Scattered around Boston are vibrant shops filled with skilled hands, bundles of yarn and unwavering passion. At long wooden tables, people stitch, weave and press pages together to create various crafts. These are the scenes in Boston’s local craft stores: nooks that are devoted to their craftsmanship yet are overlooked by the city’s fast paced nature.
At a time when many crafts are bought online or made by mainstream retailers, Boston’s remaining craftspeople preserve art forms that quietly shaped Boston’s reputation as a “knowledge” and “culture” city. In doing so, they created local communities that share the same passion for the craft, whether it be fiber arts, woodwork or even bookbinding. Today, they continue their work quietly and precisely, adored by Boston’s crafting communities.
Harcourt Bindery in Charlestown is one of these places. For over a century, the Bindery has been a staple of Boston’s crafting space. In the city, the craft dates back to the 17th century when the city became a hub for early American publishing and religious printing. Now, they produce for collectors, libraries, artists and families who want to preserve heirlooms. The Bindery includes forwarders, who make the books, and finishers, who apply gold and various designs to the books.
Frank Jones, a leather forwarder who has worked at the Bindery since 1997, finds joy in crafting beautiful things.
“People still want objects of beauty that they can display in their house. It’s not part of the minimalist aesthetic. But certainly some people still do like that,” Jones said. “People don’t need leather bound books, but people want them.”
He explained that handmade bookbinds, like at Harcourt Bindery, have longer turnaround times than machine bookbinds.
“[People] think that we take a stack of pages and put them in one end of a machine, and that the machine then spits out the other end. There are machines that can do book binding, but they don’t do what we do,” Jones said.
Harcourt Bindery manager Robert DeCristoforo added that we live in a “throwaway world”: most things people buy today are not built to last.
“A lot of people don’t even realize that [bookbinding] is a craft,” DeCristoforo said. “Everything today is like an immediate spit out. You can order a book and have it shipped to you within two days. We’re completely different from that.”
While Harcourt Bindery represents one of Boston’s oldest craft traditions, Boston also has more recently developed neighborhood craftspaces.
Annissa Essaibi George started Stitch House Dorchester in 2007 after realising how passionate the neighborhood already was about fiber arts. Born and raised in Dorchester, she wanted to create a space that would challenge the area’s negative reputation.
“It’s both refreshing and frustrating to hear people come in and say, ‘Wow, this business is in Dorchester?’” George said. “We deserve to have nice things and I’m really happy that I’ve been able to make that happen in my community.”
She noticed a surge in interest in crochet among younger crafters recently, which brings an old time tradition into the mainstream. George has created a communal table in the middle of her shop for people to foster conversation and community.
“The one thing that everyone at the table has in common is that they’re working on something. Many of my customers have turned into friendships outside of the store, and that’s pretty special to me,” George said. “I think what draws a lot of our customers to the craft is a desire to disconnect from virtual living and digital living to experiencing things in real life.”
Despite strong community ties, running a small craft business comes with challenges.
“Online [retail] is a huge threat to us,” George said. “Beyond rent, there’s the utilities and labor costs. My inventory costs a lot of money, especially now considering a lot of the costs have gone up.” Still, George believes that Stitch House adds value both through craft and neighborhood connection.
“Our shop motto is that there is nothing more special than what you make by hand,” George said. “It’s always more expensive to make, but what a beautiful, special gift to give.”
Another small but growing craft hub is Tight Knit in Roslindale, opened in 2025 by owner Shannon MacDonald. The idea came to her after realizing there was nowhere nearby to buy yarn in her neighborhood.
MacDonald envisioned it to be a space where people could come and spend time: a third space for the community.
“As they start to get comfortable, they’ll start chatting about their lives, or, their kids, their families, just things they’ve done today. It’s very supportive, and people will definitely help each other,” MacDonald said. “So even if it’s not a class, it’s just a hangout and someone has a question, everyone’s always usually willing to jump in and try and help.”
Like Stitch House, Tight Knit has become a space that can help with emotional well-being.
“I’ve had a lot of people who’ve come in to learn who said ‘I want something to do with my hands that’s not scrolling my phone.’” MacDonald said. “[Knitting] is a way to disconnect. It’s a way to focus on the present.”
To further support the business, Tight Knit is open to donations from crafters. Donations could be in the form of money, but it could also be materials. One donation particularly stayed with MacDonald: a large collection of yarn from a family whose grandmother had passed away.
“They wanted it to be used, not thrown in the trash,” MacDonald said. “I’ve had so many people go ‘Oh, this reminds me of my mom or my grandmother’, and it’s really touching how [fiber arts] can remind people of loved ones.”
“I think if [craft spaces] weren’t here, Boston would just lose this sense of community that the makers have,” MacDonald said.
For younger Bostonians, craft is a way to express themselves. Stella Lamson, 19, a second-year behavioral neuroscience major at Northeastern University, learned to crochet during COVID-19. She crocheted both her high school graduation cap and the shirt she wore in her senior photos.
“When I just sit and crochet, I’m doing it because I need to calm down. Other times it’s more like a fun activity that I do while doing something else,” Lamson said. “I think things are a lot more special to me if I can make them myself.”
One of the things that she loves about crochet is that it cannot be fully replicated by machines.
“Anything handmade is better. I can tell by the stitches [when something’s handmade],” Lamson said.
Crafting is also a way for Lamson to process emotions. After her grandfather died while she was in high school, she crocheted pieces for her family and reflected on the pieces she made for him.
“That was how I was kind of expressing myself during that time,” Lamson said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I don’t know how to talk to you’, so here’s a crochet heart, because I don’t know how to express how I’m feeling.”
For her, community remains central to learning and continuing the craft.
“I love the community of crocheting,” Lamson said. “If someone else is a crocheter, you instantly have something in common with them.”
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Spaces like Stitch House and Tight Knit are part of a much larger maker ecosystem across Boston. Artisans Asylum in Allston reflects that broader movement. Started in 2010 in Somerville and shifted to Allston in 2022, the 52,000-square-foot craftspace is composed of personal studios for their members and shared workshops. There are spaces for jewelry making, fiber arts and digital fabrication among many others.
Michael Shia, one of the member-elected directors for Artisans Asylum, says that the space is a unicorn in the Boston creative landscape. He referenced a study he read on makerspace longevity, noting that most maker spaces die after about six to eight years.
“I think this one has gone longer mostly because it’s not a monoculture. There’s a real diversity of what people do here,” Shia said. “Everybody comes for the tools at first, but they stay for the community.”
Artisans Asylum also teaches 40 classes a month to community members. On any day, a wooden boat, a small car and a motorbike may be scattered around the shop floor.
“We have artists, engineers, we have entrepreneurs, we have hobbyists and we have retired people like me who need to stay out of trouble, so they come here,” Shia said with a laugh.
For Cal Groudas, the Experience and Engagement Coordinator at Artisans Asylum, the space offers a way to slow down and find a creative outlet. In his free time, he makes leather and bronze fidget tools.
“People’s favorite things about [Artisans Asylum] are the resources, the tools and the community. So anything that you want to do, there’s somebody here who knows how to do that,” Groudas said. “It’s like such a valuable space in a number of ways. I’ve been here for a year and a half now, and I keep meeting members who I’ve never met before, who are doing amazing, amazing things,”
Shia added that many people come to the store wanting to take a course but end up finding a passion for a different craft.
“I think one of the most important things to having a vibrant society is to have people feel like they are enabled to solve their own problems, to create their own things,” Shia said. “This is community driven place to learn, to make, to teach,”
For Shia, the value is not just in what people produce, but in what they carry with them afterward.
“Now, you have a skill that you didn’t have before,” Shia said. “You’ve now expanded your horizons and maybe your own community.”
