Zig zagging Through Everywhere Astonishments! // Margaux

I first met Margaux online many years ago, when Bk was still at its first brick-and-mortar location in Glassell Park. As the co-founder of Peg and Awl, she has transformed reclaimed materials into artifacts rich with history, beauty, and purpose for the past 15 years. Whether binding journals, crafting wooden treasures, or capturing fleeting thoughts in her journal with her art, Margaux moves through life with curiosity and intention, embracing its zigzags and inspiring us along the way. - Eunice

Bk: Outside of Peg and Awl, who is Margaux? Can you share a brief glimpse into your personal journey and the experiences that shaped who you are today?

Margaux: Oh goodness, this is a big question! Who am I? I am shaped and reshaped daily by the magic of everyday things that surround me. I scribble and make obsessively. I love ungardening and am at this very moment, seeing the results of my gardening in the form of thousands of snowdrops breaking through the earth of this recently cleared-from-invasives hillside! I am Mama to two boys — Søren and Silas, and one Pearl. I am wife and partner of Walter, with whom I co-own Peg and Awl, our business of 15 years!

I love, love, love getting lost.

Bk: Peg & Awl seems to evolve in such an organic and inspiring way! We are curious how you navigate its direction, from small details to major business decisions? Was there a pivotal moment or experience that shaped the journey of Peg & Awl?

Margaux: We started without a plan and continue without a plan — though the business isn’t without structure. Sometimes my spontaneity confounds our small crew made up of mostly grounded and organized creatures. The balance allows for our many pivots and enables us to flourish whilst maintaining structure, organization, consistency, and reliability.

Though too, what feels sometimes like chaos is easy to make sense of in reverse. Peg and Awl began with treasures for the home. We made multiple use objects for relatively small spaces for our family.  When Silas was born we had two littles’ things to haul — and two new journals as well. We couldn’t find a bag suited for all our needs that looked good too — so we made one bag and then we made more. In 2016 when I felt art had been squeezed out of my life, I returned to it by taking a picture book workshop in Spain. The next year Walter went to Italy for a painting workshop. From those two adventures came our biggest pivot – we developed the Sendak Artist Roll and the Scout Plein Air Box.

What a joy to be parents, small business owners, AND artists again!

We’ve done a ton of zigging and zagging in our 15 years, which we celebrated on the 10th of January, may we never stop!

Bk: How do you balance or juggle tending a small business passionately and being a parent?

Margaux: I think what balance we have comes from loving what we do — making, exploring, learning, and doing — and braiding it into family, education, work, etc. Having a small business and homeschooling* our boys means that work, school, vacations, bike rides, museum visits, projects, cooking, and even television, are all things that we get to enjoy, learn from, talk about, and incorporate into Peg and Awl!

*Silas started public school this year so we have entirely new ground to navigate!

Bk: From bookbinding to woodworking to bag making, Peg and Awl has explored so many mediums. Is there a particular craft or project that feels like the soul of your work?

Margaux: The soul of our work is the want for something that doesn’t exist in the way we want it to. We love to design and problem solve new treasures. We return to certain materials — wood, waxed canvas, vegetable tanned leather, paper, metals — because we have them and the tools for them in our shop — but we are always excited to bring in new tools and materials, too!

For example, every winter I get a hankering to play with clay. This year, after not being accepted into a local clay workshop, I got together with a friend and her underused kiln and we set deadlines for firing which has us both making a lot of stuff!! I am excited to continue and I may even have spent too much time investigating antique kickwheels on FB Marketplace.

Bk: In a world increasingly driven by digital tools, what analog tools remain essential to your creative process, and why?

Margaux: I am never without a journal and pen. I often have nightmares of losing my journals to a hungry sea — though I give much credit to The Journal Thief of Amsterdam for igniting our business. I write and draw everything out first. The act of scritchy scratchy-ing in my journal makes things stick somewhere in my ooey gooey brain, even the things sometimes take a while to excavate. I love tools and materials and often go to flea markets for inspiration where I find old art supplies, textiles, objects, mystery tools, and colors and patina of things worn and abandoned. Of course I love the stories, too — about both the objects and the sellers!

Bk: How do you incorporate art-making and journaling into your everyday practice?

Margaux: I reserve EVERY morning for morning pages and scribbling. Even when traveling. Even when our schedule gets crammy. Everyone in my life knows this — and they don’t always love it but I am a crank if I don’t get my morning scribbles in. The everydaying is the foundation of my being and the spark that feeds my work and living.

I also thrive with challenges and deadlines. I/we partake in person events and shows, as well as online challenges and classes. I am currently embarking on my 8th year doing #the100dayproject ! This year my project consists of miniature prints of drawings drawn from memory — a real challenge for me as I have Aphantasia and have NO visual imagery in my mind. My longest lasting #100dayproject was my non-dominant hand journaling project, Smudge, which lasted for 3 years!

Bk: Your writing on your Substack often captures the tension between nostalgia and living in the present. How do you balance looking back while continuing to move forward?

Margaux: Well, strangely, I think I mostly live in the present in my life — the past in others’ lives — most often the lives of strangers through their objects and abandoned homes. Other people’s nostalgia, I call it. From a very young age looking back at my life resulted in a physical pain like no other pain I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never loved my own nostalgia but am appreciating a slow warming to it since my mom’s death 4 years ago, and as I near, yikes!, 50.

Bk: Memory and storytelling are central to both your writing and your work. If Peg and Awl were a book, what would its title be?

Margaux: Everywhere Astonishments!

Where to find Margaux: 
IG: @pegandawl @beingmargauxkent
Substack: Resounding Little Voices

Bk Artifacts Featured:

• [Peg and Awl ] Mini Artist Sendak Roll - Mini Size of the Regular shown in photos
• [Peg and Awl ] Iris Painter’s Palette
• Peg & Awl Full Collection