Craft and the Craft Revival of Western North Carolina

This Pine Cone Bloom Coverlet was created in 1924 by Lessie Eva McKinney Woody in Mitchell County, North Carolina. It is made of linen and wool and dyed with madder. The coverlet is part of the collections of the Southern Appalachian Archives at Mars Hill University. (Photograph by Megan Walters.)

This Double Bow Knot Coverlet was created around the 1890s by Anna Clark Davis in Spring Creek, Madison County, North Carolina. The coverlet is made of linen and wool and dyed with synthetic dyes. The coverlet is part of the collections of the Southern Appalachian Archives at Mars Hill University. (Photograph by Megan Walters.)

In 1933, Lucy Morgan drove a small wooden cabin up to Chicago’s Century of Progress to sell handicrafts made by the Penland women, selling the image of simpler times and tradition. The truck and cabin remain on the grounds of Penland today. (Photograph by Megan Walters)

By MHU students Grace Mayer, Gisselle Michua, Nicolas Varner, and Megan Walters

Western North Carolina has a rich and vibrant craft scene. As you drive through the mountains, signs notating the Blue Ridge Craft Trails and Toe River Valley Studio Tours can be found. These signs were created and installed to celebrate the historical and ongoing musical, crafting, and artistic heritage of the Appalachian region (Blue Ridge National Heritage Area). Legacies of this crafting heritage can be found throughout Appalachia and beyond today.

One such legacy thrives in Robbinsville in far western North Carolina, at a workshop called Hunting Boy Woodcarving. There, carver Billy Welch has been carrying Cherokee traditional mask carving for over three decades. Welch carves all the masks by hand, using natural dyes to color them. These dyes come from native plants such as black walnut, bloodroot, and Indian paintbrush (PBS, NC). The creative traditions of Appalachia have often been intimately tied to the land, exquisitely stated by this purposeful usage of locally and natively-sourced materials.   

These aforementioned plants have also been used to dye weaving materials, such as rivercane, for generations. Rivercane is a native species of bamboo known for its variety of uses, including creating baskets, mats, and fish traps (Mountain Heritage Center). Rivercane weaving had once been largely lost with the man-made decline of the plant itself, but revitalization efforts from the Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual and those who know the weaving methods have helped to preserve the tradition of rivercane basketry (Fariello).

The traditional crafts celebrated in western North Carolina are often born of practicality, but many of them are also musical traditions. Out in Fairview, North Carolina, sits the two-story workshop of Pisgah Banjo Company, relatively small, yet one of the largest banjo workshops in the country. Few other instruments come to mind so vividly Appalachian as the banjo does. Pisgah Banjo operates entirely on solar power and has a mission to create professional-quality and affordable banjos that are made with 100% Appalachian hardwoods (Pisgah Banjo Company). With so many crafts to be seen in western North Carolina, you might be wondering: Why exactly are there so many craft traditions here?

Beginning in the late 1800s, a craft revival began in Appalachia. According to Western Carolina University's online craft revival exhibit, “One focus of the Revival was preservation, the teaching and learning of skills thought to be endangered at the time” (Hunter Library Digital Initiatives, “The Crafts”).  The craft revival also had a big impact on western North Carolina as a whole and “helped to change the attitudes and the values that contributed to today's appreciation for handmade crafts” (Hunter Library Digital Initiatives, "The Story”). In western North Carolina, the folk and craft revival began to improve the lives of (predominantly) women who were struggling economically in rural areas of the Appalachians. The origins of the crafts were already there from both European and Native American influences, and reformers, frequently women, would move into isolated areas to facilitate vocational instruction in the region, including handicrafts (L’Ecuyer, 125).

During the craft revival, many institutions were established across western North Carolina, the first being Allanstand Cottage Industries. Allanstand was founded in 1897 by Miss Frances Goodrich, who had been gifted a 40-year-old coverlet and was impacted greatly by its beauty. Goodrich initially located and organized women in Britain’s Cove, NC, who could weave and dye cloth. This organizing was done with the intention to “give paying work to women [in isolation]; to give these mountain women a new hope and a new interest; to save from extinction the old crafts and to produce artifacts of beauty and value” (Van Noppen, 187). Eventually, Goodrich set up Allanstand in Madison County, and also created several log cabin shop outposts on other parts of the county, like Big Laurel, Sodom, and White Rock (Davidson, 26).

While Allanstand Cottage Industries no longer operates or stands today, several other craft schools do, one such institution being Penland School. The Penland School of Craft was founded in 1929 by Lucy Morgan, a North Carolina native from Macon County. Morgan, at the request of her brother, Rufus Morgan, learned weaving in 1923 from Anna Ernberg, a Swedish weaving instructor at Berea College, and soon began to find women to take on as weaving students. In similar fashion to Allanstand, Penland began with the revival to bring back forgotten traditions and originated in weaving instruction. Over the years, it grew larger and took up shop at the Appalachian Industrial School, which became known as the Penland School of Weaving and Pottery in 1929 and eventually the Penland School of Craft (Becker). When Lucy Morgan retired in 1962, the second director of the school, Bill Brown, brought new life and vision to the school by introducing the new courses in other media to Penland. Today, the school is located on more than 420 acres of land with 57 buildings, welcoming over 1,400 students annually who come seeking instruction in pottery, weaving, glassblowing, bookbinding, and other arts (Penland School of Craft).

Over the course of history, western North Carolina has developed a vibrant craft heritage. From wood carving and mask creation to basket weaving and banjo making, western North Carolina continues to revitalize and preserve handmade craft traditions that make Appalachia, Appalachia.