Five Hudson Valley Makers We're Watching This Summer
One of the things we love most about living and working in the Hudson Valley is how close you are to the people who make things. Not in the abstract, Instagram-filtered sense, but literally. The ceramicist whose mugs you drink your coffee from has a studio twenty minutes away. The woman who made your quilt foraged the dye materials from the same hills you hike. The cheese on your board came from a farm you can visit on a Saturday afternoon, where the cows are out in the field and the aging cave smells like something from another century.
This is the culture of making that drew many of us here in the first place. And every season, we find ourselves paying attention to a new handful of people whose work feels especially alive. Thoughtful in its process, rooted in this place, and made with the kind of care that you can feel the moment you hold it.
Here are five makers we're watching this summer.
1. Tellefsen Atelier
Middletown, NY | Ceramics
Alexis Tellefsen has been quietly building one of the most recognizable ceramics practices in the Hudson Valley. If you've eaten at a farm-to-table restaurant or browsed a carefully curated home goods shop anywhere between Beacon and Hudson, there's a good chance you've already held her work in your hands.
Trained at SUNY New Paltz, Tellefsen works from her Middletown studio, where she wheel-throws thousands of pieces a year. Mugs, carafes, berry bowls, candle holders, serving dishes, all in a palette of custom-formulated glazes that land somewhere between river stone and morning fog. Earth tones, always. Nothing precious, nothing fussy. These are pieces that want to be used.
What draws us to her work isn't just the aesthetic (though it's undeniably beautiful). It's the consistency of vision. In a ceramics world that often chases trends, like the wobbly mug or the splashy glaze, Tellefsen's line feels anchored. Every piece has the same quiet authority: a confidence in simplicity, a refusal to overwork. Her work is carried by about two dozen regional vendors and through her own studio shop, and if you haven't added a piece to your kitchen yet, this is the summer.
Find her: https://tellefsenatelier.com
2. KHEM Studios
Stanford, NY | Furniture & Woodwork
KHEM Studios is the kind of operation that makes you rethink what "handmade" means. Founded in 2016 by Kari Britta Lorenson and Erik S. Guzman, both MFA sculptors from the School of Visual Arts, the studio produces contemporary furniture and homeware from locally sourced American hardwoods at their space in Stanford, a small town tucked into the rolling farmland of southern Dutchess County.
The name is an acronym: Kari, their daughter Hanna, Erik, and Maple, their giant schnauzer. That detail tells you something about the scale and spirit of the work. This is a family studio, not a factory. Every piece, from benches and dining chairs to side tables, coffee tables, and their now-iconic cutting and serving boards, is shaped by hand with a sculptor's eye for proportion and negative space.
What sets KHEM apart is the tension between minimalism and warmth. Their furniture reads as modern and clean, but it's never cold. The grain of the wood does the talking. A walnut bench has the presence of a piece of art but the humility of something that belongs in a mudroom with boots underneath it. That balance of art-school rigor and Hudson Valley practicality is rare, and it's why their work keeps showing up in the homes we design.
Find them: https://khemstudios.com
3. Salt + Still
Hudson Valley, NY | Naturally Dyed Quilts & Textiles
If there's a single maker in the Hudson Valley whose work makes us stop and stare every time, it's Alison Charli Smith. A textile designer, natural dyer, and quilter, Smith has spent the last decade building Salt + Still, a one-woman studio practice devoted to quilts made entirely with plant-based and foraged dyes, hand-sewn with cotton sashiko thread.
The name is a tribute to water, the elemental ingredient in the natural dye process. And the quilts themselves feel elemental, too. Smith works with materials like madder root, Osage orange, and insect-based pigments, coaxing colors from the landscape that no synthetic dye could replicate. The result is a palette that shifts with the light: dusty pinks, deep ochres, muted indigos, soft greens that feel like they've been washed by a decade of sun.
She produces just eight to fifteen quilts a year, many of them commissioned, including pieces for the Farmhouse Project and New York City's Tonchin restaurant. Each one is a genuine art object, but they're also blankets. They're meant to be draped over a bed, pulled over your legs on a cool evening, lived with.
Find her: https://www.alisoncharlismith.com
4. Chaseholm Farm Creamery
Pine Plains, NY | Artisan Cheese
Some makers are good, and some makers are named one of the top 50 cheesemakers in America by Food & Wine. Sarah and Rory Chase are the latter.
Chaseholm Farm is a multi-generational, 350-acre grass-based dairy operation in Pine Plains, about as deep into the quiet, agricultural heart of the Hudson Valley as you can get. The farm has been in the family for generations, but the creamery is Rory's creation. In 2007, he converted a barn built by his grandfather in the 1930s into a cheesemaking plant and aging cave. Sarah manages the herd. Together, they're one of only a handful of true farmstead operations in New York, meaning the milk comes from their own cows, on their own land, steps from where the cheese is made.
The lineup ranges from fresh farmer cheese (in seasonal flavors) to soft-ripened beauties like their camembert and the cult-favorite Nimbus, a triple cream that Food & Wine singled out specifically, to firm, alpine-style wheels aged four to eight months. Everything is seasonal. Everything is small-batch. And everything tastes like the place it comes from, which is exactly the point.
Find them:https://www.cfcreamery.com and at farmers markets throughout the Hudson Valley.
5. Silver Brothers
Old Chatham, NY | Grain-to-Glass Whiskey
This one is brand new, and we mean that literally. Silver Brothers just opened their tasting room to the public on June 6, making them one of the freshest stories in the Hudson Valley maker scene right now.
Founded in 2020 by Matthew Greitzer and Kimberly Driessen-Greitzer, Silver Brothers is a grain-to-glass distillery operating on a 220-acre farm in Old Chatham. About 70 percent of the grain used in production (rye, barley, corn) is grown on-site, and their first expression of Empire Rye Whiskey, aged three years and bottled at 46% ABV, was released in June 2026 in a limited run of 450 bottles.
The Empire Rye designation is significant. It's a New York-specific standard that requires at least 75% New York-grown rye grain, a movement that connects distilling to the agricultural identity of the state the same way Champagne connects sparkling wine to a specific terroir. Silver Brothers isn't just making whiskey; they're making a case for what Hudson Valley whiskey can taste like when the grain, the water, and the process are all rooted in the same patch of ground.
Find them:https://www.silverbrothers.com tasting room now open in Old Chatham.
