Visitors can be sure that each artisan will deliver only the best quality work, as each of the 800 exhibitors at the show go through a careful screening process. After submitting their applications, exhibitors are chosen by a jury based on quality, uniqueness, sale-ability, and on whether the show still has spots in that category of goods.
It also helps to be from out of town. An artisan bringing new items from out-of-province can score an extra points.
“All things being equal, if we had one spot left, we might want to take somebody from out-of-province because you’re not going to see their work at any other time of the year,” Stewart said, adding those goods gave a broader flavour of Canadian talent.
The One of a Kind show runs from November 22nd through December 2nd. Visitors get admission to all the exhibitions for a one-time payment of $14, and can re-use it during the 11 days. Below is a peak at some of the products visitors can expect.
1. A Tactile Experience with Dishes
Since 1993, Sandra and Gavin Silberman have been making handmade porcelain tableware and home decor items fit for a royal table. Sandra Silberman is the sculptor and the creative mind behind the pieces. She says that home decor and nature inspires the shapes and the textures of her earthy coloured tableware.
Silberman grew up and studied pottery in South Africa, but now lives and works out of her studio in Barrie, Ontario, where she and her husband run Dotti Potts.
The unique feature of her work is the tactile experience. Silberman creates textures on the surface of mugs and bowls with clay dots that resemble the stalks of flowers, or small concave shapes that resemble leaves. “There’s a whimsical aspect,” she says. Many of her large serving dishes have intricate engraved designs. Silberman, however, says that each dish needs to also be functional. “I don’t believe in the China cabinet,” she said holding the earth-coloured bowl.
Dotti Potts: dottipotts.com
2. Soaps for a Good Cause
Heidi Flint has been making soaps since 1991 from her home in Huntsville, Ontario. She keeps an inventory of the bath and body products in her garage while single handedly running the Muskoka Soap business. “We might have the best smelling garage in town,” her husband once joked with her.
Many of the creations in her line of products are inspired by people around her who she wanted to help. She developed the extreme H-balm moisturizer cream for her neighbour with cracked dry hands. She made the cuticle cream for her sister who she says has bad cuticles, and the acne cream with bee pollen for her kids who had acne. Although she’s known for the consistency that her loyal customers rely on, one year Flint was inspired to make all her soaps in the shapes of cakes and pies.
Flint said that her very own loofah glycerin soap was an accidental discovery. Some 15 years ago when she was making the glycerin soap mixture, a loofah accidentally fell into the almost-hardened mix. She thought ‘Oh well, I’ll cut off the good part when it dries.' But when the soap dried hard and she spliced the chuck in half she realized the loofah looked good with the soap around it. Since then it’s been a favourite among her buyers. Flint might have actually been the inventor of the specialty soap.
Muskoka Soap: muskokasoap.com
3. Sculpting a Piece of History
Scottish Sculptor, Douglas MacDonald, turns historical references into sculptures that can be used at home as well as outdoors. He uses old buildings as references and has a collection of work inspired from scenes in New York, Oxford and elsewhere.
For the last five or so years, MacDonald has been sculpting specific characters or images found on the Parliament Hill building. His work is then sold at the souvenir shop. He says you can be touring around the building and pointing out a historical sculpture and then heading down to the store to pick up your own piece as a souvenir.
Although he was a photographer in the 80s, MacDonald has been sculpting for over two decades now, something he‘d never thought he’d do. “It’s in the blood,” says his mother, Agnes MacDonald, who was volunteering at her son’s booth at the show.
The most unique aspect of MacDonald’s work is that each piece looks like it was chipped directly off a historical building. Each concrete sculpture is glazed to give it an aged patina. It’s like having a piece of history hanging in your home or garden.
Rue Royale Stone: rueroyalestone.com
4. Little People Magnets
Fridge magnets are a specialty of sculptor Mara Nascimento who makes figurines from cold porcelain. The figurines resemble people in a specific profession or with a specific hobby. Three long walls stood packed with her magnets. She’s a painter by trade and has always been interested in painting the human physique, but when she once made a little figure and put it up on the fridge, her son, while playing around with it, suggested that Nascimento make magnets for sale. And she did. For 10 years now her magnet business, called Little People for obvious reasons, has offered unique creations.
She says custom orders from around the world started coming her way when she began making cake toppers.
Engaged couples typically want something funny that reflects their relationship. “They make it a challenge for me,” Nascimento says, pointing to a wedding cake topper displaying a bride pulling the groom by the collar of his tux off of a golf course. She’s been inundated with orders from Australia in particular.
“They don’t even mind the shipping fee,” she says.
Mara’s Little People: maraluiza.com
5. Jellies From the Garden
All the way from Grand Pré, Nova Scotia, came a team of jelly lovers. Beverly McClare, owner of The Tangled Garden, has been coming to the One of a Kind show for 20 years, ever since she began making jellies.
She started off in a restaurant but was always drawn to the versatility of herbs and started experimenting how they could be used in each dish. She focuses only on herbs now, using them to make a whole line of products including vinaigrettes, sauces, salsas and other condiments. At the show she displayed a colourful tray of jellies on crackers that you can use with fish, bread or even in salads and yogurt.
“The garden is what keeps me going,” she says about her passion for growing her own herbs. Each day for McClaire starts with hand chopping all the handpicked herbs, then preparing the jelly mixtures and making 6 jars of savoury jellies at a time, for a total of 100 jars a day. At the end of the day, she says her jellies have to look and taste good on food, but also have to look beautiful in the jar. “There’s a little bit of love in every jar,” McClaire smiles.
Tangled Garden: tangledgardenherbs.ca
6. Beeswax Reinvented
Working from her studio in Cannington, Ontario, photographer and artist Sarah Tacoma makes photos that last a lifetime. She sells photo-encaustic pieces, which are pictures mounted onto wood, and then covered in a layer of 100 percent natural beeswax.
Nature inspires Tacoma, and her pictures are proof that she picks the most romantic landscapes when traveling around Canada to shoot with her old camera. She says she likes to shoot with film. Some of her work also displays horses. To make one of her 3“ by 5” photo frames takes around 3 hours, not including the time to take and prepare the photo itself. She applies thin layers of beeswax which give the photo, that’s printed on wood, a smooth matte finish. “It’s very muted and dull, almost like a memory,” she says about the finished look of the photos. The edges look rugged and faded, and when a thicker layer of beeswax is applied, the landscape looks as if covered in fog.
Sarah Tacoma: sarahtacoma.ca
7. Doughnuts à la Carte
