The 2024 Heritage Maker’s Market at Manitowoc County Historical Society scheduled for June 29-30, 2024 with hours from 10am to 4pm on Saturday and 10am to 2pm on Sunday.

The goals of the Heritage Maker’s Market are to preserve and showcase skills and traditions while making available the products of those skills as they are unique to our heritage. We believe in the preservation of skills and processes as much as we believe in the preservation of the products of those same skills and processes. Historical integrity is of the utmost importance to us at MCHS and to our visitor experience. Our priorities are as follows: 

1. Showcase a variety of skills that are unique, rare, and/or endangered.
2. Provide visitors with an opportunity to see these skills in real time.
3. Provide visitors with an opportunity to support local and/or historical artisans.
4. Provide a historical environment unincumbered by modernisms as much as possible.

We are striving to educate visitors more, therefore demonstrating craftsmen and women will be showcased as much as possible. If there is a presentation you would like to add to the programing, please indicate this on your MCHS registration form. Period clothing, while not a strict requirement is highly encouraged to further immerse and educate our visitors.

Booth spaces are spaced around the village to provide visitors with an immersive experience. There is also vendor space inside our Two Creeks Town Hall. While booth spaces are free of charge, all exhibitors must register for the event to help ensure spaces and accommodations. If you do not have a period setup, please indicate that on your form so we can make sure you are placed in a building or we can make another historical set up available for you.

If you are new to the Maker's Market, please provide MCHS with photos of your items and a general list of items you have for sale for juried approval. 

Quality Control Specifications

Items that are ok to sell

• Handcrafted items made using historic methods, skills, and/or techniques. Prehistoric to 1920s
• Reproductions of historical artifacts
• Supplies and/ tools pertaining to historical processes
• Sewing patterns and historical kits in plastic bags 
• Basic foodstuffs relevant to trekking or the historical experience (teas, coffee beans, maple and cone sugar, historical candies and treats, etc. Items not in competition with our food vendors) 
• Reproduction historical jewelry

The following Items are prohibited

• Modern tents and/or easy-up canopies in areas visible to the general public. (If you need assistance with period correct tent solutions,  please let us know. We are happy to help)
• Archeological artifacts, live animals, parts of products from threatened, endangered, or otherwise protected species, or skins/parts of protected domestic species (See WI DNR for more information)
• Food conflicting with our concession rights
• Commercial photographs.
• Mass produced jewelry, or any other jewelry not period to 1920 or earlier.
• Tourist items, bamboo flutes, pvc pop guns, player drums, plastic toys.
• Flea market, rummage sale items, holiday items, non-period gift items.
• Modern southwestern pottery, mandalas, bird leg earrings, plastic beads, and beadwork.

MCHS Staff reserve the right to remove any non-period correct or inappropriate items from public view. Questionable items must have primary source documentation such as archaeological research, museum collections, original art and/or publications. If you are unsure of an item, ask yourself “Is this item a reproduction of a researched historical piece, an educational tool, or is it something created simply to generate revenue?”

Exhibiting crude, profane, or drunken behavior to visitors or other participants, excessive loudness, rowdiness, or other disruptive behavior is strictly prohibited and will not be tolerated and will result in removal from the event.

For more information or questions, please contact the Manitowoc County Historical Society at (920) 684-4445 or programs@manitowoccountyhistory.org. Visit our website at https://www.manitowoccountyhistory.org/programs

Registration due by April 28, 2024

Late Registrations are not guaranteed a place.