Local coffee mugs mark year-end gift giving tradition by NIU alum

Northern Illinois University alumni living as missionaries on First Nation land in central Canada have created and are selling coffee mugs with hand-drawn illustrations depicting DeKalb County cities.

The hometown mugs are the end result of a First Nation tradition of giving village elders gifts at the end of the year.

In 2017, Ashley Ann Klockenga, a Christian missionary living in Cat Lake First Nation, Ontario, Canada, decided to give coffee mugs with illustrations of their Ojibway-run community to the elders.

“Everybody loved them, said Klockenga, 36. “Even people that didn’t receive them wanted them. It was just totally a gift that I made one time, and I never thought that I would ever like start a business around mugs.”

A few years after those mugs were given, she found time to illustrate the symbols of another Canadian community she’d traveled to in anticipation of the birth of her fourth daughter. Cat Lake First Nation does not have a hospital with maternity care within commuting distance.

Klockenga said she created her drawings to work through the anxiety of giving birth. After becoming satisfied with a number of illustrations, she decided to pitch them as a coffee mug design at a local coffee shop.

“We were really nervous about it, but we got 72 of them printed,” Klockenga said. “I thought, ‘Well, they’re never going to sell.’ That’s a lot of mugs. They put them on the shelves, and within 24 hours they were all gone. It kind of started this journey. This last spring I started drawing just pictures of Sycamore, Genoa, DeKalb and put them together progressively.”

Although the coffee mugs are designed in Canada, the business venture has DeKalb County roots.

Klockenga met her husband Matt Klockenga, 35, through a student Christian organization while studying at NIU more than 15 years ago. They settled in DeKalb after getting married.

Six years after the Klockengas moved to Cat Lake First Nation, the northern Illinois cities where they first started their family have continued to influence Ashley Ann Klockenga’s artwork.

“These are really special places to my husband and I,” she said. “It’s where we met each other. It’s where we started our family, and it’s really special to be in these communities now.”

Ashley Ann Klockenga has three unique mugs on sale at three different coffee shops in DeKalb County.

A Sycamore mug can be found at Coroco Coffee in Sycamore, a DeKalb mug at Cast Iron Coffee in DeKalb and a Genoa mug at Open Door Coffee in Genoa. All three cost $23.99.

Ashley Ann Klockenga said she likely wouldn’t have taken her coffee mug venture international without her husband, who studied business while on campus. Matt Klockenga humbly rebuffed his wife’s remarks, saying that she does the heavy lifting.

“My wife does most of the work on just, obviously, making the mugs,” Matt Klockenga said. “But it was really fun doing it from just our stomping grounds and where we met. To be able to just reflect back on that time and create mugs that celebrate those communities – so yeah, I loved it. It was really cool to see her do her work.”