“After 41 Octobers, I’m Putting Down the Torch” – Massachusetts Metal Artist Marguerite Doyle (71) Is Releasing the Last 412 of Her Hand-Cut Witch Lanterns at a Farewell Price
She was one of the first women in her local ironworkers’ local. For four decades she has cut, hammered and hand-finished the same Halloween piece in a garage in Marblehead. This is the final batch – and when it’s gone, there is no next year.
Marblehead, Massachusetts. The garage smells like scorched metal and coffee that has been on the burner too long. A radio in the corner is playing a Red Sox post-game nobody is listening to. On the bench: a stack of flat steel silhouettes, a jar of brushes standing in mineral spirits, and eleven witches in a row – hats on, skirts open, waiting for their lanterns.
Margie Doyle picks one up the way other people pick up a coffee cup. She turns it into the light from the open door, finds something on the hem that only she can see, and takes a small file to it for maybe fifteen seconds.
“That’s the part nobody notices,” she says. “And that’s exactly why you have to do it.”
She is 71. She has been doing this since Ronald Reagan’s second term.
“Everybody buys the plastic one once”
Ask Margie why anyone should pay for a handmade Halloween piece when the big-box store down Route 114 sells a light-up witch for eleven dollars, and she doesn’t get defensive. She laughs.
“Everybody buys the plastic one once,” she says. “You put it out, it looks fine from the street, and in January you find it in the garage with a crack in the base and the little light rattling around inside. Then you buy another one. Then another one. I’ve got customers who did that for ten years before they came to me.”
Her version is not a decoration that pretends to be metal. It is metal – cut from sheet steel, shaped, and finished by hand, one at a time. The skirt is pierced with a bare-branch pattern she drew on the back of a parts invoice in 1985 and has never changed. Behind it sits a hand-tinted amber panel. When the light comes on, the branches go black against a field of glowing amber and the whole skirt reads like a winter treeline at sunset. The light comes through the metal, not off it – which is the difference between a lamp and a decoration with a bulb behind it.
“People send me pictures every October,” she says. “Always the same picture. Never the whole witch. Just the skirt, lit up.”
“I don’t make a scary Halloween. I make the Halloween people remember from when they were nine years old. Warm light, a little mystery, somebody’s porch.”
One woman, 62 steps, no two alike
Margie learned metal the unglamorous way: 1974, a shipyard-supply shop in Lynn, the only woman on the floor, cutting brackets and stair rails for eight years before anyone let her near anything decorative.
“They gave me the fussy work because they thought a woman had the patience for it,” she says, entirely without bitterness. “Joke’s on them. The fussy work is the good work.”
The witch started as a gift for a neighbor’s porch in 1985. By 1991 she had left the shop and was working out of the garage full time, selling out of a booth at fall markets from Marblehead to Portsmouth.
- Cut and finished by hand, not molded. Real sheet steel, hand-cut edges, hand-filed hem – not printed plastic with a metal look.
- Hand-applied antique patina. Brushed on, wiped back and sealed by hand, so the black settles into the recesses and the high points stay warm. No two finishes are identical.
- Hand-tinted amber panel. The glow panel behind the skirt is tinted by hand, which is why the light is warm and uneven – like a real flame rather than a flat LED wash.
- The branch pattern is pierced, not printed. The light comes through the cut metal, so the branches read as black lace against the amber – not as a picture on a panel.
- Built for the porch. Sealed finish, weighted base, indoor or covered outdoor use. Plug-in cord with an inline switch – steady, even light every evening, no batteries to keep replacing.
- Limited: 412 pieces remain from Margie’s final run, now $34.95 instead of $50. When they’re gone, there will be no new ones.
“I’ve made about 12,000 of these. I’d like one October off.”
This is where you expect the sad part. Margie isn’t interested in providing one.
“Everybody wants me to say my hands gave out,” she says. “My hands are fine. Slower. Fine.” She holds them up, flat, steady. “I’ve made about twelve thousand of these. My granddaughter is eleven. I have never once been at her Halloween parade, because every October of her life I’ve been in this garage until two in the morning packing boxes. That’s the reason. It’s not a tragedy, it’s arithmetic.”
Could someone take it over? She shrugs.
“I had two people try to learn it. Both good. Both quit inside a year – and I don’t blame them, it’s sixty-odd steps and you don’t make real money until year four. Nobody’s coming to save the trade. That’s just true.”
Rather than sit on the last of the run, she made a decision her nephew – who handles the website, badly, by her account – had been pushing for anyway: put the whole final batch out at a farewell price and let them go to people who’ll actually put them in a window.
“I’m not doing this to clear money,” she says. “I’d rather 412 porches have one than have them stacked in my garage while I’m at a Halloween parade.”
What her customers say
“I bought mine at a fall market in New Hampshire in 2009. Sixteen Octobers later it’s still on the same windowsill and it still looks the way it did the day I carried it home. I ordered two more this year for my daughters.”
“My husband thought I’d lost my mind spending real money on a Halloween decoration. Then he saw it lit on the porch and spent twenty minutes explaining to the neighbor how the skirt was cut. He’s the one who wants a second one now.”
“The photos don’t do it justice, and I say that as someone who takes photos for a living. It’s the way the light comes through the cut metal. You don’t get that from a plastic one.”
“My grandkids come up the walk every year and the little one goes straight past the candy bowl to look at the witch. That’s worth more to me than what I paid for it.”
The one gift that doesn’t get returned
A surprising share of Margie’s orders each fall are gifts – and not for children.
“It’s daughters buying for mothers, mostly,” she says. “Or somebody who just moved into a house and wants one thing on the porch that isn’t from a big-box store. Halloween is the one holiday where nobody has an opinion about how you decorate. There’s no wrong way to do it. People like that.”
She is aware that after this year, the piece becomes something else. “They’ll be out there for thirty years,” she says. “Somebody’s going to find one at an estate sale in 2050 and wonder who made it.” She goes back to the file. “Good. Let them wonder.”
Claim one from the final run
The last 412 hand-cut Lantern Witches from Margie Doyle’s workshop – at her farewell price, in time for Halloween.
$34.95$50.00 Save $15.05 · Farewell price Claim yours for $34.95 →Limited quantity · While supplies last
Try it risk-free: 30-day money-back guarantee
Put it in your window. Turn it on at dusk. Look at the way the light comes through the branches. If it isn’t what you expected – the weight of it, the finish, the light – send it back within 30 days and you get your money back. No arguments, no restocking fee.
The Lantern Witch isn’t a seasonal decoration you replace every few years. It’s a piece of real metalwork, cut and finished by one pair of hands that have been doing it since 1985 – and after this October, those hands are done.
Thank you, Margie. For 41 Octobers.
Disclosure: This is a paid advertisement. Quantities stated reflect inventory at the time of publication and may change. Customer statements are individual experiences. Delivery before October 31 applies to orders placed while stock remains.