About Christa

Christa Niver is a natural born beader. Her father's ministry took her traveling as a child and she grew up in New England, Iowa and Minnesota learning knitting, crochet and kloppelspitzen at her Oma's (grandmother's) knee. Kloppelspitzen is bobbin lacemaking.

As a young adult, Christa studied studio art at Cornell College in Mt. Vernon, Iowa, then silkscreening and lithography at SUNY at Stony Brook. Much later after raising her daughter and sending her off to college she resumed her lace interest in earnest and joined the New England Lace Group (NELG.) She ordered some lacemaking books online and began working in kloppelspitzen again using antique German hooded bobbins that had been in her family for several generations.

Christa moved to Chatham to care for her elderly mother in 2002 and began frequenting the Handcrafters store. She showed her lace to Leslie and Karl Gabosh who encouraged her to incorporate beading into her lacework. She took to beading very quickly and soon started selling her bracelets, necklaces and earrings.

In just one year's time she was teaching beading at Handcrafters, had a display case at Slattery's and had taken orders for over 25 different items for the Holiday Season of 2003. She continued researching and studying beading and began teaching private students. Serendipitously, she FOUND a floor jack loom on the side of the road while selling her beadwork at a fleamarket near Great Barrington, and in a matter of a few weeks had Terry Buck teaching her weaving in exchange for Christa demonstrating weaving, beadweaving and wirewrapping at the Blacksmith Building at the County Fair. Mary Anne Davis donated shuttles, a swift, and a box of yarn ends to get her started. Grace Bischoff of Red Barn farm has lent her books, given her space to set up her loom and helped her warp it.

Christa cannot remember a time in her life when she wasn't practicing art of some form in fiber, paint, beads or some other medium.

In the 1980's she and her father had a joint exhibition at the Silas Bronson Library in Waterbury, Connecticut which included her watercolors, photographs and mixed media drawings.