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Brooklyn Artisan ™: Formation of the Team Blog

Also known as brooklyn-artisan.net, Brooklyn Artisan is a team blog publishing on an every-few-daily basis. It is a publication from Qwerty Communications, Inc., 315 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11217, and is guided by a team of professional and veteran journalists, designers, and writers. The name Brooklyn Artisan is trademarked for our exclusive online use for education, entertainment, and journalistic purposes. All editorial material is protected under the copyright laws of the United States.

The editorial mission of Brooklyn Artisan is to write both for and about the creators of small and micro artisanal businesses.

The Brooklyn Artisan Brain Trust

Editor & Publisher:

Anne Mollegen Smith

Executive Editors:

Basia Hellwig (Food/Drink)
Joy Makon (Craft/Design)
Phil Scott (At Large)

Contributors:

Bruce A. Campbell
David Fay Smith

Guest bloggers:

By invitation or special arrangement with Brooklyn Artisan

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Kickstarting Brooklyn: Hyperachievers

By Bruce Campbell

IN THE SINGULAR ECOSYSTEM that is Kickstarter, one will encounter many evolutionary dead ends—projects, visions and dreams that wither away unfunded. Then there are the mysterious campaigns that don’t just meet their targets, they blow by them and reach double, triple or stratospherically higher funding results. Why and how do these hyperachievers succeed, and can we learn any […]

Top Off Your Style like Bogey or Sinatra. Or Walter White.

WHAT COLOR WAS BOGEY’S FEDORA? Tough question. Brown? Gray? I’ve always envisioned Humphrey Bogart wearing a brown fedora in any of his fedora-wearing good-guy movies like Casablanca. The movie was released in black-and-white, but in the scandalously colorized version from the ‘80s his suit is muddy brown, Ingrid Bergman’s silky dress is muddy yellow, and […]

What’s Your Business Mantra? And When To Commit to It

By Anne Mollegen Smith

“Ready, Aim, Fire” or “Done is Better Than Perfect”? WHY DONE IS BETTER THAN PERFECT, says the Etsy Blog title for the June 20, 2013 entry by Alexandra Ferguson. And then the art shows a cute cushion with the message, Ready, Fire, Aim. As the originator of “‘Done’ is better than ‘perfect’” (explained in an addendum […]

Be an Operator, Not a Hustler…and Other Tips for Business Success

By Basia Hellwig

BUSINESS OWNERS SHANE WELCH, FOUNDER OF SIXPOINT BREWERY in Red Hook, Matthew Tilden, founder of SCRATCHbread in Bed-Stuy and Charlie Sahadi, proprietor of Sahadi Importing Co. in Brooklyn Heights, showed their business scars and shared some hard-earned wisdom at a recent Brooklyn Public Library conversation, “Fantastic Food,” led by photographer Randy Duchaine, whose “Created in […]

Start-ups Aren’t for Sissies

By Basia Hellwig

Created in Brooklyn: Food and Drink Entrepreneurs Talk Shop ANY BUDDING ARTISANS IN THE AUDIENCE at a recent Brooklyn Public Library panel, “Fantastic Food,” would come away both sobered and heartened. Three business owners—Shane Welch, founder of Sixpoint Brewery, Matthew Tilden, founder of SCRATCHbread and Charlie Sahadi, proprietor of Sahadi Importing Co.—all shared disaster stories and […]

Sargent’s Watercolors: How Does He DO That?

By Anne Mollegen Smith

OUR BROOKLYN MUSEUM’S SHOW OF NEARLY 100 WATERCOLORS BY JOHN SINGER SARGENT, created jointly with Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts — pooling art from both collections and wisdom from both museums’ curators and conservators — is every bit as good as you’ve probably read and heard by now. Good coverage is on the museum site and […]

My Tasty – Though Hasty – Valentine Comes with a Love Poem (and a Dash of Chagrin)

By Anne Mollegen Smith

SOME YEARS I JUST CAN’T BE THE VALENTINE GIVER I’D LIKE TO BE. Flu, deadlines, house guests, or no excuses, it just happens. So this year, on the way home from the Q train, I’m skidding into Natural Land on Flatbush Avenue to pick up some chocolate I’ve been eyeing from time to time. The flavors sound […]

Cuzin’s Duzin Mini Donuts Aiming to Raise the Dough

BROOKLYNITE TODD JONES CALLS HIMSELF A “DONUTOLOGIST.” You know, just as archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann studied archaeology, namely the archaeology of ancient Troy, donutologist Jones studies donuts, namely sweet, sticky, delicious mini donuts, each a deep-fried doughy circle. Not Dunkin’ Donut donuts, or Starbucks donuts, but hot, fresh mini donuts. “Glaze will come out of my […]

What Makes a Book ‘Rare’ –– And Do You Have One?

By Anne Mollegen Smith

ON THURSDAY NIGHT AT THE COMMUNITY BOOKSTORE ON SEVENTH AVENUE, Heather O’Donnell set out to shine a little light on the subject of rare and collectible books for more than a dozen of her Park Slope neighbors. “Rare books are my passion,” she said, and hastened to reassure her listeners sitting with books on their […]

Here’s to Orville and Wilbur: The Makers and Flyers

Yesterday was Kitty Hawk Day, which provoked this reminiscence. THE WRIGHT BROTHERS NEVER TRUDGED UP THIS DUNE BAREFOOT. That’s what I’m thinking last spring as I try to negotiate the wings of a 1902 Wright glider up a sandy winding trail carved out of Jockey’s Ridge with Kitty Hawk Kites’ clean-cut manager Bruce Weber and assistant recreation manager […]

Cookie Heaven

By Basia Hellwig

Day Eleven • 12 Tastes of Brooklyn I WAS INVITED TO MY FIRST COOKIE-EXCHANGE holiday party this year, but alas, now it’s been cancelled and all motivation to cover myself in flour and sugar has gone out the window. Luckily, Brooklyn is rich in cookies—beautiful ones made by hand with the finest ingredients by the most […]

The Comforts of Tea

By Bruce Campbell

Day Nine • 12 Sips of Brooklyn TAXONOMY, CLADISTICS, SYSTEMATICS, PHYLOGENETICS—so many ways to group and divide living things. Darwin famously sundered the world into “lumpers and splitters”: those who are happy with the general gist, and those who are obsessed with specifics. The tea trade is one where splitters can run riot: green or […]

More Stories from Encore, Encore!

Keep Calm … And Chalk On

August 8, 2016

For Swedish espresso aficionados, or the merely curious, Konditori in Prospect Heights is on Washington Avenue between St. Marks and Prospect, where it projects a friendly attitude. “Keep calm and stay Swedish” is the message of the day. Cardomom Brod is a featured menu item. Or you could choose the hairy calorie bomb, aka the […]

Chalk It Up: A Romantic Notion for Autumn

October 30, 2013

Chalk a Menu Idea for Your House

October 2, 2013

OF COURSE THE WEATHER TURNED FREAKISHLY WARM a few days after this sign was put out by Fleishers, the artisanal butcher on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope that specializes in grass fed, organic meats. But a timely menu suggestion has been made. Dust off the trusty stew pot or set out to acquire one, for […]

MORE: Brooklyn Artisan's Chalkative Series

What’s Better Than “Perfect”?

By Anne Mollegen Smith [

IF GROWING THIS BLOG were modeled on “Jack and the Beanstalk,” we are at the point of the story where I have traded the family cow for three little beans. I have confidence in the growth potential of those three little beans, but the current stage feels a bit awkward. Rather than hold out for polished […]

How Brooklyn Artisan Got Its Name

By Anne Mollegen Smith [

I KNOW WHAT A STRUGGLE it can be to name your business. When we named the parent company of Brooklyn Artisan, our first project – producing A Computer Dictionary for Kids and Other Beginners for Ballantine Books – was already well underway. Many clever, engaging, adorable, double-takeable, quotable and otherwise wonderful company names occurred to us. But when […]

Brooklyn Is Not Just a Brand, It’s a State of Mind

By Anne Mollegen Smith [

BROOKLYN INDUSTRIES, Brooklyn Bagels, Brooklyn this, Brooklyn that, it’s everywhere–so big a brand that it subdivides. (Smorgasburg, The Gowanus Yacht Club, Prospect Park West.) New York Magazine calls Brooklyn’s artisanal foods movement “The Twee Party.” The New York Times writes more respectfully about Brooklyn’s “unique food culture.” Blogs spring up with names using almost every conceivable spelling […]

An Artisanal Author Confronts His Pencils

By Guest Blogger [

by John J. Kochevar I WROTE MY DISSERTATION with a wooden pencil. Or, rather, many wooden pencils. We rented a summer cottage in Effort, Pennsylvania where, every morning, I carefully sharpened every pencil in my collection before sitting down to write. I think I read somewhere it was Ernest Hemingway’s custom each morning to sharpen all […]