Duck Girl. No, it's not the lat­est dance, re­al­i­ty show or YouTube sen­sa­tion. It's an unas­sum­ing craft store on West­ern Main Road, St James. You can't miss it. Or maybe you can; there's no shin­gle and re­al­ly no sign of life un­til af­ter noon, which is when Jade Drakes, the pe­tite girl with the enor­mous tal­ent, opens her shop and starts cre­at­ing. You walk in and the first thing you no­tice is that it feels like home, or at least like your grand­moth­er's sit­ting room. There's cheery wall­pa­per adorn­ing a fo­cal wall, a funky duck lamp that's a homage to her duck-keep­ing days, quaint kitchen cab­i­nets that dis­play a wide as­sort­ment of trin­kets: moth­er/daugh­ter aprons with vin­tage rib­bon, hand­made note­books, quirky or­na­ments, em­broi­dered let­ters for chil­dren's rooms, bird­hous­es, pic­ture frames, bags, pup­pets. "I'm re­al­ly a met­al­smith," ex­plains Drakes, who re­cent­ly moved back home af­ter at­tend­ing one of the old­est trade schools in the US, North Ben­nett Street School in Mass­a­chu­setts, where they of­fer pro­grammes in every­thing from book­bind­ing to preser­va­tion car­pen­try. She be­came a skilled bench jew­eller, and worked re­set­ting stones and re­siz­ing rings at some of the biggest and most rep­utable com­pa­nies in Boston.

Then came the glob­al fi­nan­cial cri­sis. "I lost my job, but it turned out to be the best thing that could have hap­pened," says Drakes. She de­cid­ed to hone her skills in Italy at a con­tem­po­rary school called Alchimia. She says it changed her life. "They made you go deep. Now I see beau­ty in every­thing, even in what I thought was ug­ly be­fore." So how does an ac­com­plished crafts­man (Drakes loves that word "be­cause it sug­gests that you can't do any­thing else but work with your hands") end up open­ing a lit­tle craft shop in Trinidad that hard­ly any­one knows about? "I al­ways want­ed to have a lit­tle gift shop with hand­made stuff and things that I cre­at­ed. And I want­ed it to be a place where friends could drop in and have a cup of tea. I'm too small to cater to the gen­er­al pub­lic, but I can do things by or­der." The "Mom­my and Me" aprons, for in­stance, have be­come quite pop­u­lar. "An apron is such a sym­bol of cer­e­mo­ny," she says."It's not about be­ing im­pris­oned in the kitchen. It can be for gar­den­ing, for craft...it's all about love, be­cause who takes care of you bet­ter than your moth­er?" Drakes is an old soul who wants to bring back a bit of the old-time days through her store. "I am the shop," she says. "It's a sweet coun­try and maybe it'll be con­ta­gious and some­body low­er down in St James will sud­den­ly get a loom!" She's on­ly half-jok­ing. "I'm hap­py to come in here every day," she says. "You get orig­i­nal stuff... things that work­ing peo­ple to­day would nev­er think of or have the time to do for the peo­ple they love. So let me do it for you." Made with love, by the Duck Girl.

-Ja­nine Mendes-Fran­co

Vis­it Duck Girl's Face­book page: https://www.face­book.com/pages/Duck-Girl/267947716645470