On Being worthy of purpose

I'm tying my first knot before binding a broom when I start thinking about the person who's going to own it.

I don't know their name. I may not ever meet them. But I know what they’re going to do with this thing in my hands — they’re going to carry it to the front door and sweep outward, pushing out whatever the day left on the threshold. They may cast a circle with it, walking the edge of the space with the bristles just brushing the floor. They’re going to hold it over a doorway, or the  hearth, as a ward, or run it through a room heavy with something that needs clearing. So as I bind it, I'm not just thinking about whether it's beautiful. I'm thinking about whether it's formidable — whether it'll hold up to the work that will be asked of it, at its most beautiful. Sturdy enough to actually do something. That's the whole job, as far as I'm concerned: build something worthy of what it's for.

That sentence — worthy of what it's for — is close to the center of everything I do, not just the brooms. I've never been able to separate the magic from the practical work of it. People sometimes assume the two live apart: the mundane object over here, the protective or ritual meaning tacked on somewhere else, like a label. I don't experience it that way. The practical magic — pun fully intended — is the practice. A broom is either sturdy or it isn't. It either sweeps clean or it doesn't. The craft has to hold up, or none of the rest of it means anything.

I didn't understand that, at first. My first broom came from a Sunhouse kit — good instructions, approachable, the kind of thing that gets you started. It taught me the mechanics: how to bind, how to shape a handle, how the whole thing wants to come together. But it wasn't until I took a workshop with Alyssa at Hearthcraft Brooms that something shifted. Here was this object we mostly think of in terms of its practical or ritual associations and she was making them beautiful. Functional and beautiful at once, with no contradiction between the two. That unlocked something for me. It gave me permission to stop making a basic besom and start actually designing — to treat a broom the way you'd treat any other object worth making with care: personalized, bespoke, an expression of whoever it's for.

The style I work in draws on Appalachian and Shaker broom-making — it's a way of making that's tactile and accessible without sacrificing range. It requires your whole body in the work. You can make something simple and sturdy, or you can get as elaborate and specific as the piece calls for. That flexibility matters to me, because I think no two people who want a broom want the same thing from it.

I never lose sight of how liminal a broom actually is. We tend to think of tools as belonging to one place — a kitchen tool stays in the kitchen — but a broom doesn't adhere to that. It moves across the threshold (literally) constantly, in and out, in and out, which means it's always half in the house and half out of it. I heard someone on the Between Three Witches podcast describe besoms this way once — as tools built for liminal space — and it named something I'd felt but hadn't quite articulated. A broom doesn't just clean a room. It works the boundary itself: the door, the step, the line between what's welcome in your home and what isn't.

handmade braided broom

One of the pieces I've made that I feel most connected to is a small whisk broom with a Brigid's cross worked into it — simple, elegant and, I think, beautiful. I use it constantly, to cleanse my altar, to clear my workspace before I sit down to read cards or hold space for someone else's grief. It doesn't look like much. But it's strong enough for what I ask of it, every single time. That, more than any elaborate piece I've built, is what tells me I got the balance right — beauty that doesn't come at the expense of the work.

So when I'm binding a broom now, that's what I'm building toward. Not a decorative object shaped like a broom. Not a superstition on a stick. A tool sturdy enough to do real work at a threshold, beautiful enough that someone wants to keep it in view instead of in a closet, and made with enough care that the person who eventually owns it can feel, even if she couldn't say why, that it was built with her in mind.

If any of this speaks to you, I'll have brooms available soon through my Etsy shop, and in person at The Witchery NJ this fall. More on both very soon.