Michael Moore's shop at the Texas Renaissance Festival features hundreds of different fairy and gnome doors of all styles and colors. Only three weekends remain for this year's event, including the Friday after Thanksgiving. The Texas Renaissance Festival is an opportunity for visitors to take a trip back in time, but only three weekends remain in this season. While you're there, you can shop for a handmade souvenir you can't find anywhere else. Nov. 1 and Nov. 2 were School Days at the festival and gave grade school children a chance to experience the wonders of the festival and purchase unique items from the plethora of vendors.
People flocked into tent after tent of different vendors selling everything from wooden swords to handmade leather satchels. One tent tucked away amongst the mass of other artists and craftsmen was a man who added his own unique touch to his renaissance art.
Visions in the Wood is a shop that has been featured at the Texas Renaissance Festival for the last 18 years. Michael Moore, artist at the festival, and his family hand craft wooden products to sell every year.
“My children have grown up doing wood working and we have an incredible fun time here at the Renaissance Festival selling to patrons,” Moore said. “We make gnome and fairy doors, we do wizard wands, we do fine art, and we do jewelry boxes.”
Moore’s specialty is scroll art, which consists of using a narrow-bladed scroll saw to make fine cuts into a thin piece of wood to produce a beautiful image. He said he enjoys challenging himself by attempting to create very intricate pictures with a lot of detail.
“Doing simple little things is easy but I like intricate so I do very, very complicated thin pieces such as dragons,” Moore said. “I also do Celtic art, fairies, and wolves, I really enjoy wolves.”
For some of the pieces in Moore’s shop the most interesting aspect of it is not how it was crafted but the folk legend behind it. His wife’s family is of Scottish decent and their ancestry is what gave him the idea to create the fairy and gnome doors.
“We went on a trip to Scotland one time and we saw in the old, old fields that the big rocks they had pulled out of the fields all had arches scratched in them,” Moore said. “If you ask the old timers they would say that when they pulled the rocks out of the field they would scratch an arch in them so that the kelpies, which were the spirits of the rocks would go back into the rocks rather than eat their crops.”
The shop’s most popular attraction was their hand crafted magic wands that resembled the wands shown in the Harry Potter movies. Moore said they are a crowd favorite and kids of all ages enjoy tapping into their imaginations with them. Moore even explained to a child browsing the wands that they simply won’t work without a little creative faith.
The wands are even hollowed out on the bottom so the purchaser can choose three elements to make his or her wand unique. Be careful and choose wisely because once the dragon scales, phoenix feathers and other magical elements are put into the wand, the bottom is sealed and the wand of your choice is ready to cast the spells of the dark arts.
