THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, April 5, 1995 TAG: 9504040152
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Coastal Journal
SOURCE: Mary Reid Barrow
LENGTH: Medium: 99 lines
Colonial crafters Debby and Ron Lindgren have found a fringe benefit of making candles and brooms the old fashioned way.
It's the aroma - the sweet smell of honey from beeswax and the country smell of straw and hay from broom straw - that wafts through their home whenever they are at work.
``The whole house is wonderfully fragrant when we melt the wax,'' Debby said. ``It's so pleasant to work with both materials because they smell so good, so natural and light.''
It's good they like the scent of their crafts because candle and broom making is more than just a hobby. Debby, also a dressmaker, is at home full time keeping the books for their business, Brooms-N-Beeswax, making candles and filling wholesale orders. Ron, a master chief petty officer who is a signalman, is looking forward to joining the effort more or less full time too when he retires from the Navy in September.
You can sniff the Lindgrens' sweet smelling candles and brooms and hear them talk about their crafts from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday on the grounds of historic Francis Land House. Eleven other crafters also will be on hand to demonstrate Colonial skills ranging from lace and soap making to bucket and bowl making. Admission is $2.50.
Many hand crafted items will be for sale. The Lindgrens will be selling candles made in molds shaped like beehives and teddy bears. They also will sell hand dipped tapers and beeswax Christmas ornaments, made in the European tradition.
Their beeswax candles can range in color from almost brown to almost pale yellow, the shade depending on what flowers the bees have been feeding on. The aroma also changes depending on the flowers, Debby Lindgren noted.
The couple began making candles a year and a half ago when Ron's brother sent them hand-dipped tapers for Christmas. The Lindgrens became so interested in candle making, they asked the brother to teach them.
Now they are off and running. On candle making days, the sweet aroma begins scenting the house at 3 a.m. Ron plans ahead and wakes up in the middle of the night to turn on the stove, since the 4- to 5-gallon vat of wax takes about six hours to melt.
Although modern candles are made of paraffin, Debby said she thinks beeswax is the better wax. ``Beeswax candles burn cleaner, brighter and longer,'' she said, ``and they are pretty much smokeless.''
For example, a four-inch beehive which sells for $3.50 can burn up to 30 hours, she said. The candles are wholesaled to a number of area stores and the Lindgrens also sell them direct at craft shows. On the other hand, they do not wholesale their brooms at all, selling them only to customers at craft shows, like the one Saturday at the Francis Land House, and by special order.
The Lindgrens got interested in broom making about five years ago when the saw the work of Norfolk broom maker, Jim Thomas. ``We were entranced,'' Debby said. ``And Ron was really inspired and we tucked it in the back of our minds.''
Then 18 months ago, the Lindgrens spent a couple of months learning the craft from Thomas, now 75 years old. Thomas had learned broom making long ago from a broom maker in North Carolina.
``We're the third generation to learn,'' Ron said. ``There aren't many broom makers. Jim's the only one we knew.''
Broom straw comes form a plant called broom corn which is in the sorghum family, he explained. The plant looks like sweet corn, but it doesn't produce ears of corn. Instead in July bushy stalks start shooting out of the top and those are the stalks which are bound into brooms.
With Debby's help, Ron creates a variety of brooms, ranging from whisk brooms to hearth brooms and from cob webbers to cake testers. A cob webber comes with a long handle to reach cobwebs on the ceiling and a cake tester is a tiny little broom to hang near the stove so broom straws will be nearby to test whether a cake is done.
For a couple who just began crafting in earnest 18 months ago, Brooms-N-Beeswax has really taken off. Debby thinks it's because the beeswax items are unusual and affordable and there's a lot of heritage connected to the brooms.
Not to mention all those good smells!
P.S. FILL UP THOSE HUMMINGBIRD FEEDERS! A male hummingbird has been hanging around since March 15 in the Blackwater section of the beach, reports Ron Kommer of Chesapeake.
JOIN THE VIRGINIA NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY, South Hampton Roads Chapter, and Lytton Musselman, biology professor at Old Dominion University, for a walk through the pine barrens at Blackwater Ecological Preserve on Saturday. Participants should meet at 9:30 a.m. in the Dairy Queen parking lot at the intersection of routes 460 and 258 to caravan into the preserve. Call Becky White, 489-7067, for information. MEMO: What unusual nature have you seen this week? And what do you know about
Tidewater traditions and lore? Call me on INFOLINE, 640-5555. Enter
category 2290. Or, send a computer message to my Internet address:
mbarrow(AT)infi.net.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo by PETER D. SUNDBERG
Rob Lindgren, a master chief, hopes to join his wife, Debby, making
brooms and candles more or less full time in their home-based
business, Brooms-N-Beeswax, when he retires from the Navy in
September.
by CNB