The Rycraft Story
Creating Sweet Memories & Family Traditions
We always like to tell the story of our family business in order to let you know what is behind the tradition that we are carrying on today. The memories we treasure the most are those we have of our family and friends – of baking cookies together on special occasions and holidays.
The Rycraft family tradition was, and still is, to present beautiful hand-crafted cookie stamps and other high quality American-made products for you, your friends and your family to enjoy. We hope that by creating delicious treats, handmade gifts, and decorative accessories for your home, you – our family of friends and Rycraft collectors – will also be creating your own sweet memories and family traditions to be cherished for many generations to come.
Handmade in America
Eleanor Rycraft and her husband, Carroll, started Rycraft’s in 1968. As far as we know, Eleanor Rycraft was the first American artist to introduce finely-detailed, handmade-in-America terra cotta cookie stamps. Originally, Eleanor patterned her unique ceramic cookie stamps in the manner of the antique wooden Scandinavian stamps which have been handed down through generations.
In her rustic workshop on the family farm in Corvallis, Oregon, she created over 250 designs in a diversity which appeals to all peoples. Most of Eleanor and Carroll’s original designs have been retired now and the tradition of handcarving new designs was taken up by their son, Robin Rycraft, in the 1980’s.
The more than 450 current designs in the Heirloom Collection are available in a wide variety of ceramic products and silicone molds. Not only has each beautiful and unique design been carved by hand, but each individual cookie stamp, craft stamp, and Keep It Soft has been cut out, imprinted and glazed by hand using the traditional production process which began over 50 years ago.
Today, Rycraft products can be found in finer gift and gourmet shops and craft stores around the world, as well as many websites and collectibles trading sites such as Ebay, Pinterest, and even Amazon.
The Rycraft Cookie Stamp Collector’s Handbook is a history and guide to Rycraft cookie stamps with pictures of each Rycraft stamp design, who carved it, the date introduced, the original price, and the date retired. To order the Collector’s Book, click here.
The Rycraft Family Farm – Corvallis, Oregon
A 100-acre parcel of fertile Oregon farmland is the original home of Rycraft Cookie Stamps. For nearly 50 years Robin Rycraft lived on the Rycraft family farm where his parents’ cookie stamp business began over 50 years ago. Rycraft Cookie Stamps are still being made by hand in the same tradition but in a new location in Emmett, Idaho, while Robin’s sister Judy and her husband Jim still live on the farm with their family.
Eleanor’s ceramic studio is located next to the original 1880’s two-story farmhouse where Robin spent his childhood. A wood stove in the center of the workshop added to the rustic atmosphere where Rycraft employees, at one time numbering 30 people, made each ceramic product by hand. They enjoyed peaceful vistas of farmlands and fruit trees, majestic views of Mary’s Peak and sunsets, and a pond which hosts the resident wild geese and blue herons that inhabit the farm.
The Rycraft Story – Told by Robin Rycraft
Eleanor & Carroll: 1967-1973
It was in 1967 that my mother, Eleanor Rycraft, made her first cookie stamps to sell at the Corvallis Art Center Christmas sale. She started making cookie stamps to earn a little extra money. The idea came to her after seeing pictures of wooden stamps made in Scandinavia and the Eastern Pennsylvania-Dutch area of the United States. Mom was always amazed at how many people loved her stamps. They became so popular at the Art Center that she and Dad set up a booth at the Junction City Scandinavian Festival the following summer. While Mom only thought of the cookie stamps as a way to make a little extra money at Christmas, my dad, Carroll Rycraft, thought making cookie stamps could be built into a business.
Mom carved each stamp individually in the beginning, but when Dad became involved, he carved wooden tools which pressed the designs into the clay stamp, simplifying the carving process for Mom. Most of the early geometric designs were made this way (see top photo at right from our Rycraft Cookie Stamp Collector’s Handbook. The photo below it shows our first recipe booklet). Dad designed many of these first stamps offered for sale.
As an artist and ceramicist, Mom did many other things: she painted china cups and saucers for the PEO. She designed and painted tiles picturing cooking herbs for a friend’s kitchen. She braided beautiful wool rugs for our home. She always had something going on at the dining room table. Mom had also studied landscape design, so when we purchased our farm in 1952, she turned the horse pasture that surrounded the farmhouse into a wonderfully landscaped garden. Together with my dad, she hosted many ceramic workshops at our farm’s riverside campground where a large updraft bank kiln was built and fired with wood.
My dad was more of an inventor and folk artist. He didn’t talk too much about what he did, he just did it. He made simple things beautiful. He made arrows for me each Christmas when I was young. One Christmas he cut a maple tree with lots of moss into firewood size logs, put on big red bows and gave them to all our family friends. He got together with Hap Gathercoal one year and made about a dozen fireplace bellows; they hammered sheets of copper with woodsy designs and the family surnames, and attached them to each side of the bellows. I purchased one of these at a flea market some 35 years later for $20. It was the same bellows made for the Bethel Vernon family in Alsea, Oregon.
Shown above are examples
of Eleanor’s early stamps
A Santa face painted by Eleanor,
discovered for sale on Ebay
Egg tempura copy of Blake
painting by Robin 1964.
Example of gothic calligraphy
by Robin 1969.
Eleanor & Family: 1973-1988
When Dad passed away in the fall of 1973, we had three people working for us. Mom wasn’t sure what we were going to do. I had been attending California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland and Portland State University studying ceramics and calligraphy. In 1976 I returned to the farm to help Mom manage the cookie stamp business, where we began working together to develop new glazes. Over the next few years the whole family helped out in one way or another. Lon, my younger brother, my younger sister, Erin, and Judy, my older sister, were involved directly in the early years, a family of artists, all on a different track.
By 1979, twenty-five people were working full time. The popularity of Mom’s cookie stamps soon extended far beyond the borders of Oregon, especially into many Scandinavian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities across America where decorating cookies with beautiful designs has been a tradition for generations. Mom passed away on October 15, 1995. Like Dad, she is really missed. Both of them were an encouragement to all of us in so many different ways.
Today our Heirloom Collection Cookie Stamps are still handmade with the same tradition in mind.
After growing to a company with over 30 employees in 1996, we have recently downsized and relocated to Emmett, Idaho where we are a Mom & Pop company once again. Our goal has not changed: to offer quality handmade products which will help you create sweet memories and family traditions.
Robin S. Rycraft
Leather quarter binding
with marbled paper
by Robin Rycraft (1976)
Above and below: Papercuts
of old growth fir trees and stars
(Mary’s Peak, Corvallis, OR)
by Robin Rycraft 1976
Robin: 1961-1988
After graduating from Corvallis High School in 1961, Robin attended Oregon State University where he studied art, jewelry and ceramics. During the summers he worked construction jobs in order to save up the tuition to attend the California College of Arts & Crafts in Oakland, where he studied design as well as jewelry and ceramics.
In 1967 he returned to Oregon and attended Portland State University where he studied calligraphy and then became interested in bookbinding and making marbled papers. This led to Robin’s ongoing interest in the art of making handmade paper.
In 1970 Robin and his first wife, now Peggy Skycraft, opened a studio at Hillside Center in Portland where they earned their living selling handmade books and marbled paper. During his years in Portland, Robin was part of a group that put together a recipe booklet Twenty Scandinavian Cookies printed in 1971, copyrighted and sold by Rycraft, Inc., and then reprinted in 1976.
After his dad passed away in 1973, Robin returned to the family farm in Corvallis to help run the cookie stamp business with his family. Robin also taught bookbinding at the University of Oregon as a visiting artist from 1979 through 1981. During the years that the Rycraft family worked together to build up the business on the farm, Robin learned the art of relief carving designs in clay.
Shown above are some of the tools
Robin and his dad, Carroll Rycraft,
designed to press designs into the clay.
Robin Rycraft demonstrates
carving a master.
Robin and friends wrote
this recipe book in 1971.
Robin: 1988-1992
When Eleanor’s health began to decline, the family decided to close the business for a season, after which Robin reopened Rycraft’s in the summer of 1988 as the only one of the Rycraft family still working in the business. He did all of the carving, with only a handful of part-time, seasonal employees to help with office work and production. By 1990, Robin had retired the majority of the old cookie stamp designs and replaced them with new designs reflecting his own tastes and distinctive style of carving.
Robin & Carol: 1993 to 2015
Robin married Carol May in 1993, and a year later they introduced their 2 1/2″ craft stamps and their first book The Art of Paper Casting. In 1994 the couple began exhibiting Rycraft Cookie Stamps at national trade shows such as The Gourmet Products Show and The Hobby Industry Association show. Buyers for America’s finest gift and gourmet shops were charmed by these delightful collectibles, and Rycraft earned a reputation for beautifully-detailed designs and high-quality craftsmanship.
In 1997 Rycraft developed its website at www.rycraft.com. Since then, Rycraft cookie stamps have been featured in a variety of national magazines (see our Publicity Photo Album) as well as on television and cable network shows, among them Martha Stewart’s Living, the Home Shopping Network, the Family Channel’s Home & Family Show, and Aleene’s Creative Living.
More recently you will find Rycraft stamps featured on many social media blogs such as Shower of Roses which features many giveaways of Rycraft cookie stamps. Robin and Carol now work together, using requests and suggestions from their customers, to choose the new designs which they introduce each year.
The Knockoffs and a Lawsuit: 1997 to 2001
In 1997 Rycraft Cookie Stamps were “knocked off.” A company in Pennsylvania came to the Rycraft booth at a trade show in 1996 and said they wanted to carry Rycraft’s products in their catalog, so they asked for samples and a list of our best sellers. They then promptly went to China where they had duplicates of Rycraft’s 80 best-selling designs made, not only copying Rycraft’s “trade dress” (the look and feel of our cookie stamps), but also the individual designs and naming them as we had done, even using the exact same names.
The knockoffs looked like Rycraft cookie stamps: 2″ diameter, terra cotta clay, a 1″ handle, but they only had a clear glaze instead of the colorful glazes Rycraft offers. In February 1997, we discovered that this company was selling the knockoff cookie stamps to our customers in the gift & gourmet market at 1/3 to 1/2 of our price. Our attorney began a law suit that lasted 4 1/2 years!
After 3 years we finally went to trial in front of a jury. It lasted 5 days and at the end of that we were awarded a total of $12 million in damages; however, the Supreme Court changed Trade Dress Law two weeks after our trial, and made it retroactive. Because it affected one aspect of our case, and because it was retroactive, it enabled the “bad guys” to ask for and receive a new trial scheduled for a year and a half later.
In the total of 4 1/2 years until the second trial in 2001, we lost all of our 28 employees, we went deeply into debt in order to keep our doors open (to close would have meant losing the case), and we had to mortgage the family farm to pay the attorneys fees – and the bad guys had time before
the 2nd trial to restructure their company and develop a strategy to defeat our arguments in court… so that we knew we would not be able to win the 2nd trial; therefore, we settled out of court for a little over $1 million, which was much less money than it took to pay 40% to the attorneys, the taxes to the government on the money received in the settlement, and to buy back the family farm which we had had to mortgage in order to survive. In the end, we were still deep in debt even though we had “won,” and we started over as a “mom and pop” family business.
Above: Rycraft’s Heirloom Collection 2″
Terra Cotta Cookie Stamp handcarved
by Robin Rycraft.
Below: A cookie stamp from the Import
Collection (made in China) which
looks exactly like a Rycraft Heirloom
Collection cookie stamp.
David & Maggie: 2004 to 2005
In 2004 David and Maggie Montgomery joined Rycraft, Inc. as the new graphic arts/photography team. Rycraft’s 2005 catalog was their magnificent creation, with Maggie making every single craft project and decorated cookie pictured, choosing all the props, and designing the layouts for the photo shoot, while David got the lighting just right and took all of the photos. In addition David did the pre-press graphics and photo editing to produce the catalog. Click here to see Maggie’s beautiful jewelry creations here.
David and Maggie also happen to be Carol and Robin’s “kids” (Dave is Carol’s son), so it was great to have them working at Rycraft’s while they were living nearby for a year or so. Robin and Carol are very proud of the work they did for Rycraft’s (and have done a lot of bragging about them, too).
Robin & Carol 2015 & 2016 – A Vacation Instead of Retirement
At the end of December 2015, we closed our storefront in Chester, California and sold our website at www.cookiestamp.com as well as our inventory of Import Collection Cookie Stamps (made in China), the three Rycraft books, the Rycraft Paper Casting Kit and Refill, our inventory of cobalt blue Rycraft Christmas ornaments (white clay), Rycraft Pot Savers (white clay), Rycraft embossed gift boxes and Rycraft wood display boards, as well as various other Rycraft products to Peggy Luckwald in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
In May 2016 we headed for Costa Rica, in hopes that we could afford to retire, and looking forward to the low cost of living and beauties of paradise found there. Here we are (right) holding our hometown newspaper (a Chester tradition) upon our arrival in Alajuela, Costa Rica in June of 2016.
November 2017 – We re-open the Business
The Costa Rican paradise turned out not to be as idyllic as we had hoped. After what turned out to be only a 4 1/2 month vacation instead of long-term retirement, we returned home to our beloved USA just in time to vote in the 2016 election and then move into a little house on a 1-acre farm in Idaho, where Robin has his studio and workshop overlooking our horse pasture, orchard and veggie garden. Thoughts of retirement went out the window and we re-opened the business, just the two of us once again.
Confused?
Rycraft Cookie Stamps – Historical Overview