Meet Jan Lynn, An Artisan by Nature

Jan’s Cattail Windchimes©

Outside a small town in north western Wisconsin, Native American artist, Jan Lynn, fashions her unique copper cattail wind chimes. Each cattail leaf is hand cut and hand crafted making each set unique. You will find these award winning wind chimes all over the United States. In fact, Jan told us that Bill Gates – yes, that Bill Gates - has her cattail wind chimes in both his corporate and home gardens! Jan’s inspiration for her cattails came to her while sitting on her mother’s deck, admiring the lake view and the small stream feeding it. On this particular summer evening, the breeze gently swayed the stream’s cattails and at the same time, stirred the windchimes hanging in a nearby tree. Jan says, “It was so cool! It seemed to me that the cattails were chiming, like cattail wind chimes!”

Metal seemed like an obvious choice for the material but, although Jan has always been an artist, she had never worked in metal before. And she had never worked with a blow torch, a tool necessary for all metal work. She fixed that in short order. In fact, when one customer called her a metal artist, Jan quipped back, “Nah, I’m just a broad with a blow torch!” As a savvy business woman, Jan’s sense of humor is one of her strengths. It helped her navigate the US Patent process and as Jan would say, “it really comes in handy at the 45 or so, art and craft shows I do each year.” Jan also offers a lifetime warranty for her wind chimes. “Just be aware,” she says, “that’s just the lifetime of the artisan!” A last quote from Jan, “My work the past 20 years seems always to be inspired by my love of nature. My cattails for instance; it takes wind to move them, fire to create them, water to cool them after the fire lathe, and copper from the earth to make them.” There is a bit of poet in Jan, too.

Jan with her blow torch