Shop Local This Holiday Season With Gifts From Top Sonoma County Artists and Makers

With Christmas right around the corner, holiday shopping is in full force. Start local for homey presents that are as unique as they are thoughtful. We found the perfect gifts from eight top Sonoma County artists and makers to celebrate the holidays in Sonoma style.

Nancy Rosenthal

Fiat Luxe, Santa Rosa

Santa Rosa native Nancy Rosenthal is a classically trained cellist who spent two decades working in early childhood education. After teaching herself soapmaking, Rosenthal found her niche in felted soaps, which work like a washcloth and soap in one, sudsing up a thick, herbal-scented foam. Eventually, her unique designs were discovered by retail giant Anthropologie.

“That was in 2009, and we went from making 40 soaps a year to over 10,000,” she remembers. She hired assistants and ramped up production, but eventually, the cost of the raw materials surpassed the market.

Rosenthal has since returned to her original love of creating with wool. “Felting is like a metamorphosis. You lay out all these fine layers and wisps of wool. The potential is all there; you just have to be patient. All of a sudden, it just shifts. It’s so exciting.”

Her background in teaching continues to inspire her art. “I never really lost touch with my childhood… And witnessing the beauty the children were creating did encourage me to explore.”

Soaps, $19 each. Meet the artist at an open-studio holiday event Dec. 14 in Santa Rosa. fiatluxedesigns.com

Kaylee Weeks

Lil Clay Grl, Petaluma

Ceramicist Kaylee Weeks didn’t know that a collection of playful blue bunnies would become her calling card. But when the up-and-coming artist, who earned a degree in ceramics from Sonoma State University in 2019, first started embellishing her mugs with the woodland creatures, which are drawn by hand, the design resonated.

“As soon as I made my first few bunnies, I did feel attached. They felt very ‘me,’” she says.

Weeks, who works out of Petaluma’s Kickwheel studios, has recently been able to leave her day job to be a full-time artist and ceramics teacher. “It feels incredible to be able to be in the studio more and get more of a following,” she says.

She is experimenting with form, including larger serving platters, sculptural pieces and travel mugs, in addition to her signature chunky mugs with bold, exaggerated handles. And there are new designs too — tomatoes, dachshunds, cherubs kissing under mistletoe — all with Weeks’ signature whimsical touch.

Mugs, $40-$60. Meet the artist at Kickwheel Sonoma’s holiday market and craft fair on Dec. 14. lilclaygrl.com

Matt Gallegos

Foolish Pride Leather, Santa Rosa

“As bad as the pandemic lockdown was, the silver lining is I launched my passion,” says Matt Gallegos of Foolish Pride Leather. Gallegos grew up in Colorado and began creating with leather in college as a hobby.

He spent the earlier part of his career in the culinary field, working at a local bakery and at Ceres Community Project, which makes meals for residents with life-threatening illnesses. But when the pandemic upended the industry, Gallegos returned to his love of craft.

Gallegos’ elegant, hand-stitched wallets, billfolds, keychains and braided bracelets are sold at Bay Area maker fairs and online. Colors range from the classic cognac and tan to red, black and bicolor designs in Italian leather, with tonal or contrasting stitching. Gallegos says his signature is the minimalist folding wallet called the Springfield, which folds in half and has slots for a picture ID, cards and cash.

“The first thing I ever made in college was a studded bracelet,” Gallegos says. “To see the broader line be successful feels incredible. I really enjoy seeing a tangible product of my labor — something I can hold in my hand.”

Wallets $60-$105, keychains $25. foolishprideleather.com

Abel Salas & Raul Peralta

Sonoma Millworks, Healdsburg

Sonoma Millworks specializes in furniture and accessories made with wood reclaimed from the wine industry. When large batches of wine are aged in stainless-steel tanks, winemakers will occasionally insert thin staves of French oak into the tank to impart flavor, mimicking the influence of barrel aging. The team at Sonoma Millworks repurposes these wooden planks, which are stained an array of colors by the wine, into tables, knife blocks, serving platters, charcuterie boards and more.

The company has a studio in Healdsburg where you can check out designs.

Stacks of material await transformation in the lumberyard out back, while woodworkers Abel Salas and Raul Peralta work in an adjacent studio. “People don’t believe how the staves can transform into this product. It’s good to give another life, another chance to the material,” says Salas.

Tapas boards, $165-$225. sonomamillworks.com

Hitomi Jacobs

Hitomi Jacobs Designs, Santa Rosa

Hitomi Jacobs was born in Japan and studied textile design in college. She built a career in fashion in Tokyo, working as a pattern maker and running a small apparel company. But in her 30s, she married an American and moved to the U.S., where she explored a new interest in jewelry. “With fabric, if you cut by mistake, it’s done. Working in metal, I can go back, melt it, change it,” Jacobs explains.

Her delicate creations, made with fine keshi pearls, gold wire and tiny, crocheted silk threads, are all one of a kind. “They’re simple — so light and moveable. I love the fringe effect, the shimmer and movement of the pieces as they’re worn,” she says.

Earlier in her career, Jacobs found it difficult to be an independent designer, but here in Sonoma, she’s found her calling. “In Japan, there are so many rules — people saying ‘It must be this way.’ When I left at 37 years old, my friends said it was too late. ‘Don’t do that,’ they said. But I think America has more opportunity.”

Earrings, $280-$980. Available at Healdsburg’s Gallery Lulo and from the artist. hitomijacobsdesigns.com

Cathrina Susoev

Cat-Hawk Gardens, Petaluma

An avid gardener and artist, Cathrina Susoev had been growing herbs and making succulent dish gardens for years when she first came across kokedama about a decade ago. Kokedama are Japanese string gardens, an art form in which a ball of soil is covered in moss and bound tightly with twine or wire.

Kokedama often show off rare ornamental plants or bonsai, which grow well with limited soil space. Susoev has designed kokedama with staghorn fern, asparagus fern, pothos, succulents and more. “I love the Japanese influence, the aesthetic, which is kind of wabi-sabi,” she explains. “They really are like a meditative process to create.”

Susoev, who used to teach at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, has a small studio at her rural Petaluma home where she grows many of the plants she uses in her kokedama. She leads kokedama workshops at Petaluma’s Tenfold Farmstand and for private groups — and because she is also a bodywork practitioner, each workshop begins with a meditation that centers the body and mind.

Kokedama, $55. Available at Penngrove Market, Ethical Clothing in Petaluma and Bliss Organic Day Spa in Sebastopol, or from the artist. cathawkgardens.com

Lisa Rogers

Slow Digz, Sebastopol

“I think I was always meant to work with my hands,” says natural-dye expert Lisa Rogers. A former science teacher, Rogers has lived and taught in both California and Hawaii. After losing her Lake County classroom in a wildfire, she moved to Sonoma County and worked as a mentor to other science teachers before leaving to pursue her love of eco-printing and natural dyes full time.

The colors on her silk and cotton scarves come from leaves, bark and flower petals she’s collected in the wild or grown in her home garden. “The connection to nature is really spiritual to me. I love gathering natural materials and testing things out,” she says. “But the real joy is unbundling a piece of fabric after the dyeing process is complete. It’s like magic!”

These days, teaching about the natural dye process is a new passion. Rogers leads classes at local nature preserves and in stores and libraries. “Honestly, the workshops are my jam. I really love teaching people. It’s so fun to see their work, to share that wonder with people,” she says.

Scarf, $45. The artist leads a holiday gift making workshop Dec. 14 in San Rafael. slowdigz.com

Dirt to denim — that’s the ethos behind this handsome jacket, designed by denim aficionado Nic Wiessler. WiesMade, his line of rugged jeans, jackets, hats and other timeless basics, are designed here in Sonoma, produced with sustainable American-grown cotton and sewn in a family-run shop in Los Angeles. Wiessler’s denim comes with a sense of history — the jacket James Dean might’ve worn, if James Dean drove a farm truck around Bodega with a surfboard sticking out the back. “We do have lots of actors and people in Hollywood discovering us,” says Wiessler.

A lifelong surfer who studied environmental science at Sonoma State, Wiessler is a veteran of big retail brands like Gap and Cole Haan. He sees his clothing in the context of historic, American-made workwear — pieces that reflect an honest, humble spirit and will last for decades.

As he told the magazine last year, “If you want a good pair of jeans and you’re into locally sourced, high-quality denim, you’ll come to us. There’s plenty of market for that.”