Our father, Ralph Gates, received a phone call in 1973 that would forever change our family. Ralph had been working as a software-systems engineer at the Kennedy Space Center on the east coast of Florida. His job with Grumman, contracting with NASA, helped put man on the moon and it was an exciting job.
He loved it until he realized none of his four children really knew him and he didn’t know them. The job was high-pressure and the long hours were too much for a 36-year-old man who was growing old way before his time.
Ralph started looking for ways to work from home and was exploring a few options when the phone rang. His niece, a craftsman in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, called to tell him about a broom-maker in the community who had suffered a heart attack.
Lee “Pop” Ogle was well-known in the area and his brooms were legendary. However, he wanted to train someone to take over his business for the summer. Ralph flew up to meet Pop, and then a few weeks later the whole family moved to the mountains to start a whole new life.

We are the second generation in our family to explore brooms as an art form. Brooms as art were stifled in their infancy by the invention of the broom machine in the 1850s. At that point, the plain wire wrapped, dowel handled broom became the standard. Until recently there have been no professional broommakers, only machine operators.
Using natural wood handles and broomcorn, we make each broom by hand with techniques that date to the 1790s.
Diana prepares the handles by shaping, carving and sanding each one by hand. Marlow then ties the heads on the handles in an intricate hand-woven Shaker design.
We both share in the design, sewing and finishing of each broom.
Freed from the constraints of the machine, we are investigating shape, size, color, texture and the other fundamentals basic to any art form.
Friendswood Brooms are often used in weddings, religious ceremonies or cleansing rituals. They can be used to sweep the floors clean of both dirt and bad luck. They can also be simply viewed as beautiful sculptural objects – art brooms
for art’s sake.
We continue to draw inspiration from the teachings of my father, mentor, and master broommaker, Ralph Gates.
Ralph truly was a master craftsman and considered by many to have pioneered Brooms as art.
Each broom is a unique, functional piece of sculpture, incorporating traditional Appalachian strength and longevity.