By Sarah Stebbins
From our April 2025 Home & Garden Issue
When Meredithe Stuart-Smith wants to show her English colleagues how Americans celebrate holidays, she often pulls up photos of the Fourth of July festivities in Castine. Every year, the town common is a hub of patriotic pride, with a parade assembling on School Street and costume, tug-of-war, and pie-eating contests playing out on a wide lawn. “Americans celebrate everything with gusto, and this is a good example of that,” says Stuart-Smith, a Kansas native whose Meri Meri party-supply business is based in England. But her heart is in Castine, where she has summered since 1994.
This year, Stuart-Smith is celebrating Meri Meri’s 40th birthday. She started the business with handmade greeting cards crafted at her kitchen table. When she sought stylish supplies for her son’s birthday parties, she added tableware, garlands, cake toppers, and more to the mix. Today, the company offers hundreds of products organized by theme, color, and occasion, and
Stuart-Smith credits Maine as a major source of inspiration. “In summer, the light here is so bright and crisp,” she says. “I’ll come back to the studio and say, ‘We’ve got to sharpen these colors up.’” Lobsters are also baked into her collection. Currently, a tomato-red crustacean with gold-foil antennas adorns cocktail napkins. “He’s not my best-selling creature,” Stuart-Smith says, “but he does pretty well.”
