Greenwich Citizen
By Anne W. Semmes
For over half a century the Greenwich Exchange for Women‘s Work has been tucked away on Sherwood Place. It continues to be the place to go for handmade gifts, from baby clothes to pretty smocked dresses to women’s jewelry. With the Christmas season fast approaching the Exchange might be called Santa’s outlet shop with all the women, and yes, men busy as elves creating their handcrafted items off site.
Some of their hand made items are readily available at the Exchange. But on Nov. 9-10 at the annual Christmas Gift Fair at the Round Hill Club, these crafters’ wares will be especially displayed. With the help of Roni Schmitz, the longtime president of the Exchange, the Citizen was able to visit a few of these “elves,” these crafters at work.
Donna Stampien is a champion knitter who lives near Western Middle School. She has just the thing for a newborn – a Santa Claus suit and cap ($60). She’s a long time supplier of knitted items for the Exchange. She knits while watching TV at night. It takes her about a week to make a sweater, such as the white one with a pumpkin face found at the Exchange.
Stampien started knitting in high school. “My mother taught me to crochet,” she says. When pregnant with her son – now 27, she started to knit baby things, and was soon outfitting all her nieces. “I made them all matching sweaters,” she says, “I’m a Catalano so it’s a big family.” For the designs she incorporates into her knitted pieces she relies on her grown daughter, Sarah. “Sarah is such a good artist,” she says, “She’ll draw it on graph paper.” For sports fans, she’s made a pair of Red Sox socks and aNew York Yankees sweater for a young tot. Creating the Yankee initials was an especial challenge says Stampien.
Chitra Ramcharandas of Milbrooke has an eye-catching chartreuse necklace on display at the Exchange. But in her home Ramcharandas, a retired elementary school teacher, has many more necklaces on their way to the Exchange. Across her dining room table she’s displayed a dazzling array of her necklaces, bracelets and earrings. The eye moves over strands of multihued beads and semiprecious stones of turquoise, coral, and blue and red jade. There are necklaces of amber from Africa, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan; antique pendants from India, Nepal, Tibet and Morocco. In one necklace there are fetishes and crosses from the Southwestern U.S. The prices run from $40 to $250.
Ramcharandas began making jewelry as a teenager in her native India, where her father held the equivalent position of Postmaster General. “I had an enchanted childhood,” she says. She was soon making her friends jewelry – in the days when she could find the “stuff” of her jewelry easily and at little cost. In her lifetime of travel, she’s collected boxes of beads and antique ornaments she incorporates into her jewelry.
Ramcharandas calls the Women’s Exchange, “The best kept secret in town. They have very nice things.” Her handiwork is a confirmation.
Andre Lanoux is a retired graphic artist who paints and creates note cards from his own paintings and from vintage images he finds on the Internet. “Paintings are a hard sell in this economy,” he says, “But making cards I can get them out there easier.”
In his tight quarters at Quarry Knoll, he brings out small boxes of cards arranged by subject, holidays, animals, art. The colorful vintage Halloween and Thanksgiving note cards are particularly winsome. “I’m very careful about copy rights,” he says, referring to what he uses off the Internet.
He explains how he digitally photographs his art work, then prints out and cuts his cards. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe I’ve assembled these all by myself,” he says. He works at his note card making two or three hours a day, he says, “And then I rest and work some more.” At night when he can’t sleep he says, “I can get up at two o’clock and cut cards.”
Lanoux is happy to have found an imaginative hobby. “The cards are a lot of fun for everybody buys cards,” he says. He’s made an impressive recovery for in 2005 he lost his home and a lifetime of art in Hurricane Katrina. A year earlier, after 35 years of working in New York as a freelance artist, ill health had caused him to return to his native New Orleans. A friend in Connecticut gave him shelter and Greenwich’s Department of Social Services did the rest. “I am extremely grateful to this town,” he says.
Follow the whir of a sewing machine and you’ll find Hillary Brooke‘s creative space carved out of a room in her Byram home. Here she makes the many monogrammed items found in the Women’s Exchange, from children’s clothing to cosmetic bags, from small tooth fairy pillows to hair bows and headbands.
Brooke’s work room is a wonderment of machinery, materials and colorful threads. She starts on an individual straight stitch sewing machine, then an industrial overlock machine to do the finishing stitches, or she’ll use a blind hem machine or a button hole machine. An embroidery machine is stitching her computer-fed image of a runner on a girl’s cosmetic bag. The machine will also stitchi the word “Run.” There are shaving kits for guys. The cost is $18 for the large cosmetic bag and $16 for smaller one. “I believe in fair pricing,” she says.
Brooke started hand sewing at the age of eight, making Barbie doll clothes. “My mother was very crafty,” she says, “She’d let me play with her sewing box.” Her grandmother was a “real seamstress.” Brooke bought her first sewing machine in the ninth grade to make her own clothes and hair accessories she was selling to friends. She made her prom dress – and still has it, but didn’t make her wedding dress – “too much pressure.” She often turns out christening gowns from others’ wedding dresses. “It’s something you’ll have forever, and it can be handed down.”
She’s had various sewing jobs at home including making children’s clothes for Susie Hilfigers’s Best & Co. store in Greenwich until it closed down. Now, with her two kids in school she works in the public school system, helping out in Eastern Middle School‘s cafeteria. When she gets home she starts sewing. During the busy holiday season she’ll sew all night long.
When asked what is the most challenging item to make, she replies, “I enjoy doing it all. What keeps it fun is because it’s always different, and because people come to me with ideas and I can bring them to life.”
The Greenwich Exchange for Women’s Work is located at 28 Sherwood Place, and is open Monday through Saturday. For hours, and for information on the Christmas Gift Fair visit www.greenwichexchange.org or call 203-869-0229.
