It the 1960s, Nancy Templeton was not allowed to take wood shop at her Southern California high school. With a passion for fine wood crafting, hard work, determination and the mindset of no-one telling her what she can or can’t do, she created a dream studio in her garage and developed an artisanal business we all know and love. Takota.

 

With two master’s degrees she had a successful career teaching special needs children in Los Angeles. After years of teaching, she left Los Angeles to follow her dreams of becoming an artist. After a short experiment in San Francisco, created a new life in the foothills of rural Grass Valley.

 

She began her creative journey making fine jewelry, one-of-a-kind jewelry boxes and several other unique items out of high quality and rare woods. One of her pieces of art was selected to be on the White House Christmas tree during the Clinton administration. As a nature conscious artist, she would never use woods from endangered trees and would only purchase wood from companies that were committed to re-foresting.

 

She transitioned her craft to recycling discarded hard cover books. In the era of Kindle, many hard cover books are destined for library used book sales or worse. As Baby Boomers age and downsize or as estate sales are held, hard cover books are being discarded in record numbers. Some end up in landfills or being fed into wood chippers. In her shop she gave them a second life. Removing the pages, she turned them into beautiful book “banks”. Sitting on a shelf, the books became secret hiding places for valuables. Larger coffee table books could remain on the coffee table but now hold remote controls.  This became Nancy’s labor of love.

 

She had loved the community of artists and craftspeople she had met along the way as they had all become her "Family". She will be greatly missed.