Craft is alive and well in New Mexico. The home of Pueblo pottery and colorful Diné tapestry, this part of the world has a heritage of craft and design that continues to inspire artisans to practice old trades or create something entirely new. Often some mixture of the two.
These are just a few of the craftspeople in New Mexico who are creating one-of-a-kind goods by hand. You can find all of them on Instagram and at local markets.
Robin Moore and Cebastien Rose, Dryland Wilds
Together, partners Robin Moore and Cebastien Rose capture the scents of New Mexico in perfumes, lotions, soaps, and other products made with foraged ingredients, like piñon, snakeweed, sage, and rosehips. They also lead regular foraging walks and workshops to educate the public about the edible and medicinal plants they use and how to safely and responsibly harvest them.
How did you start Dryland Wilds?
Robin Moore: We used to farm, so what we’ve done for a long time has revolved around the seasons and the land. Some time ago, we made a list of everything we loved to do, and that kind of became our business plan. We were originally going to do food and skincare, but it became too much. But we still have that [food] component with our foraging workshops.
Tell me about the foraging workshops you lead.
Cebastien Rose: This business is more than just making cool skin-care products; it’s also the larger context of what we’ve been talking about [place-based knowledge]. When you go out and understand “ok, this tastes good, this doesn’t; this is good for skin care, this isn’t,” you feel so much more connected to the land. It’s also about deepening that connection and responsibility with the land.
RM: If you go back to the same spot to harvest rose hips every year, you notice when the patch is weaker, when poison has been dumped, because it affects you! Like, “Hey, that was going to be my jelly!”
What’s your favorite part of this work?
CR: Watching people cry when they smell the piñon soliflore. Recognizing that that’s how people connect to place—through our sense of smell.
RM: Our sense of smell is so tied to memory and emotion. A lot of people from New Mexico now living out of state say that our scents remind them of home.
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