CRAFTING COMMUNITY
Meet three Oakland makers whose lives, and livelihoods, are intertwined.
“It’s kind of like having our own craft guild,” jokes woodworker David Ball. He’s referring to the ménage of makers who occupy the same address in Oakland’s Cleveland Heights neighborhood, not far from Lake Merritt: Ball and his wife, jeweler Marisa Haskell, rent out their garden cottage to friend and ceramist Sarah Kersten, who resides within shouting distance of their back door.
“Although we’re all insanely busy, it’s nice to be able to kick back with a beer and compare notes about price points, marketing, photography — and angry clients,” says Dave. “And small-business loans,” groans Sarah, with a slight eye roll.
In a time when so many stories about Bay Area artists share a denouement of displacement, it’s a tonic to meet three who not only have roofs over their heads, but have forged a way to do what they love full time. Ball, Haskell and Kersten recall “magical moments” that kept them going when times got tough, and they credit the particularly supportive connective tissue that binds the East Bay creative community.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, Ball, 33, graduated from UC Berkeley and took up woodworking as a hobby while completing his master’s degree in environmental engineering in Colorado. A one-year sabbatical to apprentice to a woodworker in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, stretched to two, and in 2013 Ball returned to California with a signature product — beautiful end-grain butcher blocks in walnut and oak, sold under his company name Jacob May. “I stashed in few in my bag and began biking around town,” says Ball, whose wares found a warm reception at Atomic Garden in Oakland, Maker & Moss in San Francisco, and Healdsburg’s Shed — a kind of ground zero for those aspiring to the effortlessly beautiful lifestyle espoused by Kinfolk magazine.
At the West Coast Craft Fair in 2014, Ball’s first furniture line — the Shaker-esque Lore Collection — caught the eye of Catherine and Robin Petravic, owners of Heath Ceramics, who snapped up a walnut dining table and bench for their Tahoe home.
“It was encouraging to have two such respected people in the design world be so supportive,” says Ball, who sells his Nomad line of collapsible tables (think heirloomquality Ikea) exclusively through Heath. “It gave me the confidence to keep at it,” he says. “And to walk away from the corporate world — which is not to say I never freak out when things slow down.”
It was around this time that Heidi Swanson, the influential cookbook author and proprietor of the home accessories website Quitokeeto, spotted Ball’s cutting boards at Shed. She added them to her mix, which included Sarah Kersten’s ceramics. “When Heidi showed me Dave’s work, I thought he might be a kindred spirit in the East Bay craft landscape,” says Kersten. “We met for coffee, and have been friends ever since.”
Kersten made her way to Oakland in 2009 via the San Juan Islands in Washington state, where she spent a few years learning organic farming and making pottery in her spare time. “On the farm we were all really into fermenting vegetables — kimchi, sauerkraut, pickles — but it was so hard to find a decent fermentation jar that properly sealed out the oxygen. I knew if I could figure out how to make a really good one, it would be something special I could sell for a lot more than, say, a mug.”
Once in Oakland, Kersten sublet a room in a big blue Victorian with a garden, where her landlord, Robert, hosted community workshops, including a fermentation demonstration by food writer (and DIY activist) Sandor Katz. “I finally had a good batch of functional jars, and Robert encouraged me to put them out. The same week I quit my restaurant job to focus on pottery, Sandor’s book, “The Art of Fermentation,” came out. And bam! — there was a picture of my jars. It was a real turning point in my career,” says Kersten, who also credits the appearance of her wares in the documentary of Michael Pollan’s “Cooked” with helping her career.
Now, with two studios in Berkeley and her own $60,000 gas kiln (thanks, in part, to a Kickstarter campaign), Kersten makes dishware for such restaurants as Frances, Flour + Water, the Wolf and Cala, and sells her crocks and covered bowls to March, Shed and Preserve — a store specializing in fermentation that’s around the corner from Marisa Haskell’s jewelry store on picturesque Temescal Alley.
Haskell, 35, grew up in Santa Barbara, in a house stuffed with antiques (her parents were dealers) from Spain, Mexico and the Southwest. Her grandmother tanned her own hides and had a huge cache of old beads, and Haskell began piecing together bags and jewelry as a teenager.
After receiving an art history degree at UC Berkeley, Haskell took a post-grad gap year at her family’s rental house in Sayulita, Mexico, then a sleepy surf town. “I was living on $7 a day, so I mainly hung out with the locals, surfed and made jewelry.” Returning to the states in 2006, she took a day job with Concreteworks and designed jewelry on the weekends, working with elemental materials such as leather, brass, silver, turquoise and crystals. Designed to be layered and stacked, the dangling necklaces and wrist cuffs are a hybrid of ancient tribal ornamentation and music festival glam.
Haskell dreaded the idea of making cold calls, so she picked up accounts by driving around California and wearing her creations into stores. At one intimidatingly high-end boutique on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice, the owner complimented her necklace and asked to see more. “When Linda Evangelista walked in and bought two pieces for herself, I thought, ‘Oh my god, this might actually work!’ ” she recalls.
Gradually adding accounts, such as Erica Tanov and Reliquary, Haskell was able to devote herself to jewelry full time in 2011, when she also opened the first iteration of her shop, Marisa Mason. Two years later, as Ball waited in Temescal Alley for a haircut at the barbershop a few doors down, he wandered into her store to kill some time. They went out the next day, married two years later, and recently had a baby, Flora.
In the past six years, Haskell’s store has expanded into a space large enough to showcase the work of other local artisans. The first featured maker was Kersten, followed by Joshu+Vela bag designer Noa Guy, and textile artist Jess Feury. Offering exposure to other makers is part of Haskell’s life and business plan, and part of what she likes about being rooted on this side of the bridge: “People here appreciate craft and design, the process and the product, and aren’t just after getting the cheapest thing. It’s part of what attracts people to Oakland — there’s an edge and a soul.”
Kersten maintains that the curiosity and openness that have encouraged technology to flourish also support businesses such as theirs, which offer an antidote, however fleeting, to the ubiquity of screens. “I think about craft and history a lot. Ceramics, furniture, ornamentation — they’ve all been around forever; they’re a connection to our humanity. And to be able to do that in this place and at this time, it really feels like a privilege.”