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Mae Holloway Has Been Building Music Boxes in a Vermont Barn for Twenty Years. This Is the Last Run.
Mae Holloway has spent twenty years at a bench in the back of a Vermont barn that doesn’t have reliable heat and costs more to maintain than she’d like to admit. She makes wooden music boxes — each one fitted with a Swiss-made movement, each one built from hardwood she selects at mills she’s used for fifteen years. She’s 67. She’s moving her studio this winter. This is her last run.
“I didn’t mean to make this my life’s work,” she says, holding a cherry box up to the window to check the lid seam. “I meant to make one good one. And then somebody asked to buy it. And then somebody else asked. And you know how that goes.”
She retired from twenty-two years of engineering work in 2004 and started the barn workshop the same year. The early boxes were experiments. The current ones are not. Twenty years of fitting Swiss movements into domestic hardwood bodies has settled into something reliable: a box that sounds right, opens right, and looks right on a shelf twenty years from now.
This batch is four melodies: Swan Lake, Lullaby, Für Elise, Amazing Grace. Mae has been making music boxes long enough to know which melodies travel — which ones people give to mothers, to daughters, to the people they’re trying to reach across distance. These four. Every time.
The Sound That Lives in the Wood
Mae sources her movements from the same Swiss supplier she’s worked with for twelve years. But she’s quick to correct the assumption that the movement is where the sound comes from. “The movement is the engine,” she says. “The box is the instrument. A good movement in a poor box sounds thin. A good movement in a body that resonates — that’s a different thing entirely.”
“The sound doesn’t come from the movement. It comes from the box. The wood amplifies it. You can hear the difference between a good body and a hollow one in the first three notes.”
She planes the interior cavity by hand, adjusting the depth and wall thickness by feel until the resonance is where she wants it. It’s not a step she can teach. It’s a step she learned by making two hundred boxes that weren’t quite right before she understood what right felt like.
A Box That Was Built to Outlast the Song
Mae’s late father had a music box on his dresser that his own mother had given him. It was still running when he died. Mae knows the maker’s name, knows the movement type, could identify it by sound. That object is part of why she started making boxes. “Objects should outlast us,” she says simply. “The good ones do.”
The wood in this batch is Vermont cherry and Vermont maple — mill-selected, not commodity stock. Mae goes through the mill herself when she can, or she talks with the owner about what’s available. The grain in this batch runs clean. She’ll say that. She won’t say much else about wood because she knows it sounds like sales talk and she doesn’t do sales talk.
Each box is fitted, glued, sanded, sealed and tested before it ships. Mae tests the lid open-close resistance ten times on each finished box. If the hinge binds or the lid seats loose, she resets it. “The lid has to feel like the box knows what it is,” she says. She can’t explain it better than that and doesn’t try.
What Makes This Music Box Different
Mae sources her movements from the same Swiss supplier she’s worked with for twelve years. Each one is tested before it goes into a body. If the timing is off or the tension is wrong, she adjusts it. She doesn’t pass a movement that isn’t right.
Cherry and maple from Vermont mills Mae has used for fifteen years. The grain is selected for resonance, not just appearance. The body is hand-planed. The interior cavity is tuned by feel.
Swan Lake, Lullaby, Für Elise, Amazing Grace. Mae tunes each movement against reference recordings she’s used for fifteen years. The pitch and timing are set before the movement goes in the body. You don’t have to wind it twice to get the sound to settle.
A music box lid should open with consistent resistance and seat flat when closed. Mae tests each lid ten times before a box ships. If the hinge binds or the lid is loose, she resets it. This is the step most makers skip. She doesn’t.
Mae is moving her studio this winter. The barn workshop is closing. She has this inventory and nothing planned after it. When this run is gone, it’s gone.
One Last Winter in the Barn
Mae will pack the barn tools in November. She has a place picked out closer to her daughter in Burlington — smaller, warmer, no barn. “I’ll do something,” she says. “I just don’t know yet what. Something smaller. Something that doesn’t need a mill relationship.”
The workbench she’s used since 2004 is staying with the barn. She’s not sentimental about it. The boxes she made on it will outlast it. That’s the point, she says. That’s always been the point.
This run is the last. Four melodies, Vermont hardwood, Swiss movements fitted by a retired engineer who spent twenty years getting it right. If you’ve been looking for a music box that sounds like it was made rather than manufactured — this is the one.
Mae packs up the barn this winter — no restock after this run
Choose your melody below. These ship from Vermont while supplies last. Free shipping over $75.
See Melodies & Availability1 box · 2 boxes · 3 boxes
What People Are Saying
★★★★★
“I ordered the Lullaby for my daughter’s nursery shelf and the Swan Lake for my own desk. Both arrived perfectly tuned. The cherry grain is beautiful in the light. You can feel the care in how these were made — the lid seats perfectly, the sound is full and clear. Nothing cheap about any part of it.”
★★★★★
“Bought the Amazing Grace for my grandmother. She’s 84 and she cried when she wound it. In the good way. The sound is clear and bright — not the tinny sound you get from most music boxes. This one rings like it means it. Worth every dollar and then some.”
★★★★★
“I collect small handmade things and this is the best music box I’ve ever owned. The Für Elise movement is beautifully timed. The maple body is gorgeous — the grain goes deep. I keep it on my studio desk and wind it when I need to think. It helps.”
A Few Questions Before You Choose
Which melody should I choose?
Lullaby travels the furthest — it’s the one people give to new parents, to children, to the people they want to feel held by something. Swan Lake is for the music lover or the collector. Für Elise is the one desk workers order for themselves. Amazing Grace is for grief, for memory, for the gifts that need to carry weight. Mae stocks all four because she knows which rooms each one is going into.
What wood are these made from?
Vermont cherry and Vermont maple, mill-selected. Mae has worked with the same mills for fifteen years. The wood in this batch has clean grain and good resonance — she wouldn’t say that if it weren’t true. Each body is hand-planed and the interior is shaped for resonance, not just appearance.
Is this really the last batch?
Yes. Mae is closing the barn workshop this winter and moving closer to her daughter in Burlington. The workbench, the tools, and the production stay in Stowe. When this inventory is gone, there are no more. Her daughter helped set up this page to find good homes for the remaining boxes before the move.
Four melodies · one batch · no restock
See what’s still available from Mae’s last run.
See Melodies & AvailabilityShips from Vermont while supplies last.