and All operates out of a shop in Homewood. Zak Kruszynski and Kelsey Henson, with the help of their team, have worked on a wide range of custom furniture and fixtures designed for prominent Pittsburgh businesses, including the Ace Hotel, the Beauty Shoppe, and the Vandal in Lawrenceville.
Each block or tile is made in Brian Peters’ studio using 3D printing technology on custom ceramic 3D printers that Peters designed and built to create large-scale installations and custom works of art.
Ashley Cecil sees patterns that very few see. In bird specimens, trees, and flowers, she sees the human touch—humans’ impact on the natural world. Her paintings and patterns reorient that ailing human-made relationship to spark greater compassion for nature and all its many creatures.
During a residency in the Netherlands, Brian Peters started experimenting in 3D printing with ceramics, which ultimately changed the direction of his career. Founded in 2018, Coded Clay expanded on Peter’s existing company, Building Bytes, to include home décor and planters.
Not one who is prone to planning, Dausch figures out each hand-carved piece as she goes—a million mistakes on the Palm Router whittled down into a million and one unique textures and tones.
An experimenter at heart and a learner by nature, Ferrell is a professor at Seton Hill in Greensburg, PA, where he teaches students the fundamentals of design. As an multi-disciplinary educator, Ferrell’s works are often composites of more than one material—wooden furniture offset by metal details or porcelain cups nestled in oak trays.
Hayes launched her business with six fabric skus, a selection of preliminary sketches, and no idea how to sell fabric. Today, Hayes produces work in multiple mediums on more than ninety skus and eighteen wallpaper skus for an interior client list in the thousands. Years after launching her eponymous brand in Pittsburgh, Hayes created the podcast Gamechangers: A Mastermind for Creative Entrepreneurs as a platform to interview fellow artists and designers and discussion best business practices.
Founded by Tereneh Idia in 2014, Idia’Dega is a global, eco-design collaboration of Maasai, Oneida, and African American artists and designers. As a contemporary clothing line, Idia’Dega incorporates indigenous bead work and eco-friendly textiles with local, national, and international points of view on fashion and design.
Benjamin Saks was born in Cleveland, Ohio. A graduate from the School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University in 2008, Saks has worked in varied capacities in film, design, architecture, and business. Since launching KerfCase, Saks’ work has been published in the W.S.J., Make Magazine, G.Q., Elle, TechCrunch, and CNET.
Blackwell established her own creative career in 2014 when she founded Knotzland. As a self-taught seamstress who started with nothing but a sewing machine, an ironing board (that doubled as a desk), and a bag of thrifted clothing, Blackwell has quickly become Pittsburgh’s resident “Bowtie Lady.”
After being in art and making for most of her life, it took a motivating conversation with friends over oatmeal for Elise Birnbaum to start a ceramics studio. As its namesake suggests, Birnbaum’s work is inspired by simple things made in a neutral color palette to emphasize the sculptural nature of her stoneware clay bodies.
A math major turned glass sculptor, Margaret Spacapan graduated from Tulane University with a Bachelor of Fine Art and moved to Pittsburgh. Now, as a contemporary artist with a focus in glass working, Spacapan is blowing and cutting her own signature line of lighting, tableware, and sculpture.
Jarrod Futscher knew he was never going to do anything else; he was only ever going to be a glassblower. TAKTTIME is the result of that committed passion.
Designer Nicholas Volpe of Temper and Grit takes traditional means of making and uses his imagination to create something anew from a broad range of craft-based fields. From concept and design to prototyping and fabrication, Temper and Grit is a one-stop custom furniture and hardware shop.
What started out in 1988 in New York as “The Other Man’s Treasures” or T.O.M.T, is an ever evolving exercise in upcycling and redesigning found materials for a planet in climate change. Refit or die, as creative director Rodney Allen Trice would say.
Greg Gehner’s career started after receiving a blacksmithing and metals degree at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. But it wasn’t until receiving a sizeable architectural commission that Gehner established his own business in 2005. Transit Forge, in northwest Pennsylvania near Edinboro College is the result of years of great skill, care, and craft.
With the belief that art— in all its forms— can bring people together and elevate marginalized voices, Atiya Jones applies her linear lexicon to Pittsburgh’s public and private spaces, including TRYP hotel, Spirit, and Knotzland’s storefront, to inform and inspire all who enter.
Established in 2016, Jenna Vanden Brink Ceramics began as a line of earthenware and porcelain custom dish sets for best friends. That initial hand-painted and hand-carved pottery collection has expanded over the last four years to include porcelain jewelry, each wearable piece as uniquely whimsical as Vanden Brink’s functional ceramic wear.
Reiko Yamamoto is a potter. Combining the two techniques of hand-building and wheel throwing Yamamoto makes forms that she herself would want in her kitchen and home, including versatile pots, functional dishes, and eye-catching accessories.