Star-Journbal Editor
Local townsfolk don't need to brag about Saturday's Hillsboro Arts & Crafts Fair.
They can let longtime artisans, glossy magazines, and national organizations do it for them, but if the locals want to crow a little about the event, that's OK.
After all, the Hillsboro Arts & Crafts Fair is one of the nation's best one-day craft festivals.
No brag, just fact.
Some 350 skilled artists and craftsmen will be on hand Saturday to sell their handiwork, and an estimated 40,000 people will come to Hillsboro because of the fair's excellent reputation and reviews.
In years past as much as $1 million has exchanged hands during the event, which runs from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.
The fair attracts people from every income bracket, including readers of the Wichita Register magazine, targeted at an upper-income audience.
In its current issue, its glossy pages contained the following glowing review, including a reference to the fair's national ranking by a top-ranked arts and crafts publication:
Sunshine Artist magazine rated this arts and crafts fair, now in its thirty-seventh year, among the top one hundred in the country. Experience it yourself, and you'll see why!
The best part of this one-day blitz is its sheer size. Hundreds of the finest artists and craftspeople from a fifteen-state area are handpicked to bring in their wares. (One hundred new vendors are chosen each year to keep things fresh). Bring a backpack and fill up!
Get your holiday shopping finished in one fell swoop and be the envy of everyone: choose from handmade jewelry and clothing, personalized children's toys, original watercolors and photography, handmade soaps and lotions.
More into eating than shopping? Homemade bierocks and zwieback and Hillsboro's famous smoked sausage celebrate the town's German heritage. Shuttle buses take guests to and from a parking lot on the south side of town.
In addition to endorsements like that, the Hillsboro Arts and Crafts Association couldn't hire better spokesmen for the event than the artists themselves.
Vendor Julie Baker, owner of Antique Flower Factory of Fredonia, has displayed her primitive country crafts at the fair for the past eight years.
In order to continue in her preferred role as a stay-at-home mom, Baker, who has four children, needs to make enough money selling her artwork at craft festivals in the fall to supplement her husband's full- time employment.
And that's why the Hillsboro fair is a must-do event, she said.
On Saturday, Baker will stock her booth, located across from the historic Olde Towne Restaurant on Main Street, with as much merchandise as she'd normally take to a two- or three-day show.
"This is my business," Baker said, speaking on a cell phone from an arts and crafts fair this past weekend. "When you talk to other people who make their living doing this, they describe Hillsboro as awesome, fantastic, outstanding; they say, 'That's a superb crafts show.'
"You can't find a better one-day craft show anywhere."
Another vendor who is sold on the Hillsboro fair is artist Carroll Stonecipher, a woodworker and metalworker from Oklahoma. He's been coming to Hillsboro for more than 15 years, selling birdhouses and, more recently, welded wrought iron creations.
Like Baker, Stonecipher is a full-time artist who travels almost every weekend in the fall. But last week he was at home in his workshop making more items to bring to Hillsboro.
"It's one of the better ones, all things considered," Stonecipher said. "I have some idea what I should bring. As a one-day fair, Hillsboro's probably the biggest.
"There's a good atmosphere," he added. "It's fast and furious, so it's a fun show to do. People come there to buy. They save up to come to that show."
Both agreed that the Hillsboro fair is so popular with the public because of its rigorous entry requirements, which assures they'll be coming to a high-quality show.
Before being allowed to have a booth at the fair, an artist and his work must be approved by a jury of Arts & Crafts Association members, which whittled 600 applicants down to 350 participants for this year's show.
"Higher quality standards by the jury make it more difficult and prestigious to get in," Baker said. "But that's why they have such a wonderful crafts show, because of the higher standards they have."
Baker said the word being passed in serious arts and crafts circles is that Hillsboro also sets the standard for hospitality.
"The best of the best craftsmen from across the country and the hometown hospitality of Hillsboro makes for a spectacular crafts show," she said.
Most importantly for Baker, the Hillsboro fair has proven itself to be a place where serious shoppers come with lots of money to spend.
"People come there to buy something," Baker said, "and they don't come with a checkbook, they come with hundred-dollar bills."
