Northfield Teen’s Food Creations Whet Appetite of Art Fans

Art fans have a budding appetite for Amelia Schmelzer’s small food.

Amelia, a 17-year-old Northfield resident, sculpts dollhouse-scale food items like chocolate caramel torte cake, chocolate-marshmallow Frankenstein cookies, Tator Tots and deviled eggs from clay.

Recently, the junior at the Northfield School of Arts and Technology—better known as ARTech—was invited to put her tiny creations on sale alongside pieces from other Minnesota artists at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. A selection of her work has been available there since Nov. 17.

Amelia’s petite-proportioned pieces can be used for jewelry, as refrigerator magnets or with dollhouse sets. They typically sell for between $9 and $25 each, depending on size and use.

Amelia has been refining her craft—which involves sculpting forms of polymer clay with pen tips and toothpicks—since taking it up at age 9.

Although she’s not certain, Amelia said her playing with refrigerator magnets as a toddler and preschooler probably was her inspiration for sculpting mini-food.

“I’ve always been fascinated with refrigerator magnets,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

While she creates a breadth of food sculptures, her favorites are what she calls “retro desserts,” like Baked Alaska.

“We have a lot of retro cookbooks at home, so I get ideas from those,” she said.

For more than a year, Amelia been selling her art under the moniker “Frippery Factory” on Etsy, an e-commerce website that focuses on homemade and vintage art.

Amelia’s partner in Frippery Factory is her mom, Mary, who sells handmade journals on the site.

“We have always been known as a crafty family,” said Amelia. “It seems like one of us always is working on something. When we’re not working alone, we work on projects together.”

Frippery Factory’s webpage on Etsy says Mary is Amelia’s “creative director” and is in charge of “important duties like quality control and legal issues.”

“She’s the one who got me started in marketing and selling my food,” Amelia said about her mother.

In addition to the Internet, Amelia’s food now is available in another marketplace. Until mid-February, a selection of her pieces are for sale in a mini-store at the Walker.

Being presented with the opportunity to sell her art at a world-renown art center came as a shock to Amelia, she said.

“It came out of the blue,” she said. “It wasn’t something I was looking to do. I was contacted by someone at the Walker, and that was exciting.”

Amelia said she is considering selling her pieces on consignment at local retailers as the next step for getting her art noticed.

“My art really has picked up since school started this fall,” she said. “And being a junior, I am pretty busy with my school work. But, making food is nice in that I can slot it in whenever I can find time.”