An exhibit at Asheville Art Museum pays tribute to the innovative women-makers of the Southern Highland Craft Guild, who have long steered one of the strongest craft organizations in the country. More than 900 craftspeople from nine Southeastern states belong, and the guild is second in age only to the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts.
Almost all of the guild’s founding members were women who led organizations designed to boost the incomes of mountain families — including Western North Carolinians such as Frances Goodrich of Allanstand Cottage Industries and Clementine Douglas of the Spinning Wheel shop, as well as the heads of two legacy institutions: Marian Heard of Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and Lucy Morgan, founder of Penland School of Crafts.
“All brought different sets of values and talents, but definitely they were very important in giving the Western North Carolina contingent one of the strongest contingents in the guild,” says Andrew Glasgow, retired executive director of the American Craft Council and co-curator of the show, with Lynne Poirier-Wilson.
In 1930, the year of the guild’s founding, southern Appalachia was so poor some scholars say the Depression nearly went unnoticed. Glasgow says the founders of the guild were strong women who operated like “proto-feminists,” acquiring government funds from budding programs including the one responsible for building the Blue Ridge Parkway, without the help of the men in their lives — seeking a way to independence. “They were the ones who wanted to do this. They wanted women and families to have incomes beyond what they were experiencing, which was very little,” he notes.
After World War II ended, men took more of a role, and eventually leadership, of the guild. However, it was a bright era of education that saw the blossoming of cultural enclaves such as avant-garde Black Mountain College and milestone work college Berea, and much of the creative power was shared.
But the exhibit pays its dues to the ones who sprung the movement. Dozens of women-maker crafts from 1930 to 2000 are on display, including early, crib-sized appliqué cow blankets by Kate Clayton (“Granny”) Donaldson — a favorite of Olive Campbell, founder of the John C. Campbell Folk School.
The show also features river-cane baskets by Rowena Bradley, often cited as one of only a handful of Cherokee artisans to carry on the complex double-weave technique.
Other objects on display include tapestries, jewelry, pottery, carvings, weavings, cornhusk dolls, and other crafts, plus historic photographs by Ed DuPuy from the craft fairs in the 1950s — further documentation of a movement that continues to shape the area’s cultural heritage.
Appalachian Innovators: Women Makers in the Southern Highland Craft Guild, 1930-2000 will be on display at Asheville Art Museum until late June. See ashevilleart.org for more information.