Angling Artist: Taf Schaefer
Growing up on Cape Cod, Taf Schaefer lived just a stone’s throw from the marshes and feeder creeks of Nantucket Sound. Annual runs of river herring brought striped bass and ospreys to the wetlands snaking through her neighborhood each spring. Those early interactions with local wildlife and marine life put her on course to a conservation-focused career in art, with emphasis in fashion design. Like most native Cape Codders, she and her family spent their leisure time at the beaches and local kettle ponds, where she was introduced to the Cape’s exceptional fishing.
By 11 years old, Schaefer was already designing clothing. She has a naturally inventive mind and because she worked with fabric, she effectively trained her brain for “3-dimensional thinking,” as she put it. “Fabric is flat, but when you combine all the different pieces together, you are creating something that becomes 3D so it can be worn.”
Drawing and painting, she admits, were not her strongest suits, but sketching is a crucial step in the apparel design process. Persistence helped her to develop the skills required to make three-dimensional art as a child.
Schaefer later joined the Apparel Design Department at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where she continued focusing on fashion. However, she eventually realized that a career in fashion design would limit her exposure to the outdoors. “In the fashion space, I felt that I’d likely spend my life working from a basement in New York City,” she chuckled. Having grown up on Cape Cod, where activities like fishing, boating, and hunting are ingrained in the local culture, a career that could potentially bind her to a dimly lit workshop in the bustling Big Apple sounded less than ideal. But Schaefer’s ability to pivot into sculpting and carving, which highlighted her existing skills in 3D design, took her down a new path at RISD. She began working with hard materials like stone and wood, and eventually experimented with casting bronze, which led her to graduate with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture.
Before her time at RISD concluded, well before today’s stringent slot regulations on striped bass, her former husband caught two 50-pound stripers in one night on Cape Cod—a remarkable feat. Even more remarkable is how she repurposed the bones from those stripers’ ribcages in a unique way that immortalized those memorable catches while also serving as a stark representation of mortality. “It occurred to me that the bones would make beautiful bracelets,” she said, so she immediately went to work. She made a mold of each of the bones, then cast waxes into the molds to create a negative space in which she would later cast molten bronze to form a bracelet in the exact shape of each bone, thus preserving them for future use. “With that same process, I’ve made a lot of jewelry,” she said. “I’ve made rings and pendants out of those same striper bones; I’ve even used codfish bones in my jewelry designs.” A devout conservation advocate, Schaefer does not seek to acquire new fish bones—she would much rather see striped bass and Atlantic cod released.
It was this sort of ingenuity—in addition to her 10-plus post-graduate years teaching carving and sculpting in Maryland—that landed Schaefer a role as a designer with Steuben Glass and as a recurring guest artist at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York. One of Steuben’s glass crafters of 40 years was retiring, and while Schaefer had no experience in glass work, she and the head of the design department had a “meeting of the minds on an aesthetic level.” Despite the steep learning curve and new materials, Schaefer worked closely with the glass blowers to achieve her designs and became a top-selling designer after a few years, an experience she describes as beyond gratifying. She has been a glass designer for Steuben for the past 25 years now, even after the company was rolled into the Corning Museum of Glass in 2013 after the Great Recession.
The uncertainty of work that came with the recession prompted Schaefer to pursue other ventures, and in 2011, she went all-in on working with wax so that she could cast pieces in bronze to create more custom jewelry. By 2012, she had started an Etsy page, and it has slowly grown into her now-prosperous business, Taf Schaefer Design.
Keeping true to her identity and lifelong values, Schaefer uses her fashion background and creates functional artwork like silver and bronze belt buckles, medallions, and bracelets that are centered around wildlife and marine life. The subjects include bears, buffalo, salmon, trout and, of course, striped bass. She even produced a limited run of buckles with Lefty Kreh’s famed Deceiver fly as an homage to the legendary fly fisherman and conservationist. Whether it’s a pair of sterling permit earrings or a striped bass belt buckle, her work especially resonates with residents of seaside communities along the Atlantic coast and beyond.
Schaefer is incredibly modest, but she takes great pride in her work, and rightfully so. “Everything is made in America,” she said. “The belts I use for my buckles come from an Amish gentleman in Pennsylvania, and my caster is based in Rhode Island.”
Looking ahead, Schaefer wants to develop a line of products that will provide her with the freedom to concentrate on designing and making new pieces. “Running a business and having a website takes time away from crafting, and I inevitably fall into the managerial side of things,” she said. She hopes to get back into sculpture but enjoys the current work she is doing with belt buckles, particularly. “I have a lot of fun breathing some life into men’s fashion, which tends to be sort of paltry,” she laughed.
Today, Schaefer works from her home studio in Exeter, New Hampshire, where she is busy making custom fashion designs with, as she puts it, an adventurous spirit. Her love for the beauty and serenity of nature, developed on Cape Cod, continues to show through her art, which then gives others the chance to wear and display their own love for the natural world.
Source: https://onthewater.com/angling-artist-taf-schaefer
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