Our Founder... Don Carpentier

A true renaissance man of his time, Don Carpentier was a self-taught craftsman, tinsmith, blacksmith, potter, carpenter, and mason, as well as a teacher, mentor, father, friend, husband, brother and uncle. Regretfully we lost Don from ALS at the early age of 62 on August 26, 2014.

Don was born September 22, 1951 in Knoxville, Tennessee before eventually moving to New York in 1954 and finally to East Nassau with his parents in 1966. He graduated from Averill Park High School in 1969 before attending Hudson Valley Community College for Civil Engineering and then graduating from Empire State College in 1972 with a Bachelor’s degree in Historic Preservation.

After becoming interested in antiques as a child he started collecting bottles at 14 and began his first building, a colonial A-frame, at the age of 15. In 1968 he opened his first antique shop, Chicken Coop Antiques, where he bought and sold antiques, enabling him to fund his true passion, historic preservation. Don's efforts to preserve historic buildings began in 1971 when he moved a blacksmith’s shop into his father’s “east field.” Leading and mentoring a team of volunteers he eventually dismantled and reassembled more than 20 historic buildings to create Eastfield Village, which serves as a working laboratory for students attending the Early American Trades and Historic Preservation Workshops, the longest-running historic preservation school in the country, now in its 45th year. Don became interested in mochaware pottery after discovering discarded shards while moving the William Briggs Tavern. He researched the era and techniques, rediscovered many lost skills and produced museum-quality reproductions of mochaware pottery that are in use by such prestigious institutions as Colonial Williamsburg and Old Sturbridge Village.

Don was proud to discover that he had descended from the Bissett and Price families of potters dating back to the 18th century. Don traveled to England many times in an effort to help preserve priceless molds from the Spode Pottery factory in Burslem, England as well as Falmouth, Jamaica to help consult with the World Monuments Fund.

He earned many prestigious awards from museums and historical societies, the most recent being the Anne Hyde Clarke Logan Cultural Preservation Award and the distinction of Honorary Fellow of the Nantucket Historical Association.

Don was dedicated to his community and volunteered as an Assistant Scoutmaster in Troop 279 Latham, NY for many years. He was also a member of the Nassau town board for nearly two decades where he earned a statewide reputation for his advocacy of protection of community character and home rule. He was instrumental in the creation of the town’s bicentennial program, committee on historic preservation and related programs, and particularly dedicated to expanding funding for highways and protections from toxic contaminations.