Mark Wurston has been recognized as the best framer on Nantucket ever since I moved here. He’s been a carpenter his whole life, has lived in the woods of Maine and on a sheep ranch in Wyoming. He is quiet and unassuming, a trait that sometimes hides his sheer brilliance. He has an uncanny ability to see a complex framing system in 3-D, in his mind, without drawing it out. For fun he raises monarch butterflies.

Andy Marcel was born in Poland when it was under communist rule. He says that growing up in a communist country prepared him for living in a rural community. As a young man he escaped to an Austrian refugee camp, and from there flew to Toronto to attend college and law school without knowing a word of English. To support himself he got a job as a helper to a tiler. He found he had a superb sense of hand and eye coordination. 27 years ago he got a chance to do a project on the island and he never left. I’m glad he didn’t.

Ben Champoux moved to the island when he was in first grade. His dad came out here in the 70s to help manage the grounds for a local developer. Ben studied ecology and environmental science in college, and then turf science. He joined his dad’s landscape design practice in his late 20s, and took it over a few years later. He’s developed an almost innate sense of what plants work together, plants that are hardy enough for the salt and the wind that define our climate.

Straight out of high school Rick Cantwell was hired as a helper in a custom wood shop on Long Island. In his words, "the hook was set.” He became absorbed in the field of studio furniture, mastering period and modern furniture making, steam bending and even instrument making. His subsequent portfolio of work landed him in the Furniture Design Program at the School for American Crafts at Rochester Institute of Technology. He set up his own shop in 2001 and he’s been one my most trusted craftspeople since.

I’ve known Greyson Keller since he was a little kid. In fact, when he was just starting his business he worked on my crews for a couple of winters. Now he’s built an admirable company that is big enough to serve you, but small enough to know you. He studied jazz and world music in college, and picked up summer landscaping jobs to get through school. It turns out that it was designing, building and caring for gardens that was his true passion.