When Brooke Dearborn Huston graduated from the University of Iowa in 2015, she took a class on stained glass as a reward. “I wanted to treat myself to something that I wanted to do,” she said. “I took the class because I’ve always been intrigued by how stained glass works and I ended up really […]
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When Brooke Dearborn Huston graduated from the University of Iowa in 2015, she took a class on stained glass as a reward.
“I wanted to treat myself to something that I wanted to do,” she said. “I took the class because I’ve always been intrigued by how stained glass works and I ended up really loving it. It hit the spot for me.”
Little did she know stained glass art would become her full time job five years later.
Ms. Dearborn Huston opened her Etsy shop, named “mindandmineral”, back in 2016. During 2020, it became her main focus as her sales grew during the COVID-19 pandemic. The shop now has more than 2,500 sales to customers across the country and nearly 5,000 followers on Instagram.
mindandmineral has also been showcased at art events and markets in the Corridor, including the Iowa City Flea Market, where Ms. Dearborn Huston showed work on Aug. 13.
The store is based in Ms. Dearborn Huston, and her husband Jake Dearborn Huston’s, home in Iowa City. The studio showcases the curiosity and creativity of the shop’s offerings, Mr. Dearborn Huston said.
“Every piece is unique and a lot of it is custom work,” he said. “While there aren’t a lot of commissions, it you’ve got a vision she can try to make it happen. Glass is crazy and it’s a little dangerous, it’s unpredictable. It’s fun to see all the ideas that can come out of a sheet of glass and what Brooke can do with it.”
How the business started
The Cedar Rapids-native wanted to base her business out of Iowa City because the city’s community felt like a neighborhood to her, one where people support one another.
Ms. Dearborn Huston chose Etsy to sell her pieces because it was familiar to her, having a previous shop for her artwork on the site. Picking a name, however, was a little bit harder.
“I feel like I live largely inside of my head,” she said. “I definitely require quite a bit of time to myself and I feel like that’s the mind part of the name. I’m also really into rocks and minerals and have been for a while. They’re two big parts of me and I’m a bit of a rock hound. I also love alliteration since it’s catchy, so it all came together into mindandmineral.”
A typical, nine to five job was not something that ever appealed to Ms. Dearborn Huston, but choosing to pursue her art fulltime was still a difficult decision. She said she was lucky to have a supportive husband who encouraged her to grow her business.
“I’ve never really been interested in a day job and the workforce in that way,” she said. “So, when I enjoyed the stained glass class as much as I did, I thought it might be something I could make a career out of. Obviously, that didn’t happen right away and it took a lot of practice. I had some part time jobs as I started building up my Etsy following and I didn’t end up doing it full time until four years into it, until COVID. I got laid off from my retail job and didn’t really have much of a choice, but I’ve been doing it — and loving it — ever since.”
The materials for mindandmineral’s artwork, however, are not acquired locally. Ms. Dearborn Huston purchases equipment from a small business in Maryland called Anything in Stained Glass, since there isn’t a supplier closer to Iowa.
Changing times
During the pandemic, Ms. Dearborn Huston experienced some supply chain shortages while seeing what she calls the “COVID bump” in sales of her work.
“It really hit the stained glass world,” she said. “It got pretty hard to source materials and things were often unreliable, but I got through it. Being a sort of freelancer and running my own business and relying on customers to buy, almost every other month can be a scary time because it ebbs and flows … Now I know to expect that, but it isn’t any less scary when you don’t know how much will come in and if supplies will be available.”
mindandmineral does custom orders, but has limited what it offers over the years. Ms. Dearborn Huston finds a lot of joy in her work and her business, so she said she’s stopped making some items she doesn’t want to, including 3D terrariums.
The slight changes in products, however, is only to help Ms. Dearborn Huston’s goal of growing her business over the next several years, something she’s quite excited about.
“I want to continue to build up a good customer base for commissions and ready-to-ship items and maybe move further away from Etsy as that happens,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get all the way off Etsy, but I’d love to do more on my own website, which I don’t have right now. I’d also like to be busy enough that markets are less of a part of my job. I still want to do a few a year to stay connected and chat with people, but I don’t think I ever want a brick and mortar store.”
For now, though, Mr. Dearborn Huston is excited to continue being his wife’s biggest supporter as she tries new designs and lets her imagination run wild, brightening the two’s home with color and iridescence.
“I’m always surprised and impressed at what she’s come up with,” he said. “It’s cool to watch her not be married to the perfection of a thing and lean into making designs that are her’s. Brooke is a prolific doodler and she’s quite creative with some abstraction in every piece. There’s not really anyone else doing what she does.”
