Bedford's Two Handmade Holiday Markets Open a Week Apart. Here's How Each One Works.

The small house behind the Bedford Public Library at 3-A Meetinghouse Road used to stand on the ground the library occupies now. Oliver L. Kendall, a local craftsman and entrepreneur, built it in 1846 as his family's home. Next door was the "Little Green House," where he and his brother Charles made shoes and ran a shop. For most of the twentieth century, the Kendall House was Bedford's library. These days it holds a holiday shop run by people who make things by hand, which fits the history of a building put up by a craftsman next to a shoemaker's shop.

That shop is one of two handmade holiday markets in Bedford this season. The Bedford Women's Club Festival of Trees & Holiday Market comes first, on the weekend of November 20 and 21. The Craftworkers' Guild Holiday Shop opens the day after Thanksgiving. Volunteers run both, and both sell locally made goods. Beyond that they have little in common. The Festival is open for seven hours in total, and a single evening decides who takes the trees home. The Guild shop is open for 126 hours over four weeks. The timing that works for one doesn't work for the other.

Two Calendars Side by Side

The Guild figures come straight from its posted schedule. Thanksgiving falls on Thursday, November 26, and the shop opens the next morning. That first partial week covers Friday through Sunday. Then come three full Wednesday-to-Sunday weeks, ending Sunday, December 20. Every week the shop is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so a Tuesday in December is the one day you can count on it being shut.

The Festival's Decisive Hour Comes After the Doors Close

The Festival of Trees is in its fifth year. It fills the Fellowship Hall at Bedford Presbyterian Church with decorated trees, and every one of them is raffled off. Community organizations sponsor or donate the trees. Sponsors sign up at three levels: Silver at $100, Gold at $200, and Platinum at $300 or more. Club members decorate the sponsored trees. When you walk the room, you're seeing local groups' sponsorship money turned into prizes by the people running the event.

The raffle rules are in the club's tree and raffle information sheet, and they reward a little planning.

1. Pick a bundle. Tickets cost $1 each, 6 for $5, or 40 for $20. The $5 bundle comes with one door-prize entry and the $20 bundle comes with four.
2. Fill out the large stub. It needs your name and phone number, and it goes in at the ticket sales table. The club uses it to contact winners.
3. Spend your tickets tree by tree. Each tree has its own labeled box. Put tickets only in the boxes for the trees you want. Door-prize tickets go only in the door-prize box.
4. Keep your phone on Saturday evening. All drawings happen Saturday, November 21, from 5 to 6 p.m. Winners get a text or a call and must come back, or make arrangements, by 7 p.m. that night.

The Saturday hall hours end at 4 p.m., and the drawings start an hour later, so you don't have to be there to win. You do have to be reachable and able to collect a tree within about two hours. Have a plan for getting a fully decorated tree home that evening. Where possible, the decorations stay on the tree. Otherwise some are boxed or bagged and handed over with it.

With 40 tickets for $20, you can either cover a lot of trees lightly or put all 40 on the one tree you'd like in your living room. The rules allow either.

Santa, Music and the Market Between the Trees

There's more to the Festival than tree-shopping. According to the club, the holiday market is set up among the tree displays and sells locally made items for gift lists. Children can do a craft and visit Santa at no charge. Santa is there all day Saturday, so families with young children have five hours that day to fit in a visit. Local performers provide music during the event. The club takes volunteer performers, who can sign up by emailing [email protected].

The club page is clear about where the money goes:

Proceeds exclusively for Bedford scholarships & local charities

So every raffle ticket and market purchase that weekend supports Bedford-specific causes. The tree sponsors, the decorators and most of the performers live and work nearby too. The whole event depends on the town's own groups, which helps explain why it's free to get in and so short.

The Guild Shop Runs on Members Behind the Counter

The Festival's evening deadline has no counterpart at the Craftworkers' Guild Holiday Shop. Its timetable is set by the volunteers working the register. The Guild describes itself as New Hampshire's oldest association of artisans and craftspeople, formed around 1925. It has more than 60 members from Bedford and nearby towns. The members are expected to staff the seasonal shop themselves. Their work is juried before it can go on the shelves. Only Guild members can sell there.

That setup shapes what a visit is like. The person who rings up your purchase is a Guild member, and the shop's four-week run depends on members taking shifts. A tight jury, a membership requirement and member staffing together mean you won't find drop-in vendors there. Every piece comes from someone the Guild has already approved.

The 18 open days give December shoppers lots of room. If you want first pick of the members' work, go Friday, November 27, the day after Thanksgiving. If you're still shopping late, the last chance is Sunday, December 20, five days before Christmas.

Why the House Matters as Much as the Shop

The Guild's history of the Oliver Kendall House follows the building through three lives. By 1910, Mrs. Frances Woodbury had bought it, and she loaned it to the Town of Bedford to use as a library. The Town bought the building in 1925, and after several additions and improvements it remained the library until 1996, when the current library building replaced it.

In 1996 the house was recognized as a historic building, restored to its original layout, and moved to the spot where it stands now, behind the library that replaced it. The Craftworkers' Guild has been based there ever since, and it shares responsibility with the Town for protecting and maintaining the building.

The dates line up in a few places. The Guild traces its start to around 1925, the year the Town took ownership of the house. For 86 years, from 1910 to 1996, residents went to the building to borrow books. Since the restoration, it has hosted a guild of makers, in a house a craftsman built for his family, a few steps from where he and his brother made shoes. Anyone who used the old library has a reason to go inside again. Anyone who arrived after 1996 may never have noticed the small house behind the library.

Planning the Season Around Both

Here's the order, from Friday, November 20, through December 20:

• Friday, Nov. 20, 4–6 p.m.: The Festival of Trees opens at Fellowship Hall. Two quieter hours to look at the trees and buy tickets.
• Saturday, Nov. 21, 11 a.m.–4 p.m.: The Festival's main day, with Santa, music and the market. Drawings are 5 to 6 p.m., and winners must pick up or make arrangements by 7 p.m.
• Friday, Nov. 27, 10 a.m.: The Craftworkers' Guild Holiday Shop opens at the Oliver Kendall House.
• Wednesdays through Sundays in December: The Guild shop is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. It is closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
• Sunday, Dec. 20, 5 p.m.: The Guild shop closes for the season.

The two calendars don't overlap. The Festival is over before the Guild shop opens, so no one in Bedford has to choose between them. To go to both, plan on two separate trips: the Festival is a single weekend, and the Guild shop is something you can return to over four weeks. Both organizers post their details on their own pages, the Women's Club festival page and the Guild's seasonal calendar. Check them before you go in case anything changes.

Many Bedford buildings have had more than one life, and the Oliver Kendall House is one of the clearest examples. Gail McCarthy at REEN USA has spent nearly two decades working with New Hampshire properties, both homes and commercial buildings, and she's glad to talk with anyone curious about how older buildings in Bedford are being kept in use. Let's Connect.