Home is a place for personal connection. It’s a sanctuary from the world and the place for cozy, intimate gatherings. In keeping with the spirit of home, the belongings you welcome into this sacred space should make you feel comfortable and cared for. Meet a ceramicist, a wallpaper designer and a furniture maker whose thoughtfully crafted goods provide a sense of warmth and authenticity.
Ceramic Dinnerware
Kathleen Royster talks about the beauty of multiples. A single shape might not catch your eye, but when that shape is reiterated, it takes on a certain elegance. In her younger, adventurous years as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, Royster was taken by the sight of fish piled in the hold of the boat. “Any one shape repeated over and over becomes a pattern, a rhythm,” Royster says. “I saw the beauty in it.”
During the decade she spent working in Alaska, traveling and backcountry skiing all over the world, Royster developed her character and aesthetic as an artist. At the close of that season of life, Royster earned an MFA in ceramics at University of Utah. She then worked as an art professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver in Colorado and Scripps College in California and began creating in earnest, rising to the top of the art world. Her ceramic sculptures are now in prestigious permanent collections such as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
Today, Royster makes functional ceramic tableware that is sold online, during Park Silly Sunday Market, and at her Main Street studio and showroom in Helper. The beauty of multiples is made evident in Royster’s subtly patterned ceramic plates, bowls and serving ware, which feature repeating lines and organic shapes. The indigo-on-white look is her adaptation of a 12th-century Korean decorating technique called mishima. This is achieved by carving a design into leather-hard clay and filling the carved lines with a contrasting color slip before firing.
Serving ware can be overlooked as an art form, but its prominence in everyday activities gives it an inherent value. “Pots are for sharing and presenting food,” Royster says. “We use them in our daily rituals, at gatherings and celebrations, and for nourishing our bodies and our souls. You add beauty to those vessels, and that deepens the experience.”
Mountain Modern Wall Coverings
Somer Gardiner is a wallpaper designer in Midway who paints her own series of multiples with an eye toward print. “My focus right now is on honoring and telling the story of high mountain living,” says Gardiner. Her patterns capture the beauty of aspen trees, the grittiness of ranching and mining towns, the granite peaks and the high meadow wildflowers and mixes all that with the send-it lifestyle of ski towns. An avid snowboarder, biker and hiker, Gardiner has made her Alpenhaus Design line a complete reflection of the mountain modern lifestyle.
Her designs are high end, clean and refined. For example, geometric marks can be earthy and subtle and in sync with more bold patterns made from a herringbone sheet of hand-drawn skis. Hunter greens and deep blues provide the backdrop to these downhill drifters, while bright pops of orange come from the colored binding on the skis. Through another of her brands, Willow and Wild Design, Gardiner sells her artisan wallpaper in designs that go beyond the ski chalet.
All of Gardiner’s work is available in four types of wallpaper and her designs are entirely produced in her studio, made in small batches on an in-house wallpaper printer. She also offers wallpaper by other designers and sells artisan-made tile and brick to complement her curated collection. Styles range from refined to fun and from serene to bold.
Gardiner is known to Park City as the founder of Olive and Tweed and Timbre Art Loft on Main Street, where she sold her work alongside that of artists and designers from around the country. That popular shop, which she sold in 2021, led her to transform her painted designs into textiles and wallpaper.
Handmade Furniture
With furniture designer Greg Burns, we move from the beauty of multiples to the value of the unique. Burns is a third-generation craftsman offering custom-designed furniture through his company,Park City Custom Wood Design. He makes heirloom-quality dining room tables, kitchen islands and office furniture for private homes and distinctive dining and conference tables for business clients.
The woodworker comes from a long line of craftsmen. Grandfathers on both sides were in construction. One worked on a huge scale, building temples for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the South Pacific, while the other worked on a more intimate scope as a carpenter and woodcarver. These ancestors’ passion for woodworking carried on to their sons and grandsons, many of whom have worked in the construction trade.
As an artisan furniture maker, Burns builds each custom piece in his Park City woodshop, where his kids might also be making lemonade stands or bedside tables under their father’s tutelage. Burns believes in bringing clients into the family fold. Clients meet Burns right in the woodshop, where they can discuss their vision for a piece of bespoke furniture made from premium hardwoods like walnut, oak and maple. Wood slabs are sourced from all over the country, and clients are welcome to inspect each one, noting their distinctions and character.
Once the wood slab is selected, Burns removes the bark and flattens and smooths the slab. He can add bowtie joinery and artfully fill voids and knots, bringing the wood to life. Burns’ favorite finish is an oil rub to enhance natural tones in the wood, and custom table bases are made by a metal fabricator.
Burns began making custom furniture in 2016 and bought Park City Custom Wood Design in 2021 to expand his ability to serve more clients. After having constructed close to 100 homes, he was thrilled to make the full-time transition to handmade furniture.
“I love the wood, the grain — I feel like it tells the story of the tree,” says Burns, noting that he finds furniture made with live, or natural, edges the most fascinating. “You can get really intimate with the piece you’re doing.”
