Fern Jennings

Perhaps you have seen the news feature "Made in America". On it reporters focus on an industry or product that you can buy that is made in this county. "Made in America" represents an ideal of how to get our populace back to work and restore prosperity in the U.S. There is a local industry here in Cleveland that still makes its product by hand much the way it has for many years. Each of item of its output is individually designed and built to specification. It has remained in the same family for 150 years. That company is the Holtkamp organ company and its product is pipe organs.


I have always found it fascinating to visit a pipe organ shop. My admiration is vast for the craftsmen and women who put together these incredible instruments. The detail from design, to pipe modeling to woodworking and assembling the finished instrument on its site are amazing. Today precision design and power tools are used to create the product but the basic techniques and design aesthetics are handed down generation to generation.


To quote from the company's website: "The Holtkamp firm is much the same today as it was in 1922 when it opened its new factory at 2909 Meyer Avenue. It remains small, employing about twenty skilled craftsmen. In fact the firm may well be of optimum size for the production of pipe organs; large enough to allow the employ of specialists in certain phases of the art of organ building yet small enough for the proprietor to assume a direct control and interest in every phases of the 4 or 6 organs that leave the factory in an average year."


We hope you will join us on the tour of the company as listed below on Saturday, September 28. After we will go up the street to another fine local business, the much newer Market Garden Brewery, for a time of food and fellowship. The registration deadline has been extended and an incorrect link to the Subdean has been fixed. If you tried the link and had your message returned please try again.


Fern    

Web Site

Job Openings/Substitutes

Join AGO