About Us
The Sarah Elizabeth Shop has been in Rockport, Massachusetts for 30 years. Sarah Elizabeth Holloran had been a member of the Folly Cove Designers for twenty-seven years. After the Designers disbanded in 1969 she decided to continue blockprinting and in 1974 opened the Sarah Elizabeth Shop. Latter that year Isabel Natti joined her as an apprentice.
The Folly Cove Designers was a group taught design by Virginia Lee Burton Demetrios. They used what they learned to design, and then carve, linoleum blocks to print on fabrics for place mats, runners, hangings, tablecloths, skirts, and yardgoods for practical uses. They started in 1938, over the years including more than forty artists in their guild-like association. No works were signed, everyone putting the group first. When their teacher died in 1968, the remaining designers decided to disband. The sample books, long yard-good hangings, and related material which remained in their retail outlet (the Barn) were given to the Cape Ann Historical Museum in Gloucester, where they can be seen to this day.
Sarah Elizabeth Johnson Holloran was born in Gloucester in 1917. She attended Gloucester schools, graduating with the Class of 1935. After attending Bradford College she studied fashion design and illustration at the Vesper George School of Art in Boston. In 1942 she took Virgia Lee Burton's design course and had her work accepted by the Folly Cove Designer's jury, carved the design in lino, thus becoming a Folly Cove Designer. She continued with them until their end in 1969.
Isabel Natti was born in 1946 at Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester, Massachusetts to a Lanesville family. The community which existed in Lanesville in the mid-twentieth century shared certain values with the Folly Cove Designers. First was to be aware. From awareness could come observation and perception. Once perceived, then beauty could be created. It was in the awareness of nature that this community found inspiration.
She learned blockprinting at home from her father. He was interested in designs and illustration to supplement his translation of the Kalevala. As a child she watched her Aunt Lee Natti printing, and shared the excitement of the family when her Uncle Eino Natti got the Acorn press. Isabel started blockprinting as a week-end job, and now, after thirty years continues to print the linoleum blocks she has designed and carved at the Sarah Elizabeth Shop.
