CANADA 150 - Nova Scotia – Amos Pewter

Mahone Bay is a beautiful town just south of Halifax, on the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. I stopped there on a holiday with my family this summer, and was charmed by the sheltered harbour, the tall trees, and the lovely shops. It was a perfect place to stretch our legs and eat some ice cream. When we were there, I noticed that we drove by Amos Pewter, and smiled at the memory of a Christmas ornament made of pewter that I once received as a gift from a dear friend.

Amos Pewter is an artisanal pewter studio that began in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, in 1974.  The studio expanded substantially since its beginnings and there are now shops in Halifax, and Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia, as well as one in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  Amos Pewter makes a range of jewellery and home décor out of pewter, often featuring sea creatures or referencing the ocean with swooping wave-like patterns.

The Royal Ontario Museum has a small series of three Amos Pewter pieces. Each of the pieces very clearly evokes iconic elements of Nova Scotia: there is a Quahog Bowl, a Birch Bowl, and a small box with an engraved scene featuring boats and a fishing hut in the distance. Quahog clams and birch trees are widely seen in the province, as is the fishing scene on the box. 

Beyond their lovely work, what I wanted to share about Amos Pewter is that they are a member studio of the International Économusée Network. The Économusée Network is an interesting organization linking studios and stores in British Columbia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Quebec and Saskatchewan. There are also international Économusées in the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Norway and Sweden. Économusée studios and stores are linked in their celebration and promotion of locally created material culture. Usually, they are craftmakers, and usually the crafts that are highlighted are traditional to a local area. However, the crafts can also, as with Amos Pewter, focus on locality in imagery and iconography.

An interesting aspect of the Économusée network is their explicit focus on economic success from craft making by focusing on tourism. In contemporary craft, there is often a division between creating work that is marketable, affordable, and speaks of a locality, and creating work that pushes artistic boundaries of a medium. Amos Pewter work is a fantastic example of what is often called “bread and butter” craft: accessible, small scale, and very appealing to tourists. Often makers bridge both types of work. I would not be surprised if many of the artisans working at Amos Pewter during the day also had art practices on the side, where they were flexing their creative muscles.

I am not an art historian; my doctoral degree is in Adult Education and Community Development, so in research I am often asking questions that relate to making the world better in some way. Marrying that with my earlier degree in Folklore, I am interested in ways that we can make the world better, through the study and use of culture and tradition. I share that as a way of explaining my point here.  As objects alone, these Amos Pewter pieces are skilfully made tourist souvenirs, but they are not rare or precious like some of the other treasures in the ROM’s holdings. One of the most interesting aspects of their story is that that they are objects from a local business, which has helped keep jobs in a region of Canada that often features considerable economic challenges. Are places like Amos Pewter making the world a bit better?  It’s hard to say exactly, and depends on the metrics you use. Certainly, small scale artisanal studios like this often have environmental issues with waste disposal and energy use. But, on the other hand, for over 30 years they have been an anchor in the community of Mahone Bay, helping community developing into the lovely spot I visited last summer.