Creativity in the Making at Tear Cap Workshops
Our Mission
Tear Cap Workshops is a 501(3)(c) non-profit organization with a mission to unleash creativity through hands-on learning. We strive to create a vibrant community built around traditional crafts and arts. Tear Cap Workshops is committed to making classes, workspace and materials affordable and accessible. Located at the former John Hammond & Son sawmill property, we have repurposed eight of eleven buildings: six are now artisan workspaces occupied by a luthier, timber framer, fine artist, two fine furniture makers and a stone sculptor. We have a charming rustic lunchroom, and a large, fully-outfitted Community Woodworking Shop.
The Community Woodworking Shop
The Community Woodworking Shop is the heart of Tear Cap Workshops–a year-round hub for individual creative projects through our Rent-a-Bench program and variety of craft classes, from spoon carving to basket making to bookbinding. We are always adding innovative new classes; In 2025 we will host a class in adding skin to a Greenland kayak and constructing a table loom from local wood.
A Perfect Home
Tear Cap Workshops is uniquely situated in the beautiful foothills of the White Mountains on 19 acres. There are trails and easy access to the region’s many lakes. Our campus is authentically rural, reaching communities that have strong connections to history, traditional crafts and environment. We sustainably harvest materials from our own property when available–trees for woodworking, plants for natural dyeing, eco-printing and Ikebana, beech saplings for wattling, and grasses for basket making. This inspires students to continue developing their skills with a nod towards local ecology–and possibly saving money on supplies. One young couple, moved by the beauty and authenticity of Tear Cap Workshops, held their wedding here! Over the past nine years, we have continued to renovate and upgrade buildings and responsibly care for the property so Tear Cap Workshops can be a creative hub well into the future.
A brief history of the organization
Tear Cap Workshops, founded in 2016 by father and daughter team Henry and Sarah Banks, began with a dream to build a meaningful community around craft, and to serve the local community by providing opportunities for hands-on learning and social connection. In our first year, we performed necessary structural upgrades to buildings but also found time to host a Wood Innovators Conference and a chair-making workshop. The positive response to these two programs motivated us to explore even more ways to engage our local communities in creative hands-on learning.
Read more about the Wood Innovators Conference here:https://www.pressherald.com/2016/10/20/conference-explore-next-generation-maine-wood-products/
A chair making class with Greg Marston was just the inspiration we needed in our first year of operation. Each student made a Welsh stick chair using traditional methods and hand tools.
Rehabbing what was the sawmill planer building to be a classroom and woodworking shop was a labor of love. We received many gifts of tools and machinery. We added new windows, a new door, new pine ceilings and walls, an updated electrical system, LED lights, new workbenches, a new heating source (the outdoor wood boiler) and spruce flooring– transforming this into one of the most functional and affordable community woodworking shops Maine.
Creativity is always in the making at Tear Cap Workshops!
