We’re Phyllis and Tom Roberts—partners in life and in art. For more than 40 years, we’ve worked side by side, creating the things we love in our studio on our property in the Village of Theresa, New York, near the Canadian border in the beautiful Thousand Islands region just east of Lake Ontario.
Five Cedars is more than a studio to us—it’s the space where our ideas come to life. After losing our commercial studio to a fire in 2001, we rebuilt behind our home, designing a 35′ x 45′ two-story workspace that allows us to continue doing what we’ve always loved: making things with our hands. Today, our studio includes areas for ceramics, woodworking, metalworking, stained glass, jewelry, textile printing, 3D printing, photography, photo printing, and custom framing.
But our beginnings were much simpler.
More than four decades ago, we sat at our dining room table shaping clay into wind chimes. What started as a small experiment quickly grew into something more. We added terra cotta birdhouses and feeders, expanded into wholesale, and for many years supplied wild bird shops and arts and crafts retailers across the country. We also traveled throughout New York State and New England participating in shows—meeting customers face-to-face, which we always enjoyed.
The fire that destroyed our industrial studio was a turning point. It was a total loss, but it also gave us the opportunity to start fresh. With careful planning—and a lot of determination—we created the studio we work in today, built to support all the different mediums we’ve explored over the years.
Photography has long been one of our passions. With the space to grow, we invested in professional printing equipment so we could produce our work exactly the way we envision it. We now print on a variety of surfaces including metal, archival paper, canvas, tile, coasters, and more. We’ve even created custom jigsaw puzzles and graphic designs featuring our own images. Because we print our own photography, opening a full-service custom framing shop felt like a natural extension of what we do.
These days, we focus on working in the studio and supplying a few select retail and wholesale accounts. We rarely attend shows anymore. Some of the ones we loved are gone, and others have changed—but we’re grateful for all the years we had on the road meeting wonderful people.
At heart, we’re simply makers. We enjoy learning new skills, combining materials, and bringing different art forms together under one roof. Everything we create reflects the years we’ve spent working side by side—experimenting, rebuilding, and continuing to grow.
We’re glad you’re here, and we hope you’ll take a little time to explore what we do.
Best Wishes,
Tom and Phyllis