What is the most fun/satisfying aspect of your work? 
Performing. touching an audience enough to make them laugh, cry, discover something new about themselves, or  inspire them to make the most of the brief time we have. 

What is the hardest?
Satisfying my need to do the perfect show. Someday I will do that. I'm pretty hard on myself. I usually follow the bows with the feeling that I could have done better.

What has happened to your business in this last Covid year? 
I have not started Club Sandwich yet because of Covid. We open July 2, 2021

What are your goals and hopes for the future?
Stay healthy. Sing better.  Play guitar better. Write more songs. Create the perfect musical performance. Welcome people back to my show again.

What else can you tell us about yourself?
I like people who are open, honest, and outspoken.  That's New Hampshire at it's best. I also like people who choose happiness.   

Click to watch John give a tour of the new Club Sandwich.

Club Sandwich, 973-634-8149.
For tickets and information please visit johndavidson.com

What is your name and the name of your business?
My name is Alexandra Teresa Townsend. You all know me as Lexi. My business is The Corner House! HOUSE ON THE CORNER, HANSON HOUSE, CORNER HOUSE INN, CORNER HOUSE RESTAURANT & BAR are some of the names it has had over the years. 

How did you get to Sandwich, NH?
I moved to New Hampshire in 2017 in search of an ideal small town that had a restaurant that was a journey to get to yet a historic gem upon arrival. The Sandwich Vortex is absolutely real. People that never anticipated moving to Sandwich, pass through and suddenly end up buying a home. Small miracles as well as big miracles happen in Sandwich everyday.

What got you started in this profession?
Growing up in upstate NY my family would go to a local restaurant called The Hitchin Post. I would not sit and dine, I would go straight to the kitchen to wash dishes as that was my preference. The staff would check for knives and I would then have at it. I would go to the table when my meal was served though slink back into the kitchen as soon as possible. 

I worked for my grandparents at a golf course they owned. I washed dishes, picked rocks, anything that needed to be done, until I was old enough for working papers, then for a local fine dining restaurant. I had the hospitality bug early though I did entertain the idea of being a flight attendant as well as a museum curator.

My end goal was to work for the Four Seasons hotel chain, therefore I selected a Swiss-based hotel and restaurant management school—the International College Of Hospitality Management Cesar Ritz—that was known for placement. They were not accredited in the US as it was a Swiss curriculum—what the Swiss thought we needed to survive running hotels and restaurants in this day and age. 

The school has campuses in Australia, Croatia and two in Switzerland as well as the US. I attended the Suffield, Connecticut campus. From there I was the youngest manager ever hired at The Four Seasons Hotel chain. I was the food and beverage manager in Philadelphia. I didn’t know a soul in town. I was there to learn. 

Years later I went to The Rittenhouse Hotel as dining room manager, then director of restaurant sales and then I moved to New Hampshire when the city continued to change in an aggressive way, from my perspective.

Tell us about your business. What do you make, do, or offer as a service? We currently serve dinner four nights a week, upstairs, and downstairs. We offer dockside delivery Friday and Saturday, and live music on Fridays in the bar. We are known for our food, cocktails, entertainment, and our vibe! 

How did your business get started?
Since 1849 the Corner House has been in service to the town of Sandwich in some form or another. From a boarding house, county inn, laundry to restaurant! Our building is so incredibly unique. The barn used to be a harness shop and the building overall a one story dwelling until pharmacist Dr. Christopher Fellows added a second story as well as the three bay windows that give the Victorian look. 

In 1952 the famed Coolidge (Boston) family purchased The Corner House. Judy Coolidge ran the laundry, her egg farm, a luncheonette window and summer dining room while offering rooms as an inn. The previous sign in front of Corner House featured a modified gryphon which was actually Judy’s Mount Holyoke College class project!

In Spring of 1981, Alex Ray of The Common Man and Rex Seley of The Woodshed took over ownership and brought in Don and Jane Brown as innkeepers. Don and Jane later took ownership and turned the Corner House into a destination restaurant. 

In Spring of 2018 I purchased and completely renovated the kitchen and behind the bar. I replaced and enlarged the draft beer system, carried on the storytelling and live music nights, adding Trivia to the entertainment.

What is the most fun/satisfying aspect of your work?
I enjoy seeing guests create memories with friends and family. The best memories I have are over food and drink, and that goes for many other people as well. I look to give you the ideal vessel to create those memories. It’s been difficult with a mask on and minimal staff, though we are doing our absolute best to make that happen.

What is the hardest?
The difficulty in getting staff members to travel to the region to work. It’s been a battle for the entire region and now the nation. We have an internal minimum wage of $15 an hour yet that does not yield staff to this region year round. 

What happened to your business in this last Covid year?
I weathered the pandemic, thanks to my wonderful patrons.  Early on in the pandemic I offered weekly bulk buying of produce, and curbside pick-up of restaurant food on weekends. I had a barbeque pit built in the restaurant parking lot, and offered drive-through Chicken BBQs several times over the summer of 2020. I also offered dockside deliveries on Squam Lake. 

Business was down by 62% in 2020. And though I burned my face and right hand accidentally in January 2021, I am happy and thriving! The Corner House is in the strongest position it’s been in in some time.

What are your goals and hopes for the future?
I set one goal at a time and thus far have achieved every single goal set. I hope to win an Americas Classics Award for the Corner House. Sponsored by James Beard Foundation for institutions that are “the nation’s beloved regional restaurants. Distinguished by their timeless appeal, they serve quality food that reflects the character of their communities.”

What else can you tell us about yourself and your business?
As a youth, I was a member of the Junior Olympic Alpine Ski Team. I tore my left ACL at Labrador Mountain mid slalom race and now I ski recreationally. I love skiing New Hampshire and Vermont. 

I have a Chartreux cat named Niobe and a bunny named Bun. As well as the angelfish & snails in the bar! I am a certified pranic healer and am now very much into human energy and healing. I am skilled at past life regression hypnosis & vedic astrology. While previously working for The Common Man, I developed a trauma response, held that with me and had no idea until the pandemic hit. It was at that time I embraced energy medicine much more broadly and got a Bio-Well to be able to show others their energy and health levels. On the restaurant website I offer more information on how you could get your energy levels read.

Corner House Restaurant & Bar
603-284-6219
22 Main Street 
Center Sandwich, NH
Lexi@CornerHouseInn.com
www.cornerhouserestaurantandbar.com

What is your name and the name of your business?
My given name is Margaret Merritt, but usually go by Peggy. When I was a child in southwestern Ohio, my mother used my given name only when I was in trouble; i.e., “Margaret Merritt, you get in here right this minute!”

I started “Basket Street Papers” around the time my husband Ron Lawler and I bought our house on Basket Street and I began making paper there. My focus has now turned from papermaking to printmaking.

How did you get to Sandwich, NH?  
I first visited Sandwich in the early 1970s during an afternoon drive to explore the region around the Holderness School where I was attending a scientific conference.  

My real connection with New Hampshire began with a 1986 vacation, when Ron and I were living in Norfolk, Massachusetts. We rented a Lake Ossipee cottage from Betsy Rouner who soon became a close friend. She introduced us to a number of Sandwich folks, including her brother Lee and his wife Rita. We bought a camp on Mt. Israel Road, near Booty Farm, in 1989. Summer weekends and vacations in that camp led to our buying the Basket Street House in 1996 and becoming year-round Sandwich residents in 2002. 

How did you get started in your profession? 
I began taking evening classes at the Kalamazoo Institute of Art in Michigan when I was research chemist at The Upjohn Company and eventually found my art niche in printmaking. I left active printmaking when I began teaching at Wellesley College in 1982.  In my last two years at Wellesley, I taught  “Chemistry and Art,” a lab-studio course for non-science students and included a section on etching.   Parts of that course were expanded and included in a lecture series on the “Chemistry of Library Materials” that I presented to staff of the Harvard University libraries in fall of 2003. 

The beautiful papers used in printmaking drew me into my first New England art-making experience in 1998 when I took a course in Japanese hand papermaking at the School of Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. That experience led to my making paper outside on Basket Street during the summer and in the bathtub in winter. While still at Wellesley, I was juried for papermaking in the Sandwich Home Industries and began to show and sell some of my paper art there and elsewhere.  My work, under Basket Street Papers, included cards, pulp paintings, and dyed and painted papers and grew in scope after my retirement in 2002.

One of the my most interesting papermaking projects was creating a piece containing recycled U.S. currency in celebration of the 75th anniversary of Crane Museum of Papermaking in 2005. The Crane family has made the paper for all United States currency since 1879. Composed of shredded discarded U.S. currency and Asian fibers, my contribution  “Strong as the Dollar” highlights the inter-dependency of world currency and is now in the permanent collection of the Museum. 

I painted with wet colored pulp in addition to making paper in sheet and sculptural forms. Such pulp paintings served as the basis for a collaborative piece, with lithographer Anita Dillman, that now hangs in the cancer research center at Dartmouth-Hitchcock. Suzanne Lee of Lakes Gallery at Chi-Lin, then in Meredith, helped facilitate this commissioned piece. 

Even when making art papers, I longed for an etching press. Etching processes require a fairly expensive, heavy press in contrast to the simple equipment used in Asian-style papermaking.   Shortly after refreshing my printmaking skills in a 2005 course at Plymouth State, I bought that much desired press. As with each sheet of handmade paper, most of my prints are now made—pulled—individually by hand, using my press.

Although I continued both hand papermaking and printmaking work for over a decade, my principal focus gradually shifted to the latter. I recently gave away most of my papermaking equipment; some will be used to establish a papermaking studio at Smith College. 

The experimental and collaborative nature of modern printmaking resonates with the scientist in me. Printmakers constantly seek new ways to translate their imagined images into reality and willingly share their discoveries. One of my most rewarding printmaking adventures came from collaboration with two other New Hampshire artists, Anne Garland and Wendy Ketchum. Together we produced twenty unique prints containing a distinct layer from each of us, and led to an exhibition at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in 2016. 

Tell us more about your work. 
The natural world provides the inspiration for most of my designs, ranging from realistic impressions to abstract interpretations. I make each of my hand-pulled prints individually by transferring inked images from one or more flat plates to paper. I often overlay different images by sequential printing of multiple plates with different inks to produce a single print.

Most of my early Sandwich prints were made from traditional chemically etched copper plates to produce black and white etchings.  

I have embraced other techniques and color in more recent prints. “On the Edge,” was included in a 2017 exhibition focused on climate change at the Carrega Gallery. 

Using printing plates constructed from dried plant material, I made the 2019  “Running Pine” print.

Scissors served as a model for the multi-colored 2020 “Rambling.”

I mainly show and sell my hand-pulled prints through galleries, locally at the Patricia Ladd Carega Gallery in Sandwich, and Artworks in Chocorua. I also exhibit my work through the New Hampshire Art Association, the Monotype Guild of New England, and Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, Massachusetts.  My own processes use “environmentally green” processes, pioneered by Zea Mays. All my materials and resultant prints are of archival quality. 

How/why did your start your business? 
I use the name “Basket Street Papers” to describe all my work and provide a means for publicizing and sharing my artwork through organizations like the Sandwich Business Group. 

What is the most fun/satisfying aspect of your work? 
I love the technical details of printmaking as well as learning and experimenting with new techniques and materials. The rhythm and flow of printing by hand imparts a sense of timelessness and meditation to my daily work and, I hope, is reflected in my art. 

What is the hardest?
Beginning a new project.  I often start by exploring materials as well as constructing trial plates to get something that “feels” right enough to finish a print or a series of related ones. I make many false starts.  

How has this last Covid year affected your work?  
The Covid year has broadened the horizons of my art life with online workshops and weekly virtual lunches, through my membership in Zea Mays Printmaking. Although sorely missing the company of local folks, I have acquired new friends and artist colleagues from across the country, thanks to ZOOM and Zea Mays. I spent far more time in my studio than in a “normal” year and was able to experiment with many different techniques and subjects. My husband’s companionship transformed the Covid year on Basket Street into a productive retreat.

“Hampshire Hog” serves as an example of a 2020 print made using a sandpaper-covered plate. 

“Bits and Pieces” is one of my first attempts at collaging and printing on pieces of old prints. 

I devoted a good deal of the spring of 2021 on a series of woodcuts, like the one shown here. 

What are your hopes and goals for the future?
I hope that the experimentation that carried me through the Covid-year will continue to enliven my art life.  And I look forward to spending more time with the wonderful people of Sandwich.

What else can you tell us about yourself and your work as an artist?
The Sandwich community, including Sandwich Home Industries folks, helped my transition from chemist to artist.  I first exhibited my paper art at an Old Home Week Art Show, reborn now as Artisans on the Green.  Of the many people who have supported my efforts to “make art,” I would like to acknowledge a few of them: my husband Ron Lawler for his unflagging encouragement of my work; my late neighbor Bob Wright for his pithy advice; and Will Lehmann for his generosity in helping me frame my own art work. I especially thank Patricia Carega for her thoughtful critiques of my art, exhibiting it, and making her gallery a Lakes Region destination for all lovers and patrons of fine art.

Contact:
peggymerritt@gmail.com
https://mvmerritt.com/home.html