Nashville magazines feature linenlaid&felt and Porter Flea Holiday Market

Porter Flea Holiday Market has finally arrived — 11 to 6 on Saturday — capping off a great wave of positive publicity in recent weeks, including a handful of features that included photos and write-ups of my handmade books.

Nashville's newest magazine, Native, got things started with a photoshoot of Porter Flea artisan items. For the photos, I brought my books to Moonbase, which is a quirky collaborative work space inside one of Nashville's coolest renovated buildings, Marathon Village, which once was an auto manufacturing plant (pre-1920s). That's also where Porter Flea will take place.

As you can see, three of my little red suede books, with vintage map pages, made it into the magazine.

It wasn't long before my books appeared in three other magazines, starting with Nashville Lifestyles, which kindly described each of my custom books as "an honest-to-goodness work of art." So kind of them.

Amid all of my busy preparations for Porter Flea, I have also been teaching, which caught the attention of another of Nashville's magazines, The East Nashvillian, which featured my handmade book ornament class in its December issue.

In mid-November, The City Paper published a feature story, "A better brand of Flea," in which I helped to explain what has made Porter Flea such a unique and successful show: 

"Unlike most other craft fairs," I told the paper, "Porter Flea includes a strong showing from male artists, bringing diversity to the show with handmade wood furniture, letterpress posters, screen-printed T-shirts, and leather goods."

My husband and I have spoken often about the particular flair of the Flea, and diversity of talents is really one of its strongest attributes. I'll be excited to see some of the new participants on Saturday.

It was also a welcome surprise to see Porter Flea noticed beyond Nashville. Southern Living was "buzzing" about the event on their website and posted a link to my shop, among others.

The popularity of the show has given its organizers a chance to put the spotlight on local artists. It's been great to be a part of the positive energy. We've got great momentum, at just the right time.