PRESENTERS
The Weaver's Croft is pleased to introduce the presenters for the July 2026 Sail Making Study Group Conference
BY HAND
The Weaver's Croft Historic Sail Making Study Group
The Weaver's Croft Sail Making Study Group's members have been working together since early 2025. The Group is divided into two main area of interest - 17th & 18th century sail cloth made before the industrial revolution and wool and linen sails woven on the warp weighted loom in the era of the Vikings.
Maggie D'Aversa has been weaving linen canvas to make a Jib sail.
Anna Whitaker has been weaving linen canvas on the 18th century hand loom.
Phyllis Detwiler has been weaving cotton canvas on the 18th century hand loom.
Andrea Myklebust has been concentrating on Viking
sails of wool and linen woven on the warp weighted loom.
Amy Palmer, Sofia Carlsen and Tina Bielenberg are all researching the weaving of sail cloths on the warp weighted loom.
Emily Whitted is studying the mending and repair of historic sails.
The group has been assisted by Kate Smith and the Weaver's Croft studio.
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Mark Shiner
Mark is Curriculum Leader for Maritime Studies at UHI Orkney and has been at the department since its near closure in 2011.
Mark's background is in Yachting, Community Project Development and he is a Sailmaker. He is a qualified RYA instructor for Advanced Powerboat, Shorebased Navigation (Yachtmaster) and VHF. He also holds a commercially endorsed Advanced Powerboat Skippers ticket.
Mark also teaches several STCW courses, Traditional Sailmaking, Schools courses and Hydrogen Crew courses. He also writes textbooks on health and social care policy and law.
Mark enjoys playing music, maritime ropework/sailmaking, classic motorbikes and making clothes when time permits!
In 2022 Grant Gambell sold Gambell and Hunter to his apprentice, Jenny Baxter. Just as those before her, she had been drawn in by the area's inspiring fleet of traditional tall ships. Before sailmaker, Jenny wore the monikers of music student, mountain hermit, and "schooner bum". Though she found sailing later than some, she took to it quickly, especially the arts of the marlinspike and sail construction. Jenny started this exploration as a deckhand aboard the Schooner Mary Day, where she met her husband, Steve Swartz.
Together they have since logged over 15,000 nautical miles both as hired professionals and aboard their own cruising boats.
During the colder months, when he isn't out captaining boats, you will often find Steve in and around the loft as our resident rigger and valuable consultant on various projects. time permits!
Jenny Baxter
Marcail Riggs
Marcail Riggs is a sailmaker, blacksmith, artist and lifelong sewist who currently works at The Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. Her training has come in various forms, beginning with sewing lessons from her grandparents in childhood.
She received her BFA from NYU and later became an elementary school teacher following a Master's in Education. She learned blacksmithing from Bill Scheer and sailmaking from Mark Shiner and Jim Mortimer.
She now teaches at the museum and creates items using her craft.
In her free time Marcail can usually be found creating projects from fabric or cultivating her gardens.
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Mary K. Bercaw Edwards
Mary K. Bercaw Edwards is a sailor and a scholar.
Professor of English and Director of Maritime Studies at the University of Connecticut, she is an internationally known Melville scholar and the author of Sailor Talk: Labor, Utterance, and Meaning in the Works of Melville, Conrad, and London (2021).
A U.S. Coast Guard-licensed captain, she has 58,000 miles at sea, all under sail. She spends her summers setting squaresails aboard Mystic Seaport Museum’s square-rigged ships and works in the Museum’s 1830s sail loft during the off-season on running rigging and sails.
Jim Mortimer
Jim Mortimer is a tall ship sailor, rigger, sailmaker, and teacher. He has worked at Mystic Seaport Museum for 37 years. He received his bachelor's degree from Appalachia State University in North Carolina and served in the armed forces.
He currently focuses on sail-restoration projects and serving as assistant foreman of the waterfront demonstration team. He has been a mentor of new members of the waterfront demonstration team, teaching them how to bend running rigging aloft, stitch and rope sails, and run the 1917 Hercules engine that powers the Museum's hoop shop. He worked as a rigger when the Amistad was being constructed at Mystic Seaport Museum.
Jim is a talented artist who enjoys creating ditty bags, carved projects, scrimshaw, buckets, and knotwork. He has worked as crew at sea aboard the 1841 Charles W. Morgan, the 1936 U.S. Coast Guard barque Eagle, the 1928 barque Picton Castle, the 1877 barque Elissa, the 1813 brig Niagara, the 1932 schooner Brilliant, the 2000 schooner Brilliant, the 2000 schooner Amistad, and the 1967 schooner Mystic Whaler
Emily Whitted is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the 2025-2026 Program in Early American Economy and Society Dissertation Fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Her research and public history work broadly explores the history of textiles, labor history, and material culture in early America. Her dissertation "Darned, Patched, and Mended: Repairing Textiles in Early America," examines early American textile repair work within homes, military camps, and the maritime world. Her current and past public history work includes projects with the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the National Park Service and the National Council on Public History, the Mercer Museum & Fonthill Castle, the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation, and the Industrial Crafts Research Network. She also holds an M.A. in American Material Culture from the Winterthur Program at the University of Delaware.
Emily Whitted
Monica D. Church
I am an artist who uses sea worn sails to paint on rather than traditional canvas. Repurposed sail material has an imbibed history and presence. Formally, they do not disappear into a painting’s illusionism, but create a surface that is present and unexpected. I like seeing though the sail surface, covering other areas with paint and responding to the sail’s inner architecture. I add color and shape allowing a dimensional painted space to unfurl. Sails are designed to catch the wind and their primary purpose is to move a boat from one place to another. I have sailed on the Hudson River, the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Oceans. I consider how the original purpose and structure of a sail affects and contributes to the final painted image and how sometimes it is merely a departure point.
To see may paintings on sails visit:
Tyler Putnam
Tyler Putman is the Senior Manager of Gallery Interpretation at the Museum of the American Revolution, where he works with the team that develops and delivers daily programs, talks and tours, theatrical programs, and costumed living history.
He holds two MAs and a PhD in History from the University of Delaware. His past experience has included work in historical archaeology, tailoring, and tall ship sailing.
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Margherita M. Desy
Photo by Kathryn MacDonald
Margherita M. Desy is a curator and historian of New England maritime and early U.S. Navy histories and is employed by the Naval History & Heritage Command Detachment Boston as historian for USS Constitution. Margherita has previously worked for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, Historic New England, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Hartford, and, for 20 years, at Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut. Margherita taught for fourteen years in the Museum Studies Program in Tufts University’s Graduate and Professional Studies Department.
Ms. Desy has a BA in History & Art History from the College of the Holy Cross and an MA in American Civilization from The George Washington University. She was a fellow at the Preservation Society of Newport County and has studied at Sotheby’s Institute, London and at the Attingham Summer School, England. She has been published in scholarly and popular journals and has been script advisor and on-camera historian for several PBS television shows and documentaries broadcast in the U.S. and Europe.
Olof Jansson
A life-long maker, Olof Jansson has been a blacksmith and tinsmith for over 30 years. His work appears in historic sites throughout New York’s Mohawk River Valley and beyond. He studied with Walt Fleming of Balston Lake, NY and mentored with Victor Zubatiuk of Cornwall, Ontario.
