The Storefront

43 Pioneer Street Cooperstown, NY

The storefront in Cooperstown opened in September 2024 and is the physical realization of years of dreaming. In the early years of my business, I dreamed of having a little shop where I could sell what I made that week. As the years passed, and I saw the obstacles that craftspeople go through to run a business, the dream grew and expanded. I wanted to make something that would remove the barriers to craft. A place where people to gather to learn and create that showcased examples of fine crafts and offered inexpensive tools, materials and kits. The new shop seeks to do just that. It is divided into a storefront with materials, craft kits and fine craft gifts, as well as a studio space that hosts craft gatherings and workshops.

Rigby Handcraft: For the Love of Craft

Some Craftspeople in our Store

Lara Bremer

Lara Bremer is the owner and designer of Paper Wolf Design, an illustrated greeting card company based in Upstate NY. She studied Graphic Design at the Art Institute of New York, graduating in 2009. From 2009-2014 she worked as a senior Art Director at Cline, Davis and Mann in Midtown Manhattan. Then in 2015, she moved back to her country roots in the foothills of the Catskill and founded Paper Wolf Design. She illustrates each design using digital watercolor and texture brushes and pairs them with wit, puns and sweet sentiments. Her inspiration comes from the urban cultures she has experienced and the natural landscape she was raised in. Her colorful cards can be found in over 300 small retail shops across the country and Canada. She lives in Oneonta, NY with her partner and their 4 year old son. In 2020, they built a small studio on their property where she runs her business. Her goal is to encourage more connection through snail mail that will bring smiles and brighten people’s day.

Rita Seiko Payne

Rita is the artist behind Beiko Ceramics. She grew up on a little farm and early on, fell in love with all the natural beauty and resources she encountered. Her happiest moments were spent either outside or at her grandma’s Sunday dinners. She had always wished she could capture the crispness of fall, the delicacy of spring, and the abundance of summer and take those things with her. Through the process of slip casting, she was able to preserve every little detail of the objects she found the most exciting, most often temporary objects which would normally be used and discarded. After graduating from the Pratt Institute with a degree in Ceramics, Rita moved back to Upstate New York and opened Beiko Ceramics. “The name Beiko is an homage to my grandmothers and mother, who brought people together with food.”

Oliver Moss

Oliver is a craftsmanship junky. He loves all things made with an intelligent, thoughtful, creative mind and body. He has been fascinated with craft and greenwood working for ten years and spent the majority of that time turning bowls on a pole lathe as well as an electric power lathe. His work is inspired by many traditions, but primarily Scandinavian craft, Japanese craft, Norwegian ale bowls, as well as many contemporary craftspeople. He works to balance proportion, line, and flow to create beautiful craft for everyday use. Oliver lives in Midcoast Maine. He has a series of turned bowls in the 2023 Makery.

SaraBeth Post Eskuche

SaraBeth Post Eskuche (she/her) is a glass artist based in Pittsburgh PA. She loves color and is obsessed with the unique material qualities of glass like transparency and its ability to mimic other materials. Color, pattern, and form are all avenues of exploration that SaraBeth implements to make bold glassware, brightening the everyday interior environment.

Karin Bremer

Karin is an artisan jeweler living and working in Oneonta, NY. Though a life long maker with a degree in the studio arts, she’s been focusing on metalsmithing and jewelry design since 2007. Her style is both classic & contemporary and is born from years of diligent studio practice. Sterling silver is her main medium and common thread, but she also incorporates many other elements: brass, copper, set stones, verdigris patina, colorful enamels and woven beadwork. She uses traditional techniques in her studio, but enjoys pushing them in unconventional ways to find new approaches.

Brittany Foster

Brittany is a self-professed hermit living in the far North woods of MN. She ran away to the woods almost 10 years ago and found that the quieter, slower life in a beautiful place gave her space to find new ways to work. Her North Tower line is inspired by charts of magnetic fields- simple, intersecting lines repeated at increasing distance. Each piece is crafted from silver wires and brass sheet by hand. She seals the brass to keep it bright and prevent tarnish. She designed the bee jewelry, and cuts each one out with tiny saw blades in a hand saw- no lasers. They are tarnish resistant sterling silver.

Paulina Rosas

Paulina is an independent, professionally-trained, handmade jewelry artist currently based out of Texas. Her work is all about helping others express the unique parts of their personality and style through distinctive, one-of-a-kind, contemporary jewelry pieces.

Kelly Walsh

Kelly Walsh is a hand weaver living and working in Durham, North Carolina. She worked as a web developer for years before deciding to leave the tech industry to follow her textile artist dreams. She loves exploring the intersections between technology and art, math and color. Kelly has always been fascinated by the tactile nature of textiles, and their place in our world as functional useable items. There isn’t one moment of our lives when fabric doesn’t play a role. Kelly believes these every day textiles can and should be elevated by quality materials and dedicated craftsmanship. Whether she is making a one-of-a-kind dyed silk shawl, or a cotton kitchen towel, each piece has a purpose and is made to bring pleasure to your life as it fills that role.

James McIlroy

James R. McIlroy is a tattoo artist and muralist who loves nature, animals and the idea of connecting them with the ever-expanding art world. His latest project has been a large series of digital drawings focused on animals with a strong emphasis on line weight and form contours. The drawings are influenced by both the Art Nouveau movement and artwork of the Pacific Northwest. James grew up in Upstate NY, near the Adirondack mountains where he was immersed in nature since he was a kid.

Ryan Back

Ryan is an artist and basket maker in Cincinnati, Ohio. He makes contemporary use-baskets using traditional methods.

Emilie Rigby

Emilie is a green woodworker, botanical illustrator, ornament maker, craft materials scrounger, and the schemer behind Rigby Handcraft. She lives in a little cabin on a lake in Upstate NY.

Her goal is to make craft more accessible, and improve the lives of crafty people by connecting them with one another.