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- [S106] The Mountain Press, 28 May 2007.
Husband and wife share duties at Beech Branch
By: GAIL CRUTCHFIELD
Community News Editor
May 28, 2007
GATLINBURG - Since the mid 1980s, Ted and Sandy Osborne have been creating handmade crafts for the home using everything from bricks, slate roofing tiles and wood they've scavenged from riverbanks or along the lake.
Owners of Beech Branch Crafts and Signs located in Morning Mist Village on Glades Road in the Arts and Crafts Community, the Osbornes offer custom pieces as well as ready-to-wrap handmade gifts perfect for a wedding, anniversary or house-warming.
Sandy said she and her husband, who met while art and business majors at Lincoln Memorial University, split their duties for their shop.
"Teddy does the bird houses and baskets and cuts the bricks, all under my supervision," she laughed.
She does the painting of the bricks to make them look like little houses, the slate tiles and the crackle signs. She also cares for the plants in their handmade baskets.
"I enjoy that," she said.
The baskets, she said, are made from a plant she called smokevine. The vines arrive green and must be formed into baskets before the dry out.
"You get the vines and you make the baskets within about two days," Sandy said. "Sometimes you can get four days, but not in this weather."
Manipulating the vines takes a good bit of strength, she said.
"Which is why I supervise," she said.
Sandy said some of her customers sometimes comment on the smokevine they use for their baskets.
"They can remember smoking it as a child and how sick they got," she said.
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, d. 4 Jul 1993 (Age 61 years)