About Bronze Basin LLC
Hi there, we're the Nelsons and we're glad you're here.
Welcome to our website where we feature the work of our hands.
The quick introduction:
We are a family-run business here to serve your family in the ways we know how. My name is Ashley and my husband is Wilton. We have 4 boys ranging from toddler to teenager. We reside in Prescott, Arizona, hailing from Kodiak, Alaska. We love to adventure hike, hunt, fish, camp, and create useful, beautiful products that can stand the test of time. We aim to glorify the Lord in all that we do.
The sit-down-and-chat introduction:
Hello there. Pull up a chair, although you might already be sitting. I'll put on the tea...
I suppose this "about" page is where we share about all things surrounding Bronze Basin. I have the blessing of being stay at home mom to care for and nurture our rowdy bunch of boys and my husband, Will, works as an equipment operator. We homeschool our children, so that leaves a lot of room for structuring our day to suit our family's needs. We originally came down here for health reasons for one of our middle boys, but that has since resolved and we are still here in the beautiful southwest. I grew up in cowboy country Texas and Will grew up in fisherman territory Alaska. We all love to hunt, fish, camp, adventure hike and so forth. We are country folks at heart but currently live "in town." We actually don't mind it right now (too much, at least). Lord- willing we'll find ourselves a piece of land after a while and begin to settle it again. We left our little remote homestead life 3 years ago in AK not knowing what would become of our son's life. God had mercy on our boy and has taught us a lot!
It was losing the homestead and that way of life that opened the door for me to pick up leatherwork. No more chickens to tend, no more lawn to manicure, no more greenhouse and gardens and gathering firewood. No more wild game to hunt or fish to catch. I, all of the sudden, had a lot more time on my hands. As long as I can remember I've been a creative thinker. For me, it really started when my granddad gifted my brother and I with oil painting lessons at 10 years old. Writing and poetry blossomed in my teens when my family fell apart. At thirteen my mom taught me how to use her sewing machine. The first purse I ever made was out of not-so-old blue jeans and not half bad. In college, I studied digital art and photography which carried me through for many years. As a 20-something adult I pursued illustration and transitioned into logo design while working in HR for a big sports and outdoors store. It was there that life came to a big halt, and I realized something needed to change in my trajectory. Until then I had been moving all over the states, exploring, adventuring and wandering all on my own. Lonely and wayward, I reached out to a friend of a friend and lined out a boat job in Alaska for the summer of 2016 because I had no reason not to. I worked the boat for the summer in Bristol Bay then got a town job in Kodiak. It was there that I found my style, so-to-speak. We did many art shows, and I even had an art series end up in a permanent collection at the history museum!
After Will and I had our first child, art production slowed way down for a couple of years. Focusing on our baby rightfully became my whole world. We expanded our property, built a greenhouse, raised our own meat, made beautiful lawns and hosted markets in our remote community. It was a really sweet time that I cherish greatly. At that point, we were learning to make handmade healthy soap, harvest our own healing remedies and turn them into products for our friends and family. Art fell to the backburner because I wanted to create things that would serve my family directly in a season when I had so little "spare time."
In 2022 we flew south to New Mexico to seek specialty care for our son and later landed in Camp Verde, Arizona. It was there that I picked up a pencil for the first time with the intention of "making art." I scribbled a roaming bison and at last had the relief of getting something down on paper. By the end of the year, my husband ordered a full set of startup leathercraft supplies and I set out to put my skill set together to create from an entirely new medium, melding my love for sewing, design and usefulness.
We continued under our old business name "Rope + Line Handmade" for 2 years and finally changed our business name in 2024. It really made sense to us to switch to Bronze Basin. I mentioned earlier that we aim to glorify the Lord with all that we do, and we wanted that theme to be encompassed in our business name, too. It was one of those happy fortuitous moments of me just playing word games that I smashed the much-loved color "bronze" and the topographical word "basin" together. When I did a quick search to see if that name had been snagged already, I was reminded of the bronze basin in the Old Testament of the Bible in Leviticus. The bronze basin was used as a wash basin before entering the presence of God, foreshadowing what Christ would become for us. Christ purifies us (sinners) so that we may enter God's presence. Without Christ, we have no way to cleanse ourselves from sin to be with a perfect and holy God. Jesus was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, died an undeserving death, then rose from the dead so that we would have a way to the Father. Bronze Basin is a reminder to us of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May God be glorified in the work of our hands and may you be blessed as you go forward from here.