Salon de Artisans: Re-Inventing the Salon with Crafts, Cookies and Lively Conversation

Wikipedia defines a salon as "a gathering of stimulating people of quality under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation and readings."

My first introduction to the concept of a salon was while reading about Gertrude Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas. Gertrude and Alice were American writers living in Paris in the early part of the twentieth century and every Saturday they would host a gathering of artists and writers in their home at 27 rue du Fleurus. The image of Gertrude holding court with the likes of Hemingway, Picasso and Matisse while Alice was in the kitchen whipping up a batch of her notorious marijuana brownies was compelling.

While my husband and I often entertain, our gatherings are usually fairly large and I always end up spending most of my time cooking and being a hostess, catching only snippets of any scintillating conversations that may be going on. I wanted to have a more intimate gathering that centered on discussing current events and exchanging ideas. I considered smaller, more intimate dinner parties as a vehicle for this, but then, once again, I'd be busy cooking and serving, since our budget did not allow for a cook and a butler.

I tossed the idea of a solon around for several months and mentioned it to friends who I thought might find such a gathering interesting. Their response was positive, so on January 1^st of 2005 I sat down and wrote out invitations to my first salon.

Since, like myself, most of my friends had hobbies that involved some kind of craftwork, and were always trying to find more time to work on projects, I decided to make that the theme of our gatherings and Salon de Artisans was born.

The invitation announced that our first meeting was to be an afternoon of craftwork and lively conversation, as well as a strategy session for planning future salons. I invited everyone to bring a portable project to work on as well as a friend. Tea and cookies were served, since marijuana brownies were out of the question.

Several friends I had invited were not the crafty types, and they called me to express their concern over this. I advised them that they must have some sort of portable project that they had wanted to find time to work on, like sorting through photos, or recipes. I urged them to use their imagination and if nothing else just come for the conversation and cookies.

I sent out six invitations and had a showing of ten people. We decided that meeting every week was more than our busy lives could accommodate, but once a month was doable. Sundays between 1 and 4 pm was the best time for everyone and the salon location would rotate among the members. The hostess of the month was responsible for sending out invitations and providing light refreshments. We made a list of everyone in attendance to be used as the next gathering's invitation list, which was to be added to as new members joined.

Salon de Artisans is now in it's third year. Our official membership list currently stands at 18 with attendance at the meetings waxing and waning between 5 and 15 people depending on individual schedules. Members range in age from 8 to 80 and are all female. It's not that we have anything against men, but the men we know all have hobbies that do not accommodate themselves to portability or confined areas. Call me closed minded, but I'm not going to invite my husband to work on his motorcycle in the living room so he can join in on our tête-à-têtes.

Several of our members who came to our initial meeting sans projects, have discovered their inner artist. The woman who brought photos to sort at our first meeting is now the queen of scrap booking and brings a rolling suitcase full of projects to our meetings. A number of others have fallen under the spell of beading, so many in fact, that we cancelled our January meeting this year so that we could attend the annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

As for lively conversations, ours have ranged from the obvious craft related subjects to book, movie and restaurant reviews, cooking (yes, you can roast a chicken in a crock pot), jobs ( no, really, my boss is a much crazier than yours), backgrounds ( what was it like growing up in China?), gossip ( what was Britney thinking?), politics ( does George Bush ever think?) and religion ( was Mary Magdalene really Jesus' wife?).

If Gertrude and Alice where to visit our salon, they would probably think it looked more like a sewing circle, but if they stayed and listened they would see a group of women and girls exchanging knowledge that can only be shared in the doing of a thing; they would hear life lessons being passed along disguised as gossip, and they would almost certainly leave with some new recipes.