Our Story
Two people, a threading machine, and a town of nineteen hundred
Craftsman Creations has been building lamps out of black iron pipe in Mariposa, California since 2011. There are two of us. There has only ever been two of us.
2011
It started because the light over the bench was bad
Nell Hargrove spent fourteen years doing plumbing and well work out of a metal building off Highway 140. The back corner of that building had a workbench and one buzzing fluorescent fixture that flickered every time the compressor kicked on. Rather than call an electrician about a twelve-foot ceiling, Nell went to the scrap bucket.
The first lamp was half-inch black iron: two nipples, an elbow, a tee, and a four-inch floor flange that had been sitting in the bucket since a job in Bootjack. The socket came from the hardware store on 5th Street for four dollars and change. It was ugly and it was heavy and it sat on the bench and it worked.
A customer waiting on a pump quote asked what it was. Then asked if Nell would build one for their kitchen. That happened four more times over the following winter, at which point it stopped being a favor and started being a second business with no name and no prices.
Teo Salcido came in the following year. Teo had been repairing tube radios and rewiring old neon signs out of a garage in Midpines and knew considerably more about a socket than either of us knew about lamps. The arrangement since then has been simple: Nell makes it stand up, Teo makes it light.
Fifteen years, counted
- Years on the bench
- 15Since spring 2011
- Lamps built
- 4,180Each one numbered
- Parts stocked for repair
- 1,240Sockets, switches, cord, fittings
- Average build time
- 7 hrsSpread over two days
That works out to roughly five lamps a week between the two of us, which is about what two pairs of hands can do without the quality starting to slide. We know, because we have tried going faster.
Why Mariposa
Population under two thousand, and an hour from the valley floor
Mariposa is a gold-rush town that never got big. Highway 140 runs through the middle of it and keeps going northeast along the Merced River until it reaches the Arch Rock entrance to Yosemite, about an hour up the canyon. In summer the traffic through town is people with kayaks on the roof. In February it is mostly us.
Being here has practical costs. Freight is slower and dearer than it would be in Fresno. Our steel comes up the hill on a truck every other Thursday, and if that truck does not come, it does not come. When the highway closed for a rockslide a few years back we drove the long way around through Coulterville for six weeks.
In the summer of 2017 the county told everyone in town to leave. We loaded the threading machine, four bins of fittings, the order book, and a dog into a truck and sat in Merced for nine days waiting to find out whether we still had a shop. We did. Every order in that book shipped late, and we called every single person to say so.
We stay because the rent on a metal building here is a rent two people can carry without needing to build forty lamps a week, and because the work is quiet. That is the whole calculation.
What we hold to
Five things we decided early and have not revisited
None of these are unusual. They are just easier to say than to keep, which is why we wrote them down.
Nothing hidden
Every fitting on a Craftsman lamp is a fitting you could buy at a supply house and identify by name. There is no cosmetic shell over a cheaper frame, and no sticker covering a seam we would rather you not see.
Nothing glued
The body is threaded steel. It holds because the threads hold. We use thread sealant on two joints where a lamp takes leverage, and that is the entire adhesive budget of the shop.
Everything repairable
If a socket fails in eleven years, you replace the socket. We stock the parts, we will mail them to you, and we will talk you through it on the phone if the wiring diagram is not enough.
One at a time
One person builds one lamp start to finish. Nobody hands off a half-wired base to somebody else, which means there is always exactly one person who knows why a given lamp came out the way it did.
In the order they were ordered
No rush tier, no line-jumping. If a big order lands ahead of your single lamp, your single lamp still ships when the queue reaches it. We will tell you the honest date rather than the flattering one.
The shop
Who actually builds it
When you order a lamp, one of these two people spends a day on it. There is no third person.
Nell Hargrove
Pipe, fitting, finish/they/them
Nell ran water lines and well pumps around Mariposa County for fourteen years before any of this. They cut and thread every body, mix the blackening, and do the wax. If a lamp looks wrong on the shelf, Nell is the one who notices from across the room.
Teo Salcido
Wiring, testing, shipping/they/them
Teo came from repairing tube radios and neon transformers, which is a strange resume until you need somebody who is careful about a hot leg. They wire every lamp, run the test rack, and pack the boxes. Teo also answers the phone, so if you call, you get Teo.
Between us we also sweep the floor, do the books, photograph the lamps, and write the sentences on this website. If something here reads a little plain, that is because a fabricator wrote it.
Come by
The shop is open by appointment, and we do mean appointment
We are not a storefront. Most days both of us are at the bench with the doors shut and safety glasses on, and the threading machine is loud enough that we will not hear a knock. But if you are coming up 140 and want to see a lamp lit in person, or hold one before you buy it, email or call a couple of days ahead and we will put you on the calendar.
People do this more often than you would think, usually on the way to Yosemite. We will show you the parts bins and the test rack and the pile of rejects, which is the honest part of the tour.
Craftsman Creations
- Shop
- 4821 Highway 140
Mariposa, California 95338 - Phone
- (209) 742-0145
- Visits
- By appointment, Tuesday through Friday. Give us two days notice if you can.
Questions about a lamp you already own go to the same address. See care and bulbs or the warranty first if it is a common one.