Roycroft Summer Festival 50: June 27

The Annual Roycroft Summer Festival takes over the Classic Rink on Riley every year on the last full weekend of June - when the arts take over East Aurora. This weekend marks the 50th birthday of the Roycroft Summer Festival!

This year we have artisans converging from across the country from as far away as Black Mountain, NC, the Rocky Mountains and even a new to festival glass artisan all the way from the California coast. Together with our juried artisans joining the Roycroft Artisans and Master, this year's festival represents nearly 50 artists and artisans working across all mediums, representing the highest quality and excellence of their craft.

The next 48 hours is full of live art, prizes, posters, music - and nationally ranked Fine Artists and Artisans of High Craft - a smorgasbord of art from across the country, right inside the Classic Rink on Riley Street, village center in East Aurora.

This year festival also offers collectors the opportunity to fill their collection of Roycroft collectible posters, with the first ever release of our poster archive for retail sale, on honor of our "50 Seasons" vintage poster exhibition that opened this month at The Historic Roycroft Campus, a comprehensive inventory of the posters of the Summer Festival are available for limited purchase at this year's festival, some dating back to the earliest days of our founding.

Roycroft Summer Festival also offers visitors the opportunity for direct engagement with our Roycroft community, with artisans at work through live, in-booth demonstrations throughout the weekend. From leatherworking, bead embroidery, calligraphy, and carving to painting and film photography, these demonstrations offer a closer look at the practiced hands, patient methods, and accumulated knowledge behind the work.

This year's Live Art Schedule includes work by Roycroft Masters Linda Nagel Meyer, Leah Corey, Shawn Krueger and Peter Potter and Roycroft Artisans Karen Ernst and Gregory Hain.

Our Door Prize this years is a sterling silver necklace by Roycroft Artisan Bonnie Hedden features a white freshwater pearl wrapped in sterling vines with a chain of micro faceted multi-color kyanites with chalcedony accents, valued at $360, by Roycroft Artisan in Jewelry, Bonnie Hedden.

Bonnie Hedden is an accomplished independent jewelry designer from Wellsboro, PA. Her exceptional usage of color, combined with clean lines, creates beautiful jewelry, and she is highly regarded across the country for her skill and eye for composition. Hedden has been a juried Roycroft Artisan in Jewelry since 2022, and holds multiple awards, most recently, 2nd place in Jewelry by the jurors of the Allentown Art Festival.

All visitors to the festival will receive an entry for the door prize drawing held at 2:45 on Sunday, June 28. The winner need not be present.

We are most grateful to Bonnie for her generosity and wish all our collectors and festival goers the best of luck!

And as always, the Festival means the debut of the annual Goodie Box fundraiser: Our annual Goodie Box is a RALA tradition for over 20 years, originally created as a homage to Elbert Hubbard’s famous “Goodie,” one of Hubbard’s early attempts to develop personal connections with and entice while he was a salesperson for the Larkin Company. The “Goodie Box” was a comparable promotional sales strategy to the Larkin Company’s “$10 Combination Box” and was offered as a premium to customers. The Roycrofters’ “Goodie Box”, a wooden trunk filled with sausage, nuts, honey, home-made pecan patties and other wholesome foodstuffs from the Roycroft farms, was originally made of gumwood and copper and measured 9 ½ x 23 x 12 ½ inches. The Roycroft Orb was carved on the top; for an extra fee a person’s name could be added and sent as a gift to the person. RALA is in possession of an original Goodie, on loan through the generosity of the Aurora Historical Society New York, in which the year's tickets are securely stored through the year until the final drawing in Asheville.

The modern Goodie Box is a proud and popular fundraising tradition by RALA and is the backbone of our non-profit fund-raising initiatives. Besides containing an astonishing variety of items from Roycroft Artisans, each year’s box has a centerpiece created by a select Roycroft Master.

The centerpiece of the 50th Anniversary Goodie Box is a functional piece of art designed by Roycroft Master Artisan Thomas Pafk!

Primarily designed as a Blanket Chest lined with unfinished aromatic cedar with proportions suited to the meet the needs of a foyer bench, it can serve as artful storage or the centerpiece of any domestic space. Measuring 28" w x 14"d x 16"h, it is constructed of quarter-sawn white oak and walnut with bookmatched walnut burl panels.The lid, adorned with the commemorative 50th anniversary seal and finished with Aurora Amber dye and catalyzed lacquer dull-rubbed top coat, opens to any angle using lid stay torsion hinges. Custom handmade leather handles by Roycroft Artisan Tom Ciminelli complete the fine touch finishing and continue the tradition of collaboration among the Roycroft Artisanship.

Together with this piece, the 2026 Goodie Box contains additional items created by Roycroft Artisans and Master Artisans valued at over $8,000 with contributions by:

Andre M. Chaves of The Clinker Press, Artisan in Letterpress/Book Arts

Julie Leidel of The Bungalow Craft, Master in Painting

John Monk, Artisan in Metal

Laura Wilder, Master in Painting/Printing

Jerry Smith, Master in Ceramics

Suzanne Handel Mair of Scherenschnitte Originals, Master in Paper

Leah Corey of aMEUSEments Studio, Master in Beadwork

Louise E. Richens, Master in Fiber

Henry Schmidt, Master in Sculpture

Holly Bird of Studio Ibis, Master in Printing

Kathy Cairns Hendershott, Master in Fiber

Patty Cancilla, Master in Jewelry

Michael A Cancilla Jr, Artisan in Painting/Drawing

Mission Guild Studio, Master in Clay

Tom Ciminell, Artisan in Leather

Each year, tickets are sold throughout the year beginning at Summerfest, culminating in a final drawing at the National Arts and Crafts Conference at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. Winner takes all (yes, ALL).

Our 2026 RALA Goodie Box will be unveiled at the Summer Festival on June 27 and the 2026 fundraising season will begin. Chances are reasonably priced, ranging from $5 - $20. Ticket sales form a major part of our programming and operations budget for the year, and make our educational initiatives like Little Journeys possible. Thank you for your support!

Visitors to the Festival will experience fine art in wood, metal, fabric, jewelry, clay, glass, book arts, prints, drawing, painting, and photography. The work is created by fine artists and craftspeople, many of whom have gone through a rigorous jurying process. Roycrofters at Large Artisans have earned the right to use the “double R” mark of the Roycroft Renaissance and represent the very strongest in quality workmanship and design.

This WNY Arts & Crafts tradition marks 50 years of Roycroft Renaissance in the heart of East Aurora: running from 10 a.m until 5 p.m. on Saturday June 27 and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday June 28.

The Classic Rink is an open air roofed venue that provides protection from elements and ensures a comfortable experience for attendees that includes ample parking. With the festival centrally located in the village, patrons can park once and take advantage of everything East Aurora has to offer, including Main Street shops and restaurants.

A nominal admission fee of $5 applies for adults; admission for children under 12 and RALA Patrons and members is free of charge. Not a member? Become one at this year's Festival and become a member of our Roycroft Renaissance Patron community, and receive our Patron Annual Gift of Art - otherwise known as the Patron Premium.

Each year we select a Roycroft Artisan to supply our annual premium for membership. This year's selected Roycroft Artisan is Andre Chaves of Clinker Press : the 2026 Patron Premium is a specially designed 10 x 14 print bearing a favorite maxim by the inestimable Elbert Hubbard; an unusual design reflecting the time period but not done in the typical Roycroft manner, printed on special paper from Northern Italy. Most of the printing was done by letterpress with each color being printed separately by hand and produced specifically for RALA in honor of the 50th anniversary of our founding in 1976, and each numbered print in this series bears our commemorative seal, ready to mat and frame by one of the modern giants of the field.

New (and renewing) Patron numbers can pick up their premiums at Member Check-in this weekend.

Love a Roycroft Collector? Our Patron Membership is giftable. Visit our membership page at www.ralaweb.com or reach out to membership@roycroftartisans.org for assistance in making a gift of Roycroft art and support for the Roycroft Renaissance!

We can't wait to welcome you to the launch of Roycroft summer. We hope you can join us.

Link here to view, share and invite others to this event on social media, with our thanks for helping to spread the word within our community. See you at The Rink!