The Charbonneau Villager Newspaper 2019 July issue Villager Newspaper | Page 10

10 THE CHARBONNEAU VILLAGER July 2019 Creations with love By CLARA HOWELL Charbonneau resident crafts Teaching Table for great-grandson T wo-year-old Juno Vedder- Holenstein walks over to a small, wooden table and chairs painted with colors, numbers, letters and shapes, and starts to point to the different visu- als and count the numbers aloud. Vedder-Holenstein’s great-grand- mother, Joan Vedder, created the piece of furniture that he was engaged with. The Teaching Table, as Vedder and her family call it, serves a dual pur- pose: to teach and remain as a keep- sake within the family. “It was a lot of work,” Vedder said. “A lot of love went into that. I think he’s going to love it.” This wasn’t the first time Vedder crafted a table like this. Seventeen years ago, she created a Teaching Ta- ble — a name that was coined by one of her children — for her 11 grandchil- dren to use when they visited her house. “They must have been 10-12-years- old, sitting here at my house,” she said. “It was always right here where I sew and they’d have tea parties, draw pic- tures, color.” When her grandchildren grew up and started having children of their own, Vedder passed the table down to PMG PHOTOS: CLARA HOWELL Juno Vedder-Holenstein plays with the Teaching Table. Joan Vedder painted the Teaching Table for her great-grandson, Juno. one of her granddaughters who mar- ried and had two little girls in Arizona. Since her family has dispersed around the United States, Vedder-Ho- lenstein, one of her four — and soon to be five — great-grandchildren resides in Portland, so she decided to gift this second table and chair to him. “I finally have another little person around here,” Vedder said. Vedder started working on the table and chairs last winter, while her hus- band was battling cancer and said it quickly became her creative outlet. Joan Vedder shows off her table and chair creation. “Seventeen years later, I’m down on my hands and knees again,” Vedder said. “I just kept painting and painting and added more and painted the legs and painted animals. I thought, ‘I’m just going to make this a heck of a ta- ble. ” Vedder purchased the table and two chairs from an unfinished furniture store in Beaverton and added two coats of primer, white enamel, de- signed the artwork — some by stencil and some free-hand — and topped it off with two coats of varnish. “It better last 100 years,” she said. Vedder hopes her grandson will share the table with neighbors and family, before eventually passing it on- to his own children. “I hope it will go on and on and on and on. It’s very sturdy I hope. You can stand on it... it takes two of us to move it,” Vedder said. “It should last a long time.” www.rienerteam.com www.facebook.com/rienerteam David Riener Broker 971.263.3735 [email protected] 255 SW 1st Avenue (99E) Canby, OR 97013 Office: 503.266.4747 Each office Independently Owned and Operated We Specialize in All Things Glass Zach Riener Broker 971.275.2705 [email protected] 503.969.5719 • GlassDoctor.com/Molalla Serving Canby, Molalla & Surrounding Cities ɂȆȋȈȏȍȏ Formerly All About Windows Locally Owned and Operated Franchise