Meet our Instructors

Ms. Baker has a family farm in Loudoun County where she grows herbs to use for medicinal purposes. She works with these herbs to create salve, oils, soaps, teas and tinctures. She has taught classes for years on the growing, preserving, and making of useful products with these herbs.

Ms. Baker is a Juried Artisan at the Waterford Fair and has taught classes for the past two years at the Waterford Craft School.

Jerry Bond is a retired Natural Resource Police Officer who has developed a passion for all things bread. He began baking cookies when his wife went back to college and has continued to study and develop his knowledge of baking over the past 20 years. For the past 10 years, he has focused on bread and pizza making, using both yeasted methods and traditional sourdough. He has taken classes in specialty breads and wood oven baking from several master bakers.

Jerry’s teaching experience includes nature programming, outdoor recreation, hunter safety, coaching sports, and since retirement, sharing his love of bread baking with others.

Ms Copanzzi began making jewelry in her teens when metalsmithing classes were offered in her high school. Over the years, she has refined her skills through formal training with Master Metalsmiths around the country.

After exploring many visual media, she found her passion in jewelry and gems. She finds she can best express her artistic abilities by forming and shaping metal. All her pieces start as either a sheet of metal or length of wire and ends up as a piece of one-of-a-kind artisan jewelry.

She currently teaches metalsmithing at the Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center and Frederick Community College, Frederick MD. And is a member of the Washington Guild of Goldsmiths.

Lisa Parmer Ditty is a leather and metal maker. After years in the fashion business designing for Tommy Hilfiger, J. Crew, and Lands’ End, she took an unexpected journey and returned to PA to start her family. Wanting to rediscover her creative roots, LPDstudios was born. She loves being a designer maker and feeling the connection to her materials, leather, and metal. They are such opposites. The colors, shapes and textures of leather have unlimited possibilities, but “the rules” of metalsmithing force her to think outside the design box, like incorporating modern techniques with old-world skills. Coming from the fashion industry where everything is mass-produced, it is especially important to her that you can still see the “hand” in all her pieces, this is a dominant theme throughout her work.

Ms. Goins has been working with paper for over 25 years. This work includes papercutting, repurposing books and making paper by hand. She has a master’s degree in Art Education. Her work has been shown in West Virginia, Florida, Maryland and Pennsylvania.

Molly Grant began leatherworking in her early 20’s, first by working on her own and then by apprenticing at the Black Swan Leather shop in Portsmouth, NH, where she learned the basic skills of traditional leatherworking. She first saw Cordwainer Shoes when she was ten years old at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen’s Fair, known nationally as the oldest craft fair in the nation. She became a juried member in 1989, and participated by showing her line of handbags. There, she had the opportunity to meet Paul Mathews, owner of the Cordwainer Shop. Within a few months’ time Molly was traveling to craft shows nationally with Paul and learning the Cordwainer art. Molly still makes handbags, but the main business is teaching shoemaking workshops at the Deerfield, New Hampshire shop and at craft schools across the country.

The Cordwainer Shop was founded in the 1930’s by Edward F. Mathews. His son, Paul, carried on the shop tradition as main footwear designer, and except for a 4-year stint in WWII, shoemaking became his life’s work and joy. Many of his footwear designs are still produced at the shop today. Molly Grant now carries on the Cordwainer tradition of creating custom handmade leather footwear, and it has become as much a passion to Molly as it was to Paul. She specializes in teaching shoemaking workshops as a way to share this tradition of craftsmanship.

Mr. Kirk has been teaching stone carving part-time for 25 years with Northern Virginia Community College, Virginia Commonwealth University, George Mason University and Shepherd University. He is a full time Art teacher with the Loudoun County Public Schools. His work is on exhibit at Rust Library, Luckett’s Elementary School and Catoctin Elementary School.

Established in 1984,  T. H. McGinn & Co. is a general contracting firm located in historic village of Waterford, Virginia.

Over the course of nearly three decades they have acquired an extensive knowledge of both traditional and modern building materials and methods.  Their reputation for historically sensitive rehabilitation projects has been established from years of working on a variety of traditional building types and architectural styles.

Mr McGinn, company owner, apprenticed for nine years before forming his company.  He holds a Master’s Degree in Historic Preservation from Goucher College.  This will be his third year with the Waterford Craft School.

Born in the west central mountains of Virginia, where he still resides, Mr Robinson
learned the art of broom making in 1991 and has been making brooms full time since then.  Mr Robinson’s  brooms appeared in the historical drama Sommersby starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster and have been purchased by George Washington’s Mount Vernon for use in their portrayal of colonial life.  Over the years, demonstrating and teaching his craft has been one of the most fulfilling parts of his journey

Mr Robinson has been a juried demonstrating artisan at the Waterford Fair since 1991.

Grace has been making floorcloths for about 14 years. She originally made them just for herself until launching Designs By Grace. During the last 5 years, Grace have taught numerous Floorcloth making workshops. These have been very popular, and many students have shared with me their continued efforts at creating floorcloths on their own. Making floorcloths is contagious!

Antonia Walker received a BFA from the University of Georgia, studied in France in a George Washington University summer term and later studied drawing and anatomy with Spanish sculptor, Benjamin Saul. She was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome in 1998 and again in 2011. The artist’s work has been exhibited internationally, and is represented in private and public collections, including the Arts-in-Embassy program, Johns Hopkins University, Lansdowne Resorts, Project Hope and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground. Antonia maintains a studio in Waterford at the Chair Factory.

Mr. Walker is a formally trained master boot-and shoe-maker who has practiced his art for the past 19 years. Four were as an apprentice and five as a journeyman with Colonial Williamsburg.

Mr. Walker is an historian/educator and a true craftsman.  He likes to tell the early American story by exploring the everyday experiences of everyday colonists to discover how their lives were shaped. He teaches a range of 18th century skills learned from working with museums and living history programs.  The two classes he will be teaching at the 2019 Craft School will be based on specific 18th century artifacts.