The 2024 Aiken’s Makin’ Arts & Crafts Show welcomed more than 200 vendors this year, with a crowd of curious shoppers to match. The tents for the annual arts and crafts bazaar were encamped across three blocks in the downtown Aiken, from the Aiken Visitor’s Center and Train Museum on Park Avenue, across Fairfield and York streets—in front of St. Mary’s Help of Christians Catholic Church—to Chesterfield Street.
Along with over 20 food vendors—offering everything from hot dogs to gyros to several kinds of chicken on a stick, as well as and plenty of freshly-squeezed lemonade—and not counting edible goods sellers, there were 10 different kind of craft vendors installed along Aiken’s downtown.
Craft categories ranged from clothing, jewelry and needlecraft, to woodwork, ceramic art and even metalwork and glass crafts.
Keturah Stoltzfus, an artist based in Abbeville, S.C. who participated in Aiken’s Makin’ for the first time this year, noted that while sales were “medium,” her handmade leatherbound journals piqued the interests of passersby.
“It’s been a great response,” said Stoltzfus, who, alongside making leather notebooks for writers and fellow artists, paints house portraits with earth-pigment watercolors, used with paints she also made herself with crushed rock and gum Arabic. “People love my work, but sometimes it’s a little out of budget for them.”
The city’s 48th annual arts market, coordinated by the Aiken Chamber of Commerce, went from Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., to Saturday, beginning at the same time and closing down at 5 p.m.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
