On Peg & Awl’s Origins:
When we began Peg and Awl, our products were made from old things: treasures and relics found and recovered from misfortune and neglect that we transformed into wearable curiosities, inscribable keepsakes, and useable, long-lasting new treasures. When we started our company, we scoured flea markets for inspiring objects from the past and hunted through deconstruction sites in Philadelphia and old barns just outside of the city.
On the Present and Future of Peg and Awl:
While we began by reclaiming old things, such materials are not limitless, thus much of what we offer today is created using natural and sustainable materials, including wood from the country’s sustainable forests, American-made waxed canvas, recycled gold and silver, and locally sourced vegetable-tanned leather from tanneries using ecologically sound processes. We are always seeking out enduring and sustainable materials.
On the Peg and Awl’s Time Traveling Journey:
But, we still incorporate found leather, reclaimed wood, and antique textiles into the objects we create, although these are made in small batches and celebrated one-of-a-kinds. For us, the beauty begins with the journey and the quest—for those treasures old and abandoned or for that which is sustainable and ecologically sound. We seek to inspire and attempt to imbue each object with the odyssey and the moment when beauty discovered strikes the heart and startles the soul.
“Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.”
– Roald Dahl
My Story:
I grew up outside of Philadelphia and have always loved making things, drawing, and writing. I still have two little books that I made at the ages of six and eight, years that also saw me selling my paintings door to door for pennies. My Papa always encouraged the making—I remember him taking me to the local art store and walking amongst the aisles flush with abundant colours, tools, and all manner of supplies. I was smitten. I didn’t know if I had talent or just a love for art, but whatever it was, I was fortunate to have a family who supported me in the making.
“I’m restless. Things are calling me away.
My hair is being pulled by the stars again.”– Anaïs Nin
On the Journal Thief:
I like to tell people that a thief started our business. In the early 2000s, I was in Amsterdam to buy records and vintage clothing for my music shop (which I closed in 2004), when my bag was stolen. I was crushed, for my journal—my place of refuge—was in that bag. It was quite an event, as a group of strangers got together and attempted to track down my thief, but he got away.
I was devastated by the thought of having no pages to hide within. To cope, I set out to make a new journal. With magic on my side, I found a bookbindery with tools and materials I had never laid eyes on before. I stocked up and headed to the upholsterer’s shop a few doors down. It was filled—floor to ceiling—with dusty old leather baring marks of centuries of use, new leather, and furniture packed into every nook and cranny. I crawled upon that dusty floor and uncovered, among other things, a piece of well-worn antique leather from a chair from the 1800s. I purchased it, much to the shop owner’s surprise, and set to work binding my next journal using my thighs as a book press. The resulting book, with that battered old leather, looked like it had travelled through time many hundreds of years, and its pages begged for stories like that of the journal thief.
From then on, I was stopped daily by passers-by asking about the book, and in 2007, I started a new business: The Black Spot Books. I set up shop on Etsy and hauled my goods to craft shows, offering journals, book necklaces, jewelry, and photographs, inspired by and incorporating objects and materials from the past.
I met Walter, an incredibly talented painter and woodworker, later that year. On our first date, I took him to an abandoned house that I frequented. We shot a few photographs and picked up a few keepsakes, including an aged once-white door that, for the past decade, has served as the backdrop for many of our product photographs.
After Walter’s year long tour in Iraq with the U.S. Army, he and I decided to start a new company, merging all of the things we both love to make under one brand. And thus, Peg and Awl was born! The business began in our Philadelphia row home in Fishtown. I was pregnant with Silas when we started, and, Søren, then two, flourished amongst the interns, the busyness, and the materials strewn all over the house—and helped with the making wherever he could.
Because we worked in our home with our child and baby-to-be, using natural materials was incredibly important to us. Soon enough, Walter and I decided we needed more space, so he built a workshop in our backyard using reclaimed wood from a 19th-century hardware store—sustainable, simple, and beautiful, it exemplified all things Peg and Awl.
On growing and moving:
A big job making spice racks for Anthropologie and good timing led to our next move into an old casket factory. A few years on, after longing for outside space in the cramped city, we found an old factory on an acre of land, abandoned since the 1980s completely packed with all manner of things—including a boat! We imagined the building breathing a sigh of relief, as we began to break up the cinderblock that had kept out the daylight for decades. Along with rehabilitating the interior and bringing back to life its origins—a place buzzing with industry and human chatter—we are restoring the grey stony acre of outside space. We started with employee gardens and honey bees, and our goal is to transform it into a green space flush with native plants teaming with life that this part of the city hasn’t seen since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
The Peg and Awl workshop is where we make nearly all of our goods. We also have a showroom there and welcome visitors to shop and see where the magic happens.
Peace is IN the passion. When I am pursuing what I love, I am truly peaceful!
On mindfulness:
As a family, we love hiking and exploring locally, internationally, and especially during close-to-home road trips. Alone, I love writing and drawing in my journal daily, walking, and yoga, and my favourite peculiar combination—walking and reading!
As a small business owner with seemingly endless ideas and a love for all that we do and stand for, it is often hard to know when to pause or how to schedule time for family and one’s self. Walter and I made the decision to start homeschooling our boys this year. Walter was homeschooled (along with his 11 siblings), and I’d been inspired to do the same, having heard the Kent family stories and Sir Ken Robinson’s School Kills Creativity TED Talk. It took us ten years to take the leap.
As things go, homeschooling took us out of the city more often, and quickly led us to our new home built in 1775 in the country-ish, situated in our freshly christened, “5 Acre Wood,” with trees and a creek, an old springhouse, and plenty of space for a garden and some animals. Since moving here, our creativity has magnified. We have new products in the works, including two new jewelry lines, many additions to our journal and stationery line, furniture and more.
On the Peg and Awl House:
We are transforming our former home and studio space in the Fishtown neighborhood of Philadelphia to the Peg and Awl House, which will be available for rent via Airbnb. The space is perfect for it.The house was built in the 1850s and was a bootlegger’s home, so it has lots of personality. You can even still see the barrel in the basement ceiling and the hole in the steps from where a tap once was! Having lived there for eleven years, we’ve slowly transformed the charming row house into a Peg and Awl home, incorporating reclaimed wood and chalkboards from an old school into our kitchen floors. We will partner with local makers to fill the house with handmade sundries including everything from dishes and dishtowels to ice cream and beer. And the house, of course, will be full of Peg and Awl treasures of the past and the future. Fishtown is the perfect neighborhood to visit, filled with restaurants, creative businesses, and artist studios that are just northeast of the city’s center.
We are looking forward to sharing our space with others, along with sharing our favourite things to do in Philadelphia! We also look forward to staying in the city, not as denizens or business owners, but as guests! We will see the city as visitors once again!
