Prairie Breeze Was founded by husband and wife team Richard and Gail lewis they were a established business with store front in strong city, ks Building hand crafted children rockers and foyer benches and blanket benches,while ms lewis was truing out hand crafted stain glass works. unfortanly due to the next door building catching fire thay lost product and had to give up their store front in st
rong city,ks .These two did not let that stop them they just moved their equipment to their home in Emporia ,ks and went through some tough choices and desions. Because in reality thay trully hade no place for the wood equipment and glass works but they came to compermises and the house became a arts and craft stuido with simply a bedroom for their qurters yes this 1526 sq foot home had its carpets riped up all furnishing removed execpt sleeping qurters and was turned to wood shop with the upper two bed rooms becoming stain glass rooms but they made it work and were happy and unashamed that their once beautiful home now had all the power tools and saw dust on the floors most of the time they continued doing what they love and started going to shows like arts in the park in marion ks selling their wares .during these years richard working on campus took some ceramics classes and got to lovein it also so mom lost a glass room upstairs and it became a clay room with potters wheel and all then the time came and a used (new to them) electric kiln came for firing clay they stuffed and scrunched but they made it work now let me say ms lewis has a verry loving family because by this time they were having meals with her parents every evening because their studio had no kitchen to speak of left like i said before bathing room and sleeping was all that was left .But that was perfectly fine they were happy and the needs were met. In the spring of 2011 during one of these kansas storms a tree limb came out of one of the trees in the back yard and brought the power line down across their garage shop wood storage and set it afire now this is where the struggles begin because in that shop was the $20,000 36 inch wood plainer that ms. lewis bought her husband as a gift one year was lost and so was approximately $40,000 worth of rough cut hard woods bought at auctions for stock supply. Dad took it hard and just shut down hell he even quit playing with clay for a while but we kids steped in and cleaned up the burnt mess by hand i dare say there was no monie for a bob cat crew to come in and do it so we did it got it all cleaned up and started over going to sticklers auction in gardner ,ks to buy lumber we were blessed that night and came home with all supplys needed except roof and roofing to build a new bigger shop/ storage dad got back into playing with clay at least and things were looking up for us in 2012 we found a 12 inch rbi plainer and a new supply of rough cut and started over its been slow but here it is 2014 and we have made it back to what it once was with changes of course they decided to open the stuido up and invite family and friends to come in and use the equipment and create have fun and enjoy paririe breeze became a guild hall.where we all meet create have fun and learn about new hobbys and crafts.
