The Rycraft Story
                  – told by Robin Rycraft
 

Eleanor & Carroll: 1967-1973 

 It was in 1967 that my mother, Eleanor Rycraft, made her first cookie stamps to sell at the Corvallis Art Center Christmas sale. She started making cookie stamps to earn a little extra money. The idea came to her after seeing pictures of wooden stamps made in Scandinavia and the Eastern Pennsylvania Dutch area of the United States (click here and scroll down to the 3/20/10 email to Peter in Germany re: Eleanor's first cookie stamps). Mom was always amazed at how many people loved her stamps. They became so popular at the Art Center that she and Dad set up a booth at the Junction City Scandinavian Festival the following summer. While Mom only thought of the cookie stamps as a way to make a little extra money at Christmas, my dad, Carroll Rycraft, thought making cookie stamps could be built into a business.

Mom carved each stamp individually in the beginning, but when Dad became involved, he carved wooden tools which pressed the designs into the clay stamp, simplifying the carving process for Mom. Most of the early geometric designs were made this way (see top photo at right from our Collector's Handbook online - the middle photo at right shows our first recipe booklet). Dad designed many of these first stamps offered for sale.

As an artist and ceramicist, Mom did many other things: she painted china cups and saucers for the PEO. She designed and painted tiles picturing cooking herbs for a friend’s kitchen. She braided beautiful wool rugs for our home. She always had something going on at the dining room table. Mom had also studied landscape design, so when we purchased our farm in 1952, she turned the horse pasture that surrounded the farmhouse into a wonderfully landscaped garden. Together with my dad, she hosted many ceramic workshops at our farm’s riverside campground where a large updraft bank kiln was built and fired with wood.

My dad was more of an inventor and folk artist. He didn’t talk too much about what he did, he just did it. He made simple things beautiful. He made arrows for me each Christmas when I was young. One Christmas he cut a maple tree with lots of moss into firewood size logs, put on big red bows and gave them to all our family friends. He got together with Hap Gathercoal one year and made about a dozen fireplace bellows; they hammered sheets of copper with woodsy designs and the family surnames, and attached them to each side of the bellows. I purchased one of these at a flea market some 35 years later for $20. It was the same bellows made for the Bethel Vernon family in Alsea, Oregon.

Eleanor & Family: 1973-1988

When Dad passed away in the fall of 1973, we had three people working for us. Mom wasn’t sure what we were going to do. I had been attending California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland and Portland State University studying ceramics and calligraphy. In 1976 I returned to the farm to help Mom manage the cookie stamp business, where we began working together to develop new glazes. Over the next few years the whole family helped out in one way or another. Lon, my younger brother, my younger sister, Erin, and Judy, my older sister, were involved directly in the early years, a family of artists, all on a different track.

By 1979, twenty-five people were working full time. The popularity of Mom’s cookie stamps soon extended far beyond the borders of Oregon, especially into many Scandinavian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities across America where decorating cookies with beautiful designs has been a tradition for generations. Mom passed away on October 15, 1995. Like Dad, she is really missed. Both of them were an encouragement to all of us in so many different ways.

Today our Heirloom Collection Cookie Stamps are still handmade with the same tradition in mind. After growing to a company with over 30 employees in 1996, we have recently downsized and relocated to Prescott Valley, Arizona where we are a Mom & Pop company once again. Our goal has not changed: to offer quality handmade products which will help you create sweet memories and family traditions.

          Robin S. Rycraft

Shown above are examples of Eleanor's early stamp

Shown above is the first Rycraft recipe booklet.

A Santa face painted by Eleanor,
just found recently for sale on Ebay.

Robin Rycraft demonstrates carving a master.

Shown above are some of the tools
Robin and his dad, Carroll Rycraft,
designed to press designs into the clay.
Click here to see more photos
from a newspaper article on Robin.
Click here and scroll down to the 3/20/10 email to Peter in Germany re: the first tools Carroll carved.