Folk Art Center is the headquarters for Southern Highland Craft Guild
Southern Highland Craft Guild is a guild craft organization that has partnered with the National Park Service for over seventy years. The Guild represents over 800 craftspeople in 293 counties of 9 southeastern states. It operates four retail craft shops and two annual craft expositions which represent the Guild members' work. These expositions occur in July and October and have taken place in the Appalachian mountain region since 1948.[1]
The Southern Highland Craft Guild is headquartered at the Folk Art Center at milepost 382[2] of the Blue Ridge Parkway in Asheville, North Carolina. The Folk Art Center also houses the Guild's century-old Allanstand Craft Shop,[3] three galleries of exhibitions, a research library, and a large auditorium. The Guild crafts are seen by about a quarter of a million visitors each year.[4]
History
The Guild was the brainchild of Olive Dame Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School. She and other founding members met through the Southern Mountain Workers Conference which was held in Knoxville beginning in 1900. At the Southern Mountain Workers Conference of 1926 Olive Campbell suggested forming an actual official crafts organization. This was followed by planning meetings in 1928 and 1929 at which founding members decided the goals and by-laws of the Guild at the Spinning Wheel in Asheville, North Carolina.[5]
They then came up with the name of Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild. The organization was chartered in 1930 as the Southern Mountain Handicraft Guild and in 1933 changed its name to the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild.[6] The name changed again in the 1990s where the word "Handicraft" was changed to just "Craft".[citation needed]
In the 1940s TVA work led to the formation of the Southern Highlanders, a similarly-named craft marketing organization which was government sponsored and had shops at the Norris Dam in Tennessee and the Rockefeller Center in New York City. Because of the broad over-lap in region and purpose, Southern Highlanders merged with the Craft Guild in 1951.[7]
Collections
Many of the pieces date from the 19th century and were collected by Frances Louisa Goodrich.[8] Goodrich was 74 when the Guild was actually founded and so while she was involved, her main contribution was in deeding her Allanstand Cottage Industries sales outlets to the new Guild.[9]
Membership
Membership in the organization is strictly of those that represent John C. Campbell's definition of Appalachia.[10] The active members come from a nine-state region that includes counties within the Appalachian mountain area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Alabama. Membership in the organization is restricted to the counties identified as "The Southern Highland Region" by John C. Campbell.[11]
Footnote references
↑ Alvic, Philis, Weavers of the Southern Highlands, p. 22, University Press of Kentucky (2003), ISBN0-8131-2258-9
↑ Koplos, Janet; Metcalf, Bruce (2010). Makers: a history of American studio craft. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina press. pp.135–136. ISBN9780807834138.
Appalachia is a socio-economic region located in the central and southern sections of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States. It stretches from the western Catskill Mountains of New York state into Pennsylvania, continuing on through the Blue Ridge Mountains and Great Smoky Mountains into northern Georgia and Alabama. In 2020, the region was home to an estimated 26.1 million people, of whom roughly 80% were white.
Highlands or uplands are areas of high elevation such as a mountainous region, elevated mountainous plateau or high hills. Generally, upland refers to a range of hills, typically from 300 m (980 ft) up to 500–600 m (1,600–2,000 ft), while highland is usually reserved for ranges of low mountains. However, the two terms are sometimes interchangeable.
Doris Ulmann was an American photographer, best known for her portraits of the people of Appalachia, particularly craftsmen and musicians, made between 1928 and 1934.
Appalachian music is the music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. Traditional Appalachian music is derived from various influences, including the ballads, hymns and fiddle music of the British Isles, the African music and blues of early African Americans, and to a lesser extent the music of Continental Europe.
The John C. Campbell Folk School, also referred to as "The Folk School", is located in Brasstown, North Carolina. It is the oldest and largest folk school in the United States. It is a non-profit adult educational organization based on non-competitive learning. The Folk School offers classes year-round in over fifty subject areas including art, craft, music, dance, and nature studies. Established in 1925, the Folk School's motto is "I sing behind the plow".
Olive Dame Campbell (1882–1954) was an American folklorist.
Western North Carolina is the region of North Carolina which includes the Appalachian Mountains; it is often known geographically as the state's Mountain Region. It contains the highest mountains in the Eastern United States, with 125 peaks rising to over 5,000 feet in elevation. Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet, is the highest peak of the Appalachian Mountains and mainland eastern North America. The population of the region, as measured by the 2010 U.S. Census, is 1,473,241, which is approximately 15% of North Carolina's total population.
Karen Karnes was an American ceramist, best known for her salt glazed, earth-toned stoneware ceramics.
The Council of the Southern Mountains (CSM) was a non-profit organization, active from 1912 to 1989, concerned with education and community development in southern Appalachia.
The Folk Art Center is a museum of Appalachian folk art and crafts located at milepost 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina. It also houses offices for three separate Parkway partners: the Southern Highland Craft Guild, the National Park Service, and Eastern National.
Settlement schools are social reform institutions established in rural Appalachia in the early 20th century with the purpose of educating mountain children and improving their isolated rural communities.
Our Southern Highlanders: A Narrative of Adventure in the Southern Appalachians and a Study of Life Among the Mountaineers is a book written by American author Horace Kephart (1862–1931), first published in 1913 and revised in 1922. Inspired by the years Kephart spent among the inhabitants of the remote Hazel Creek region of the Great Smoky Mountains, the book provides one of the earliest realistic portrayals of life in the rural Appalachian Mountains and one of the first serious analyses of Appalachian culture. While modern historians and writers have criticized Our Southern Highlanders for focusing too much on sensationalistic aspects of mountain culture, the book was an important departure from the previous century's local color writings and their negative distortions of mountain people.
"Cumberland Gap" is an Appalachian folk song that likely dates to the latter half of the 19th century and was first recorded in 1924. The song is typically played on banjo or fiddle, and well-known versions of the song include instrumental versions as well as versions with lyrics. A version of the song appeared in the 1934 book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, by folk song collector John Lomax. Woody Guthrie recorded a version of the song at his Folkways sessions in the mid-1940s, and the song saw a resurgence in popularity with the rise of bluegrass and the American folk music revival in the 1950s. In 1957, the British musician Lonnie Donegan had a No. 1 UK hit with a skiffle version of "Cumberland Gap".
Frank Brannon is a book and paper artist, and the proprietor of Speakeasy Press.
Charles Counts (1934–2000) was an American potter, designer, textile artist, quilter, teacher, writer, and activist. Counts worked to preserve the art forms of his native Appalachia, and later moved to Nigeria where he taught until his death.
Susan Morgan Leveille is a weaver and teacher from Dillsboro, North Carolina. Part of a long line of weavers and educators in the state, Morgan has been a central figure in the craft movement in western North Carolina. In 2014 Leveille received a North Carolina Heritage Award from the North Carolina Arts Council in honor of her work.
Goingback Chiltoskey, also written Goingback Chiltoskie, was an Eastern Band Cherokee woodcarver and model maker, "one of the most celebrated Cherokee woodcarvers of the Craft Revival era."
Helen Dingman was an American academic and social worker who was one of the central figures in the Progressive and New Deal eras to bring social and economic reform to Appalachia. After teaching in Massachusetts for five years from 1912 to 1917, Dingman moved to Kentucky to establish the Smith Community Life School under the auspices of the United Presbyterian Church. Serving as principal and directing six other schools in Harlan County, Kentucky, she provided both education and social services to the community until 1922. After a two-year placement as an assistant superintendent for the mission board in New York, she was hired as a teacher in the Sociology Department at Berea College. She taught social work courses and trained teachers for the rural schools in the region until 1952. In addition, she served as Executive Secretary of the Conference of Southern Mountain Workers, establishing the professional basis for social workers. The first comprehensive economic and social survey of the Southern Appalachias was spearheaded by Dingman.
Bertha Hodges Cook was an American handicraft artist who was known primarily for her needlework using Colonial knotting and fringing techniques to make bedspreads.
Frances Louisa Goodrich was an American weaver, writer, and archivist. She is best known for founding the Allanstand Cottage Industries in 1887.
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