When Morgan Pell, then a real estate agent, showed her then-boyfriend, now husband, the house, they knew they had found something special. The house was hidden behind years of growth, long neglected and unloved. With care, they have brought it back to its glory. Part of that process for Pell was to learn a variety of skills – blacksmithing, stone masonry, wood working, and broom making. It was the brooms that became a work of art. Functional art, as Pell says.
“I love all things to do with functional art,” she says. “It started with blacksmithing. Then immediately after, stone masoning. I started to work those elements into our property and into our house and just kept expanding on that into wood working and then broom making. Broom making fell into my lap a bit, but it fit right in.”
And then, broom making leaned toward taking over. While she could find good brooms at the local hardware store, they weren’t, well, beautiful. For Pell, there was no reason that the tools we use every day can’t also bring joy to the eye.
“I like things that have character in them,” Pell says. “I like things that I get joy from using them.”
Pell gathers broom straw—from a plant native to South Africa—of different home-dyed colors, arranging the individual straws with meticulous care so as to form designs and tiny scenes on their cut ends. While some take hours to create, others have taken weeks. It was a process she developed over several years and countless brooms.
Having once taken classes in her various skills, including broom making, at Tillers International in Scotts, Michigan, Pell now offers workshops to pass what she has learned on to others. See Tillers International or Earth Craft Skill Share for more information.
Read more about Morgan Pell in Encore magazine or visit her website, MergWorks.
Listen to WMUK's Art Beat every Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 4:20 p.m.
