Now, you can take your heart — and your chart — with you, wherever you go.
CHART Metalworks creates striking pendants, belt buckles, cufflinks and other adornments that are custom-made with a nautical chart of your favorite spot on the coast. Set in silver or bronze, which sailors and seamen love because it won't corrode in salt water, the charts are coated with a thick layer of resin and they end up looking like cabochons. In other words, they're quite lovely.
The small-but-growing company is the brainchild of Charlotte Leavitt, a Hampden native and former commercial loan officer who loves to sail. She had a bunch of nautical charts lying around at home and so admired their beauty that she wanted to find a way to wear them. In 2006, CHART Metalworks was born, and Leavitt has since moved the operation into a small studio above Custom House Wharf in Portland.
"I wanted to make something I could call my own," she recalled recently.
Now, she and her fiance, John Guptill, run the company together. He used to work as a Realtor, and together, they're trying to grow the business in a smart, incremental way. Expect to hear more about CHART in the coming year. Just don't expect John or Charlotte to lose sight of their values or their roots.
"We use recycled metals and recycled paper. We're down on the working waterfront. We're both from Maine," Charlotte says. "We're everything Maine."
For more information about CHART Metalworks or to place an order, click here.
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