About the “Dough Bowl Maker”
My passion has been making beautiful “handmade wooden bowls”. I have been making them in various sizes and shapes since 1988 sticking mainly to styles that were fixtures in kitchens before the invention of plastic. Every bowl is unique. Every bowl on this site is 100% food safe! There’s something for everyone and I stand by the products that I make.
History:
My Wife and I were raised in Reidsville, a city in central North Carolina 20 miles south of the Virginia line. I worked in a textile mill and early in our marriage she was an entry level clerk at the local hospital. On our wedding day we had $15 between us. She had $12 and I only had $3. I jokingly tell folks that I married her for her money – because she had four times more than I did! We were married in Milton Warf’s living room and as soon as he said, “you can kiss your new wife” I borrowed $2 from her so I could pay him $5 for marrying us.
Eating what we raised
Raising a lot of our own food and making our own bread was the norm back then. I wanted my wife to have a “Dough Bowl” to use in preparing our homemade bread. We normally made 3 small loaves every week or so. I looked for a handmade wooden bowl that I could afford at local flea markets and estate sales. It was very discouraging when we’d find nothing or even worse when we’d find a high priced bowl that was cracked so bad that it was unusable. I figured I’d never find one I could buy so I started planning on making one myself.
Enjoying Sunday Afternoons
On Sunday afternoons we’d sometimes go up to “Mabry’s Mill”. It’s an old water-powered gristmill on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Meadows of Dan, Virginia. There I would play fiddle, mandolin or banjo (all badly) with a group of locals that made music for the folks to dance to 4 or 5 hours each Sunday afternoon. I’ve never considered myself to be an artist but have always had a knack for drawing. I would often draw pictures of some of the folks I saw up at the mill. Most of them were mountain folks that lived in the area and – like us, came to the mill for a low-cost way of enjoying a nice afternoon.
Getting the tool I needed
One of the characters there that I really enjoyed seeing and talking to was “Phipps Bourne” (nicknamed Festus). Phipps was a US Park Service “Ranger” and also the blacksmith at the mill’s blacksmith shop. I gave him a picture I had drawn of him, and wouldn’t let him pay me for it. The next Sunday when we went to the mill he returned the favor by giving me a “hand-adze” which is the tool used to chop out wooden bowls. He had forged it for me at the mill. He knew that I was a “jack-of-all trades and a master of none” and figured that I’d make good use of the tool he made for me.
