About

Just Mollie and Me ...

I'm a native Mainer, born and raised in the Riverton neighborhood of Portland, now living and working side by side with my wife-cum-best-friend Mollie on the outskirts of a tiny fishing village on the Down East coast. Mollie calls herself an uprooted Texan, but over the twenty-one years we've lived here, I think of her as a happily hybidized transplant.

Before moving "home to Maine" we lived in New York City, where I was a professor of dramatic literature and English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and before that in Indiana where I taught at IU-Bloomington. But it's back in my home state, with its natural beauty - ocean, lakes, rivers, mountains, even a little desert - that we've truly created our own place.

Now that we've finished (if such things are ever truly finished) renovating (while occupying) this ramshackle old house we purchased in 1989, we've turned our energies to gardening, beachcombing, exploring the Maine woods, entertaining the little black and white kitty cat who allows us to share her home, and keeping tropical fish. We both enjoy cooking. I'm the baker in the family - can't remember the last time we bought a loaf of bread at the supermarket. Mollie makes a mean plate of pasta.

And here I've found an entirely new career. Along with Mollie, I design and craft jewelry and decorative items for the home. We work with copper, sterling silver, semi-precious gemstones, and the natural treasures (shells, pine cones, birch bark, beach stones) that Maine offers in such glorious abundance.

For more than a decade, Mollie and I have been selling online, at first on Etsy, now through our own websites.

Here's where you'll find us:

Prospero Lane

Rough Magic Creations

Thanks for visiting. Please come back soon!
Joe (a.k.a. "Prospero")