Popular right now
Maren HoltOwner, at the wrap counter most Saturdays
I grew up two streets from the lake and spent ten years buying gifts for a big department store in the city. I came home in 2014 with a simple idea: a shop where every candle, card and mug has a maker you could actually meet.
Twelve years later, Fern & Finch carries work from more than forty makers, most of them within an hour of here. Josie, our manager, runs the floor and the events; Biscuit, the shop cat, runs everything else.
We still wrap every gift by hand, still write your notes in ink, and still remember what your sister liked last year. Come say hello.
— Maren
A few of the forty-odd makers we stock. Ask us about any of them; we probably have their number.
Ada pours every candle in small batches of forty in a converted garage six blocks from the shop, using soy wax, cotton wicks and fragrance blends she has tuned for a decade.
Ada Lindqvist · Hand-poured soy candles · on our shelves since 2015
Dana throws every mug and bowl by hand and fires them in a gas kiln behind her house. No two speckles land the same way, which is the point.
Dana Whitcomb · Wheel-thrown stoneware · on our shelves since 2016
Leila and Sam roast, crack and temper single-origin cacao in a 1930s creamery. Their sea salt caramel bar is the most re-ordered thing we sell.
Leila & Sam Okafor · Bean-to-bar chocolate · on our shelves since 2018
June has been on our shelves since the day we opened. She prints on a 1950s tabletop press and presses flowers from her own cutting garden.
June Albers · Letterpress & pressed flowers · on our shelves since 2014Three generations keep 60 hives along the lake. Their honey is never heated, so it crystallises by spring, which is how you know.
The Petersen family · Raw wildflower honey and beeswax · on our shelves since 2017Rosa cures every bar for six weeks on cedar racks. Lavender & Oat is the one we can never keep in stock.
Rosa Mendel · Cold-process soap · on our shelves since 2019Maren opens Fern & Finch with twelve makers, a borrowed register and a counter her dad built from barn wood.
We take over the ground floor of the 1912 Hartwell Building at 214 Main, three times the space and a proper front window.
Curbside pickup becomes an online shop overnight. It is now a third of what we sell, and every order is still wrapped by hand.
We start a twice-a-year market on the green outside the library, now home to 60 local stalls.
Most of them within an hour of the shop. Many still drop off their own deliveries.
If someone within an hour makes it well, we buy it from them before anyone else, and we pay on delivery, not in ninety days.
Every gift, in the shop or online, gets kraft paper, sage ribbon and a sprig of something green. It has never cost extra.
We give 1% of sales to the Lakeview Community Pantry and host the Makers’ Market for free, every spring and fall.
New arrivals, maker stories and first dibs on small-batch restocks. About twice a month, never more.
10% off your first order when you sign up