My story (so far)

My name is Gwen Raffo and I am a full-time undergraduate history student and a part-time broom maker. For the past two years, I’ve been splitting time between Nova Scotia and Staten Island and bringing brooms and their history with me.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a hands-on household. With a dad in construction and a mom in libraries and education, I was encouraged to not only be inquisitive, but to find answers myself whether that be through building something or researching. These two approaches to the same task came together to form the perfect mold for a broom maker and historian.

In 2022, I was looking for a summer job to follow my first year of university. I applied to be a Historic Interpreter at a living history village back home in Staten Island. Just the idea of dressing up in a historic costume and talking about history sounded good enough to me, but when I learned that there was a chance I’d be able to learn a historic trade, I was completely sold. I had heard of, seen, or tried all of the trades on their website except for one: broom making. I had never once thought how historic brooms were made. That curiosity was all I needed to fall in love with it. During training, I sat watching the broom making demonstration like a child in front of a television. Something about the clicks of the broom winding machine and the repetitive task of weaving the stalks had me completely captured.

I spent that summer not only learning the trade at work, but also at home. I made a foot brake and ventured into hand brooms which I fell in love with. When it came to the end of that summer, it was very hard to leave. Though I took my new found love of this trade with me back to school in Nova Scotia and I have been splitting time between the two places since.

I had the opportunity to sell my brooms at the Wolfville Farmer’s Market in the fall of 2023, but quickly realized that was not sustainable while enrolled in courses. My busy school schedule (and small university apartment) has limited my opportunities for broom making while opening new doors for researching their history. Professors have encouraged me to use brooms as the subject for term projects which led me to presenting my research at the Atlantic Undergraduate Universities History & Classics Conference in February of 2024. If you’re interested in learning about the gendered role of brooms in Early Modern European art, check out my blog post about it!

This brings me to where I am today—-making brooms when and where I can! For now, this site will act as an archive, portfolio, and blog, but hopefully it will grow to more!

FAQs

  • Not currently. My last year of university is my main focus right now. When commission slots open, I will send a newsletter and post about it on my socials, so be sure to sign up and follow.

  • Any market appearances will be listed on the Events page on this website.

  • Sharing this beautiful trade is one of my favorite things to do, but unfortunately I don’t have the time right now. If you are interested in learning about broom making, check out this blog post about getting started, or my Free Resources page.

  • There’s a rich broom making community online that is definitely worth looking into! I have a post on my blog about getting started at home, as well as Free Resources.