New Jersey Folk Festival

Deomonstration Area 2009

Craft Demonstrations

From its very beginnings in the 1970s, we made an effort to supplement our Juried Craft Show (where crafts are offered for sale) with a separate area where crafts were demonstrated to the public, as a sort of living outdoor museum. This area was intended to be a place where the visitor could engage the craftsperson in a low-key, face-to-face interaction. Our model for this approach came from the Kutztown Folk Festival in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, where visitors were afforded an opportunity to talk to artists as they worked, learning about the people, the processes, and the materials involved in creating folk crafts.

In the early days of the Festival, many of our crafters came from rural areas of South Jersey. Typical crafts back then in the 1970s included blacksmithing, decoy carving, and basketmaking. As the Festival evolved in the 1980s, we turned more and more to featuring various ethnic groups with a substantial presence in New Jersey. We always tried to supplement the ethnic traditions of music, song, dance, and storytelling with traditions of material culture including crafts and costumes and games. Some of these demonstrations were quite memorable.

For example, Holland-American culture was represented with embroidery; Hungarian-American, with grave-post carving; and Scottish culture with the manly sport of tossing the caber (a very heavy log). The list goes on and on. When we celebrated the Philippines, we demonstrated the culinary preparation of milkfish and squid. When it was Haiti’s turn, we demonstrated musical instrument making. Lebanese cuisine was represented with bread-baking, resulting in hot, flat rounds of wheat called khobez—one of the nation’s staple foods. When Norway was featured, we found authentic woodcarvers who made elaborate items decorated with acanthus leaves.

In recent years, we featured the Charm of Korea with a re-enactment of Korean wedding and of a Korean first birthday as well as a traditional tea ceremony. There were also demonstrations of kimchi (fermented cabbage) preparation and a mask exhibit. When Germany was featured, we found tradition-bearers practiced in calligraphy, paper art, and crocheting. All of these objects were made by hand from materials originally found in the local environment. They reflect established norms and techniques within a community, transmitted by means of informal channels such as word of mouth or demonstration. Most of these objects are primarily functional, but may be decorative as well.

Our heritage area remains a popular attraction for Festival visitors, perhaps because they are reminded of an earlier and simpler time. Or perhaps they are reminded of their own cultural heritage. At one time or another, all of us long for an earlier period without three phones ringing off the hook or our email piling up, unanswered. At these times, we might wish for a life without such hectic moments. We appreciate crafters who take their time to make things slowly and carefully. Although time flows on relentlessly, we can appreciate those who have the memory and the skill to make fine things by hand.

—Angus Kress Gillespie, Faculty Adviser

Demonstration Area

Bill Hamilton — Fisherman

Bill Hamilton, a Long Island Brook Haven Bayman, has extensive expertise on all aspects of Bay Fishing. This legendary fisherman also serves as the Vice President of the Brookhaven Baymen’s Association, a non-profit organization with the intentions to conserve the rights of Long Island fishermen’s ways of life. Bill has experience in pound traps and fyke nets with an expertise in boat building, particularly gravies and sharpies.

Debra Simpson — Basket Maker

Debra Simpson of Forked River, New Jersey, is a studied and practiced basket maker who has honed her craft by learning from some of the most distinguished basket makers in the United States such as Martha Wetherbee, Alice Ogden, Newt Washburn, and Mary May. Debra is a grant recipient of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts Folk Arts Apprenticeships for several years, as well as the Camella Potter Scholarship for the year 2003 for studying basketry. She is a member of the Northeast Basketmakers Guild and the Penn Jersey Basketry Guild, of which she served as Guild President since 2007.

Debra became a basket maker as a way to pass down traditions within her family. She says, “When my grandparents and then my parents passed away there were no priceless antiques to pass down. There was nothing of real value by today’s standards. I’ve changed that with the baskets I have woven over the years. I’ve woven a little history and heritage in each basket. That is my legacy to my family.” Debra’s family has a history of working on the Barnegat Bay and now a future too, involving Barnegat Bay traditions as she is “handing down the basket,” teaching family members, like her daughter Diamond Lynn Frandsen, how to continue the traditional ways of basket making.

Dustin Bailey — Museum Site Preservationist / Village Tinsmith

Mr. Bailey holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from Richard Stockton College. He is responsible for taking care of the Village buildings and their contents working in concert with consultants Joan Berkeley (architectural historian) and Jamie Hand (professional preservationist) he assesses the appropriate repairs/restoration the buildings require as well as assisting the curator and curatorial assistant in identifying, describing, and researching information pertaining to the buildings. Additionally, he provides historic interpretations during the summer season as the Village tinsmith. Mr. Bailey will be demonstrating how a tinner in Early America produced hook punch-tin lanterns.

Fred Kalm — Clammer

Captain Fred Kalm from New Gretna, New Jersey, is a bayman who has spent most of his life making a living from the Tuckerton Bay. A former charter boat captain, Fred Kalm used to run fishing parties on the Sapphire Lady, a boat built for him by his father, Otto Kalm, a former tugboat captain. Over the years, Fred has tonged for clams and scallops, worked in the cranberry bogs and raised oysters and Springer spaniels. He served in the Korean War on the Phillipine Sea. Today Fred is a full time clammer for Parson’s Clam House and Captain for the Tuckerton Seaport.

In 1991 he received the Hurley Conklin Award presented to people who have lived in the Barnegat Bay Tradition. Captain Fred Kalm demonstrates tonging and runs the Tuckerton Creek tours on the Seaport’s vintage charter boat, Melody II. He assists with the cranberry harvest each fall, and is also an excellent mandolin player.

Jim Stephens

Jim Stephens is the Educational Coordinator at Historic Cold Spring Village (HCSV). As Educational Coordinator, he oversees a number of educational programs such as “Hearth and Home,” which involves the exploration of the art of openhearth cooking. In addition, there is a presentation about two important inventions of the Industrial Revolution, the steamboat and the steam locomotive and their impact upon society. There is also a lesson based on the short novel “Red Badge of Courage,” where students learn about a day in the life of a typical Union Army soldier of the Civil War using period clothing, weapons, and writings. Children visiting HCSV have the opportunity to make kites, corn husk dolls, yarn stick puppets, and Civil War drums. At this year’s New Jersey Folk Festival, Jim will present a selection of craft demonstrations from South Jersey’s “Golden Age of Homespun” 1790-1840.

Mary May — Basket Maker

Mary May of Forked River, New Jersey, is a basket maker specializing in South Jersey baskets. Mary May has been weaving for 17 years, learning first by classes and experimentation and later under the guidance of New Jersey Master, Esther Parker. She is known for her traditional baskets made of hand splint oak. Mary May is an expert on South Jersey basket traditions, researching and compiling extensive information on baskets and basket makers from local historical societies, museums and private collections.

Mary May is an officer of the Penn-Jersey Basket Guild. She is a regular demonstrator and educator at the Tuckerton Seaport, the Long Beach Island Arts and Science Foundation and the New Jersey Forestry Interpretive Center. Her baskets were on exhibit at the Tuckerton Seaport as part of the 2004 Traditions/Transitions exhibit. She is a master in the New Jersey State Council on the Arts’ Apprenticeship Program, where she worked with apprentice Debra Simpson.

Highlight: 35th Anniversary

April 25th, 2009

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