Creative women drive world ‘maker’ boom
Etsy.com market features their original crafts
Associated Press
Women have always been an integral part of crafting culture, and now, with help from the internet, they’re at the forefront of the current “maker” movement around the world.
Hobbies can become thriving sidelines or full-time livelihoods. At Etsy.com, a major online crafts marketplace that launched in 2005 in Brooklyn, most of the sellers are women, says Heather Jassy, a senior vice president for the site. She says women make up 86 percent of the site’s sellers in America, 94 percent in Australia and 91 percent in Canada, for example.
“We hear from our sellers that they want to make a life, not just a living,” she says. “Starting a creative business gives many women the opportunity not just to follow their passion, but to retain their autonomy, and build flexibility into their lives.”
Greta de Parry of Chicago grew up on her dad’s construction sites, poring over blueprints.
“I always knew I’d follow some kind of creative path,” she says. “I just didn’t know what.” In a first-year woodworking class at the Art Institute of Chicago, she fell in love with furniture making.
“It felt so natural to me, I didn’t think twice about it.”
She started her own line of custom pieces in 2009, and in 2014 opened an Etsy shop. Among her works are geometric stools, bar carts and bread boards made of hand-cast concrete, powder-coated steel and locally sourced hardwood. Last year, she won an award at Dwell on Design in Los Angeles for her Coleman steel stool. (etsy.com/shop/ gretadeparrydesign)
Evan Gray Gregory of Seattle, who used to design displays at Macy’s, turned her interest in woodworking into a business when she came up with a clever fix for a common problem. She’d gotten a new cat, and decided that a standard pet-store litter box wasn’t going to work.
“I couldn’t find anything out there to blend with our collection of midcentury modern pieces,” she said.
She designed and built a stylish litter box that drew raves from friends, and she opened Modernist Cat on Etsy in 2010. The line now includes walnut- and maple-finished crates, elevated bowls, and consoles that combine a storage shelf with a scratching pad, all designed with a midcentury modern flair. (etsy.com/ shop/modernistcat)
Amelia McDonellParry, Spin Media’s editor-at-large and an amateur weaver, says Instagram has become a powerful player.