by Cynthia Marone
Nature has always been a balm for Suzanne Crawford. Each walk in the park or stroll in the woods was a soothing respite from her work in the chaotic corporate environment of information technology and health care. The only problem was that it was temporary, and Suzanne craved something more permanent. “I had always been thinking of ways, well, how do I bring that joy from outside, how do I bring it inside. I don't want it to stop just because I've walked in the house,” the 12-year Feasterville-Trevose area resident said. “I want these reminders around me.”
The natural world has a way of righting itself, and Suzanne took its cue. During a time of career crisis, she stopped making nature her Band-Aid and started making it her business as the owner of Rustic Mountain Chic, which specializes in live-edge wood and epoxy home goods. Since its launch in 2021, her woodworking creations, and those of husband Larry, are not only inspired but inspiring. “The cool thing about wood and epoxy is you have so many options for bringing the outside in. First, you have the live-edge wood, which is very evocative of the trees and the character and all of the interesting things you can see in the woods and, literally, in the trees in the woods,” Suzanne, 55, said. “Then you have these bright pops of color that are like the bright blue streams or the bright green leaves. I dry flowers and leaves and things like that. You can preserve all of those things in epoxy.”
Suzanne, who has been married to Larry for 12 years, rhapsodizes about knots and burls in wood, the uniqueness of each epoxy, the best way to preserve foliage and flowers for future use, the particulars of her many power tools and all of the other intricacies that lead to her pieces. It makes it hard to believe she began her training and subsequently launched Feasterville-Trevose-based Rustic Mountain Chic only a few years ago, after she was let go in 2021 from her position as assistant vice president of healthcare informatics at InnovaCare Health following a company merger.
As her ensuing job search in the professional world she had known since graduating from Penn State University in 1991 with a bachelor’s degree in communications proved disheartening, Suzanne began to turn more and more to woodworking and epoxy. She had already been checking out every online tutorial she could find on the subject for years, but she used this time to pursue classes at Philadelphia Woodworks. It became clear the corporate world wasn’t the one she belonged to anymore and, with Larry’s encouragement, a transformation of space so she could properly create and an investment in tools from miter saws to drill presses, Rustic Mountain Chic officially became a seedling.
“It really is something that maybe isn't completely explainable, but I think that desire to want to bring the outdoors inside along with the popularity of this live-edge wood and epoxy online, where I could easily watch it and where it was explained in a way that made it seem doable and not something that was outside of my skill set or what I could do, I think it was just enough of those things that made me try it,” Suzanne, who is stepmother to Larry’s daughters Cailin, Bridget, Isabelle and Megan, said.
Her passion for woodworking and epoxy creations—and the start of her business, though this was barely a thought at the time — took root at a Doylestown craft show in 2019. “Somebody was selling these beautiful bowls that were turned wood, but it had this big crack in it that was filled with this bright blue epoxy. For some reason, I just was mesmerized by this. I thought that was so interesting that you have this really interesting piece of wood that was turned into a bowl, but then it's not just wood, it has these bright pops of color in them,” Suzanne, a 2002 graduate of Penn State University with a master’s degree in information systems, said.
“When I got laid off, the one bright part in that was I got six-months’ severance, so I used that time to explore other options.”
Rustic Mountain Chic’s sapling phase was a short one. It, along with Suzanne, Larry and their wares, have made numerous appearances, including at the Manayunk Arts Festival, the Tinicum Arts Festival in Erwinna, the Collingswood Crafts & Fine Art Festival in New Jersey, the Congregation Beth Or Chanukah Bazaar in Montgomery County and at several events at Playwicki Farm in Feasterville-Trevose, such as its Friday Food Truck Rallies.
The artistic process for Suzanne, whose clippings from her personal garden sometimes make their way into her projects, starts the moment she considers the unaltered slab before her, with its uneven natural gaps that she will fill with liquid epoxy and, in its final stage, smooth. “It's easiest to say it starts with a piece of wood. I have a couple places where I like to go look at live-edge wood. The pieces that speak to me, we'll buy and bring back,”
Suzanne, whose mixed-breed rescue dogs Otis and Sophie have been affectionately dubbed the company’s branch manager and supervisor, respectively, on its social media sites, said. “We have two different workflows. We make small things, like the boards and things like that, that are all our ideas. We have the custom workflows, which is completely different because the customer drives that creative process. For the stuff we make ourselves, I bring back a piece of wood or wood we think is really exciting or interesting and think about, well, what is going to show off that piece of wood, what would look really great with that piece of wood. And go from there.”
That wood, from walnut, cherry, maple and cedar to sassafras, zebrawood, mulberry, cypress and more, has been crafted into clocks, serving boards, whiskey/beer/wine flights, decorative wall hangings, menorahs, lazy Susans, headphone stands, candleholders, coat hooks and more. One of Suzanne’s most satisfying projects was a barn door and matching coffee table she created for a family’s New Jersey beach house, but many of her company’s ready-made pieces can be found on its website, www.rusticmountainchic.com, or seen by appointment at its space in Warminster. No matter the end product, it all begins with a piece of wood and what Suzanne sees in it. “They all have their charms. For me, the more character it has, the better,” the recent member of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen said. “Sometimes it's the markings on it. Sometimes it's the rotten spots. Sometimes it's just a really interesting shape of the wood.”
The wood speaks to Suzanne now just as the woods on those walks spoke to her then, whispering of potential joy to come. One thing Suzanne did not expect to come from her wood and epoxy creations was how close it brought her to her late father, Lytle Wenrick. He did a bit of woodworking, crafting jewelry boxes and stereo stands, but he was really a jack-of-all-trades who owned disparate businesses and could build just about anything, she said. Much like his daughter, it seems he could learn quickly, execute expertly and wasn’t afraid of a challenge — or the great unknown. “I do look back on what I was able to accomplish and think, in a very short period of time, I figured out how to use a table saw and how to do all of this different stuff. I really think it's partly because I'm his daughter, and I got more analytical traits from him than I really thought I did. Or should I say, the analytical traits I got from him, I didn't recognize could be transferred from the technology world to a handcraft world. It's part of the same thing where you've got to be analytical and creative at the same time. He definitely was both of those things, and I just didn't know to what extent I was too,” said Suzanne Crawford, adding after a brief pause, “It’s ironic. What happened at my job was very, very, as you can imagine, very stressful. To be able to transition from there into this other, rewarding side was a blessing, but also wouldn't have happened if I hadn't gone through that.”
For more information about Rustic Mountain Chic or its upcoming appearances, visit www.rusticmountainchic.com, email scrawford@rusticmountainchic.com or call 717-940-7735.
Cynthia Marone is a freelance writer who lives in Philadelphia.