The Butterstamp Workshop in Wiscasset. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

Just off the main road in Wiscasset, the smell of cinnamon fills the air. It draws people around the red house, through the courtyard with the crabapple tree, to the screen door of The Butterstamp Workshop. 

The shop, specializing in folk art and reproductions of antique buttermolds — stamps once used to mark churned butter — is in its final season. The owners, husband-and-wife David and Lois Kwantz, are planning to close in October after 47 years in business.

But in mid-July, a single Instagram reel ended up driving a sudden uptick in visitors, overwhelming their efforts to wind down the business.

A PLACE FOR ANTIQUES

The Kwantzes bought their home and collection of antique molds in 1979. Before then, they were junior high teachers and lived in Newburyport, Massachusetts, coming to Wiscasset in the summertime when they visited Lois Kwantz’s parents and grandparents’ cottages in Bath.

“It was an antique center, a mecca back in those days,” Lois Kwantz said. “Almost every single storefront in the village was an antique shop.”

Lois Kwantz rings up customer Wayne Gattilia of Florida at The Butterstamp Workshop, a folk art shop in Wiscasset, on Aug. 12. After a social media influencer posted a reel on Instagram about the workshop in Wiscasset, owners Lois and David Kwantz, who are planning to close the shop at the end of this season, saw a huge surge in business. “We were seeing 200 to 300 people come in every day,” said Lois Kwantz. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)

They raised their two daughters, Rachel and Sarah, at the shop, though it was hard for them to appreciate the free roam they had of the town or the craft shows their parents dragged them along to.

Everything in the shop has an antique feel — even the paper business cards have a yellowed appearance. Next door is David Kwantz’s workshed. It’s where he makes the cinnamon-scented red beeswax ornaments sold in the shop. He uses urethane molds that his wife made — and she made thousands.

“I tell him, ‘If I didn’t make those molds, you wouldn’t be doing beeswax at all,’” Lois Kwantz said. The Kwantzes produce about 35% of the products sold at The Butterstamp Workshop themselves.

The workshed is dim and cluttered, and red wax covers nearly every surface. Pots and pans hang off the ceiling. The shelves and cubbies either contain urethane molds or his CD collection. It’s a place where every nook and cranny has something stuffed into it.

Rachel McCarthy and her sister, Sarah Drewal, never worked in the shop until recently, when they finally got their parents to retire. David and Lois Kwantz, now 79 and 78, respectively, have been having a harder time managing the shop. Lois’s knees have grown worse, she can no longer be in her workshop, mixing up plaster and creating copies of the antique molds. 

But it wasn’t until October 2025 when they first knew this would be their last season. Lois was hospitalized with COVID. David Kwantz sat next to her in the hospital room wearing a face mask, and he said, “It’s time.” They’re in the process of listing the property.

David and Lois Kwantz are moving closer to McCarthy in Kennebunk. Drewal, their eldest, lives in Lewiston. They knew they’d have to help out more to unload The Butterstamp Workshop, but no one could expect the impact one Instagram reel would have on the business, not even the video’s creator.

The Butterstamp Workshop in Wiscasset. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer) GOING VIRAL

In the 2000s, Katy Elliott, 47, ran her own blog. In the past six months, she’s been posting Reels on her Instagram account. One she posted July 11 about the workshop took off, garnering over 440,000 views and 11,000 likes, one of the highest watched reels on her account. 

Lois Kwantz said the day after the reel was posted, the shop had over 200 customers. The Reel was posted without her or her family’s knowledge, and McCarthy was the first to find out when her sister-in-law sent it to her. 

“There isn’t any motivation to make something viral or anything like that,” Elliott said. “I just hope that it brings out something positive for that business owner and that other people get to find this really special spot.”

Elliott’s been writing about The Butterstamp Workshop since her blogging days. And she believes much of her audience is still with her from then. She said people sent her private messages, telling her they remember her blog posts about the shop.

There were positive and negative impacts of the video. On one hand, the Kwantz family was able to offload more of their antique collection quickly, with pieces costing over $200 each. 

On the other hand, the rise in customers was more than two near-80-year-olds could handle on their own. The shop operates at a slow pace. Lois Kwantz takes her time at the register, talking about her upcoming retirement and uses for the molds. Now she asks customers if the video brought them.

McCarthy and Drewal had to step in, helping around the shop more than they ever had before.

“I worry when I hear about things popping that quickly,” Elliott said. “My first instinct is, ‘Oh my god, what did I do?’ I would never want to overwhelm someone or have it feel like it’s too much.”

Today, the line between sharing something online and causing mass disruption is thin. It’s led some to keep their favorite places secret so they don’t get overrun with tourists. But at the same time, these small “eclectic” businesses are dying out, and people want to support them, Elliott said.

The Butterstamp Workshop in Wiscasset. (Photo by Corey Fiske)

McCarthy isn’t helping at the store because it’s fun, but because her parents need her. Her children, older now at 16 and 13, have less of an interest in helping, too. 

“Sarah, my sister, is always like, ‘I just want to hang out with them. I don’t want to have to do a project,” McCarthy said. 

McCarthy also runs their Facebook page, and said after the video they got over 30 messages daily, from all across the world. One message was from someone in Denmark asking if they shipped internationally or had an online catalogue. (They don’t.)

But McCarthy also reminisced on when her children were younger and would come up to Wiscasset. Her dad would take the kids into his wax-covered workshed and help them make their own ornaments.

“Those are on our Christmas tree this year, or all the years,” McCarthy said, “and I’d say, ‘Oh my gosh, remember you made that one with Grampy Dave in the workshop? Remember that?’”

The Kwantzes plan to close in October, hoping to have liquidated everything in the shop, and even sell some of the decor inside their living area. For now, they’re open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily.

The Butterstamp Workshop in Wiscasset will close in October. (Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer)