Lamoine upholsterer shines for Martha Stewart, who declares him ‘best slipcover maker in Maine’

David Smallidge’s 15 minutes of fame has already lasted a week and he’s hoping it might even stretch into the summer.

Smallidge is featured in this month’s edition of Martha Stewart Living, where the domestic diva herself dubs him as “the best slipcover maker in Maine.”

The Lamoine businessman, who has run The Covered Yankee with his wife, Victoria, since 1978, shrugs off the praise as any humble New Englander would, saying there are many fine upholsterers Down East.

But hey, if Martha Stewart wants to promote his work, why in the world would he complain?

“I’ve gotten some nice calls” from places such as San Francisco, Long Island, N.Y., Colorado and Michigan, Smallidge said. “They haven’t produced any new work for us, but I’m hoping residually through the summer we’ll pick up some nice new projects.”

Not that the Smallidges aren’t already busy. About 70 percent of their work comes from the repeat business of summer residents who like to change the look of their coastal cottages with new upholstery and slipcovers.

Smallidge said Maine’s coast is dotted with “beautiful little pockets of cottages” owned primarily by out-of-staters who have money to spend and old family furniture they want redone. It’s not unusual, he said, for parents to buy a cottage for their grown children and then bring out long-stored family furniture to furnish the summer home.

All of that fine furniture, of course, needs fine new coverings.

The Smallidges get nearly half of their new work orders from Labor Day to Columbus Day, keeping them busy all winter long.

Word of mouth has always served Smallidge well in his business, and that’s exactly how he got the Martha Stewart job. When Stewart was looking for a Maine tradesman for the slipcover project, her assistant at her Seal Harbor estate, Skylands, asked Mary James, a shopkeeper in Northeast Harbor, to recommend someone.

Since Smallidge, who grew up in Bar Harbor with James’ son, had done numerous projects for the family over the years, he was the first person James mentioned. In less than a week, the editor of Martha Stewart Living called to make arrangements for the project. In another week, he had flown to Maine to meet with Smallidge and to explain precisely what Stewart wanted.

Although Smallidge’s slipcover work was for furniture for Stewart’s guest home at Skylands, he did such a nice job that he’s also been hired to upholster 16 dining room chairs now being crafted by Rick Bradbury at R.L. White & Son of Hulls Cove.

“It was a very interesting experience,” Smallidge said of touring Skylands last September when he and Vickie needed to measure the eight furniture pieces that Stewart wanted slipcovered.

Stewart’s magazine editor flew a photographer to Maine from England to shoot a photo layout for the magazine. The photos mostly showed the furniture, but Smallidge’s hands also got into the picture.

More important to his fame is the photo of him standing near one of the chairs he covered on the page that features “A letter from Martha” each month.

“We got a tour of the house,” he said. “It smelled like June” thanks to a huge arrangements of deep purple hyacinths flown in from Holland. The house, and the flowers, were definitely a world away from the Smallidges’ farmhouse and upholstery shop in Lamoine, where they raised three children and built a business mostly from repeat work from summer residents.

And so, has David Smallidge met Martha Stewart? “No,” he said, “but that’s something I would like to do.”