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Russell's Handmade Recycled Vermont Frog

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Handmade by an independent artisan

★★★★★ 4.8 (734)

Tea Frog Free Shipping

$39.95

Coffee Frog Free Shipping

$39.95

🐸🔨

Handcrafted in Craftsbury, Vermont

Russell "Russ" Holcomb, 73, Craftsbury VT — his final collection. Made one frog at a time, like always.

"A piece of recycled metal is ugly. Dented. Nobody wants it. But inside that ugly sheet of steel is a frog who wants to sit on somebody's porch and drink tea. My job is to find her in there and let her out."

— Russell "Russ" Holcomb, Craftsbury, Vermont

Russell "Russ" Holcomb, 73

Master tinsmith from Craftsbury, Vermont. Russ started his apprenticeship in 1968 outside St. Johnsbury. For fifty years he shaped copper roofs, hand-formed gutters, and weathervanes built to survive a century of Vermont weather. After retiring in 2017, he turned his lifelong metalworking skill to garden sculpture — and created the Vermont Tea Frog for his wife Helen. Now, with his workshop sold to a vacation-rental developer, this is his final collection.

What you get:

🐸

1 Vermont Tea Frog
Hand-shaped & painted

🔒

Triple-sealed joints
Built to last 20+ years

📦

Double-boxed shipping
Foam-padded, fragile-labeled

✅

Satisfaction guarantee
Full refund, no questions

What makes Russell's frog different

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Triple-sealed joints Every joint is tinned and sealed before soldering — Russ's 50-year roofing technique. This locks moisture out from the inside, right where cheap imports fail first. His frogs survive winters that destroy the competition.

🛡️

Double-coat zinc primer — inside & out Two coats of zinc-chromate primer on every surface before a single drop of paint goes on. "Rust starts where you can't see it. If you don't seal the inside, the outside paint is just cosmetics."

🎨

Hand-painted marine enamel (3–4 coats + UV seal) Six hours of brush work per frog. UV-resistant, frost-proof enamel — the same family of paint used on ship hulls. Colors stay vivid for years, not months.

♻️

Recycled steel — not factory-stamped Each frog is hand-cut from reclaimed metal, hammered over wooden forms, and welded joint by joint. No stamping machines. No laser cutters. Just hands and shears.

✨

Helen's hand-curled eyelashes The detail that turns metal into a character. Thin steel strips curled one at a time around a finish nail, then soldered to the face. "Without the lashes she's just a shape. With them she has personality." — Helen

😊

People name her within 10 minutes Customers don't buy a garden statue — they adopt a character. Henrietta, Tina, Beatrice, Gloria — owners name their frogs, buy her a husband, and report grandchildren holding tea parties on the porch.

Why tinsmith-grade metalwork outlasts everything else

"The difference between a handcrafted metal garden sculpture and a mass-produced import comes down to three things: the sealing method, the primer layers, and the weld type. A triple-sealed, continuously welded joint with zinc primer inside and out will survive decades of freeze-thaw cycles. Spot-welded imports with no interior sealing typically fail within one to two seasons — corrosion begins at the unsealed interior joints and works outward, invisible until the paint bubbles."

🎓 Based on craft standards from the Tinsmithing Heritage Foundation and American Metal Arts Guild

Perfect for

Porch & patio Garden walls Mother's Day gift Grandma & Mom Retirement gift Cottagecore gardens Indoor windowsill Conversation starter

Quality you can see — and feel

Real handcraft — not factory-stamped, not mass-produced, not dropshipped from a warehouse
Triple-sealed joints — tinsmith-grade moisture protection, inside and out
Continuous weld bead — no spot-welds; every seam fully welded along its entire length
Double zinc primer + UV enamel seal — built to survive full Vermont winters and Tennessee summers
Helen's hand-curled eyelashes — the detail that makes her alive
Truly limited — final batch from Russ's workshop before the spring 2026 closure

✅

100% Money-Back Guarantee Set her on your porch. Live with her for a week. See if your grandchildren name her. See if you smile every morning when you walk past her with your coffee. If you don't love her — for any reason — send her back for a full refund. No questions asked. And if she arrives anything less than perfect, we replace her free and you keep the original.

💡

Please note: Every frog is handcrafted individually from recycled metal. Small variations in paint finish, welding pattern, and eyelash curl are natural — that's not a defect, that's what fifty years of real handcraft looks like. No two are identical. She's bigger than most people expect — roughly the size of a large house cat.

Product details

Material

Recycled steel, hand-welded & painted

Construction

Triple-sealed joints, continuous weld, zinc primer

Finish

Marine-grade enamel (3–4 coats) + UV seal

Dimensions (Tea Frog)

16.8"W × 9.6"H × 10.1"L

Dimensions (Coffee Frog)

11.5"W × 15"H × 9"L

Weight