After 70-year-old Larry Sprague retired from his computer science career four years ago, he began woodworking in earnest, ultimately choosing to create birds modeled after species found at the shore and others he has noticed at his feeder. As wooden friends accumulated in his North Potomac home, Sprague’s wife, Georgiann, gave him a gentle nudge to thin the flock in their increasingly cluttered nest.
Thus began Sprague’s second career as an artisan, carving wooden birds and crafting aluminum butterflies under the name LCSprague Artisan Crafts. “It’s a hobby-passion,” he says of his zeal to create more than 200 seagulls, swans, wrens and the like each year. “I enjoy making things.”
Most popular are his “comfort birds,” small wooden and colored resin creatures that can fit in the palm of a hand and cost from $35 to $40. Sprague began making them because his wife loved how they felt in her hands; she says each one has a different personality. Now customers scoop up these comfort birds—he estimates he’s sold well over 100 since starting in May 2023.
“I liked the idea of keeping a lovely little bird on my desk to play with and hold when I’m on video calls,” says Silver Spring customer Tacy Lambiase. “I work remotely and find myself playing with hair ties and pens while I’m on calls—I figured a comfort bird would be a nice upgrade from those.”
Sprague has had a lifetime love affair with woodworking. His father taught him the art as a child, and growing up on a lake in New Jersey surrounded by wildlife gave him endless subjects to carve.
Sprague has collected wood over the years to fuel his hobby, and uses it for unpainted wood carvings. A woodworking friend donates leftover walnut, which Sprague uses in creating comfort birds. He buys wood from local lumber suppliers for the rest of his products and creates his masterpieces in garage and basement workrooms at his home. Comfort birds take about two hours across three days; other projects can take longer.
Knowledgeable birders give him props for the precision in his life-size carvings and painting of birds such as mallards, downy woodpeckers, chickadees, sandpipers, egrets, bluebirds, cardinals and hummingbirds.
“He’s scientifically accurate—that matters for us,” says Kathy Caisse, gift shop manager at Brookside Gardens in Wheaton, one of the sellers of Sprague’s wares. “He is also very regional—who wouldn’t love it?”
Customers can order custom items by contacting Sprague through his Facebook or Instagram page, and he ships or arranges for pickup. As a frequent exhibitor at local markets, he says he can sell 40 birds in a day. His smaller hand-painted birds and ducks start at $45 to $65. Larger birds and ducks run from $100 to $150. Depending on size and detail, some carvings can sell for $350 or more.
“I really like doing the markets because I meet the people who buy the stuff,” Sprague says.
Butterflies made from repurposed aluminum cans have joined the artisan’s repertoire. “It’s actually soda pop and beer cans, but to be honest, most of mine are beer cans,” he says. “You can stick them out in the garden all year long.”
Rockville resident Larissa Johnson saw Sprague’s butterflies at Brookside Gardens and was hooked. She contacted Sprague directly, ordered butterflies and picked them up at his home. “I love them; I have them in so many of my plants at my house,” she says. Johnson bought large 4½-by-3½-inch butterflies with a 15-inch recycled aluminum stake for $15 each and a smaller 3½-by-2½-inch version with a 9-inch stake for $12 each.
The owners of Locally Crafted in Gaithersburg, which carries Sprague’s products, know the regional artisan landscape, and say the fruits of his labor are distinctive. “People constantly are commenting on the quality of the woodworking,” says Heather Luxenberg, co-owner of Locally Crafted. “You can tell each piece has been given attention and is a true labor of love.”
“I think what impresses me most about his work is that very few crafts are made entirely by hand,” says co-owner Stacey Hammer. “He literally takes a piece of wood and turns it into something else.”
This story appears in the May/June edition of Bethesda Magazine.