Name: Robert and Gwynne Kidd
Age: 45, 43
Occupation:
Woodworker
Etsy shop:
KitchenCarvings.etsy.com
Tell us a little about yourself.
I grew up in
Virginia. I came to Colorado to go to
college and I earned a degree in Professional Photography. I met Gwynne, who was from the San Luis
Valley in southern Colorado, in college.
After school we both worked for a company that put official records on
microfilm. After that I took a job in
construction doing framing and siding. I
moved on to doing interior finish carpentry and I just fell in love with wood
and what you could do with it. I studied
under a master stair builder for a while and that is where I started carving,
making custom stair parts. We now live
in the San Luis Valley way out in the country.
My wife Gwynne is as much a part of KitchenCarvings as I am. I do the roughing out and initial design and
she does all the final shaping and finishing as well as keeping on top of the
shipping. She also raises Sheep and
Goats with her mom. She is also a field
inspector for Colorado Seed Growers. In
the summer she inspects Canola, Barley, Wheat, Oats, Wild flowers, and Grasses.
When did you start creating and how long have you been on
Etsy?
Robert: I’ve been
creating things since I was little. When
I was about 10 I carved some Owls into a pine board as a present for my
Grandmother. Gwynne is also very
creative. Ten years ago I was doing custom woodworking. I did stairs as well as cabinets. I was already a wood nut and I saved every
scrap from the job sites I worked on. I
became intensely interested in harvesting my own wood and particularly wanted
to work with found wood. I had all these
little planks that I had sawed out of small logs and they were everywhere in
the shop drying on windowsills and leaned up against the walls. I needed something to do with them and one
day I saw an article in WOODWORK magazine about traditional Swedish bowl
carving. I really liked the bowls but it
was the handmade spoon pictured in one of the bowls that really blew me
away. It was so elegant. It had such beautiful lines and
proportions. I had to make one. I thought, here was a
way to work with just a small piece of wood, a limb or small section of trunk,
whether green or dry and make something both beautiful and functional. I started giving the spoons away as gifts
and soon people were calling me asking if they could buy them. I started selling to galleries and gift shops
wholesale. I did that on the side for 9
years. I did some crafts fairs and
people really liked them and bought everything I had. After the financial crisis all of my
carpentry work dried up. We live in a
very sparsely populated area. It is
three hours to the nearest city. I
either had to work long distances from home or find another way to make money. I started doing more spoons, only
wholesale. I started my Etsy shop in
January 2011.
Gwynne: I have helped
Robb out off and on over the years. In
April of last year Robb was at the point with Kitchencarvings that he needed
help. So I quit my job and couldn’t be
happier. It’s awesome making something people enjoy.
How did you come up with your business name? Is there any special meaning behind it?
I came up
with the name when I started selling to galleries. I wanted an easy to remember name for my line
of kitchen tools. If I am not carving
then you’ll find my in the kitchen so I just combined the two.
Has your Etsy shop become your full time job?
Yes it has
but it didn’t really take off until Gwynne started working with me full time
last April. She has been carving spoons
almost as long as I have and she has really helped to increase production. I could not do it without her. She also stays on top of the shipping. I tend to get easily distracted and she keeps
me focused. I can hardly stay ahead of
her. Last year we also did some
wholesaling but we have decided that as fast as things sell on Etsy we lost
money by not listing the stuff we did for other stores in our own shop.
How would your creative process?
I usually start by picking up a piece of wood and cutting
off any parts I don’t like. Usually an
idea or a shape starts to percolate in my head.
I am surrounded by pieces of wood on my bench, leaning up everywhere and
on every flat surface. Sometimes a piece
of wood will sit on my bench for months and then I’ll suddenly see what to do
with it. I’ll be working on something
else and get an idea about another piece and I’ll stop and rough it out enough
so that I can finish it later. I usually
have lots of pieces in various states of completion. I work very fast. I don’t hem and haw. I make my decisions “in the space of 7
breaths” as the Samurai would say. I
can’t look at a piece of wood without seeing spoons or other tools.
I get them close to the final shape and then Gwynne takes
over and that is when they become the pieces you see in our shop. She makes the final shape with a fine
patternmaker’s rasp which is a wonderful tool.
You can make any shape with it.
She sands them and lovingly polishes them at the shaving horse. She also catches any defects that I
missed.
I am always on the lookout for downed trees and I visit tree
trimmers yards a lot to find great wood that is destined to be split into
firewood. You know the old joke about
running into a tree because you were looking at a pretty girl. I’m just as likely to run into a pretty girl
because I am looking at a tree.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I would say that mostly it comes from the wood but there is
also my time spent in the kitchen. I
love to cook and I do a lot of tinkering with designs. I know that if I enjoy using something then
other cooks will too. Then I get
inspiration from movies. I like period
movies and I am always on the lookout for examples of Treenware in scenes. I remember one ladle I saw in the HBO series
“John Adams”. Customers also send us
pictures of their grandma’s spoon and ask us to reproduce them. I really enjoy that.
Do you also sell your work at crafts shows?
I used to. It is too hard to build up enough work to go
to a show. I am better off listing it on
Etsy and most pieces only stay on there a few days before they sell.
I do have a story from one show I did early on. It was raining and people were lined up
before the gates opened. When they let
people in a woman ran as fast as she could across the fairgrounds straight to
my booth. She grabbed up a really nice
ladle with a pour spout and clutched it to her chest and said “mine”. I don’t know how she saw it from 200 feet
away. Another time I was doing a
demonstration. I had about 200 pieces
with me and I hadn’t put any prices on them.
I dumped them in a big pile and walked over to the car to get the price
tags. When I turned around there were
about ten women digging through the pile like hens after beetles. It was two hours before I got a price tag on
anything because I was so busy filling out tickets. When I see people’s reaction to my spoons and
read my customer feedback that is what pushes me to continue.
What is your most cherished handmade item?
Robert: My favorite
piece is a strange little antique wall cabinet.
It was obviously made by a child.
It has little drawers and on one of the bottoms is written 1902. It is all handwork and the face frame is in
the shape of a stylized owl.
Gwynne: Mine are my
quilts made by my grandma and the needlepoint done by my mom and the hand knit
blankets my husband’s grandmother made for our kids. Also the first “tadpole” coffee scoop that
Rob made.
Apart from creating things, what do you like to do?
Robert: I like to hike and fish and bike and look for
old coins with my metal detectors.
Gwynne: I like to
hike and fish as well and spend time in the mountains. I like to travel and to scrapbook.
If you weren’t an artist, what would you be and why?
Robert: I would need
about fifty pages to list all the things I am interested in but probably an
Astro- Physicist or a Philosopher. I am
fascinated by both.
Gwynne: I’d be a
speech therapist and work with elderly stroke victims.
Five years from now you will be………?
Robert: I’d like to
be doing the same thing I’m doing now.
I’d like to teach classes in spoon carving because it is just about the
most peaceful, relaxing thing I have ever done and I think a lot of people
could benefit from it for stress relief.
I don’t ever plan to retire. I
want to be found one day slumped over my bench with a tool in my hand.
Gwynne: I’d like to
be doing what I am doing now but in a much nicer shop and with some other
artisans working with us. I’d like to be
doing more travelling.
Describe yourself in five words.
Robert: I can’t and
please don’t ask Gwynne to describe me.
Gwynne: Honest,
straight forward, loyal, caring and ornery.
Carrying on with the fives theme, if I were to turn on your
Ipod, what five artists/songs would I see on your recently played list?
Robert: You would
find audio books. I like science fiction
a lot. John Ringo is one of my favorite
science fiction writers, as is Robert Jordan but I also listen to a lot of Ayn
Rand and other books by Thomas Sowell, Friedrich A. Hayek, and Henry David
Thoreau.
Gwynne: Rob has
gotten me hooked on audio books as well. Recently I have listened to the Wheel of
Time series by Robert Jordan, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files series, The
Girl with the dragon Tattoo, The Wind Up Girl and Watership down.
Lastly, do you have any advice for anyone thinking about
opening their own shop or participation in craft shows?
Robert: I would say
the two most important things are to make something people really want that you
also love to make and learn to photograph your products well. Don’t set out to make what you love and then
find a market for it. Find the market
first and preferably one that is not saturated.
Learn to photograph your products not just to show what they look like
but to make the customers drool over them.
Plus be prepared to eat sleep and breath your business. Realize that there are other benefits to
working for yourself. Learn to count
those benefits as part of your compensation such as being home to cook dinner
for your kids and not having a commute.
Don’t get caught up in how much you are making per hour at first. When you are starting out you will be working
a lot of hours for not a lot of pay.
Consider it as an investment in the future. Lastly don’t get caught up in formulas for
pricing your work. Compare your work to
other similar work in the market place, honestly evaluate its quality and
charge what the market will bear.
Increase your income not by raising prices as much as by becoming better
and better at what you do.
