How did they learn to do what they were experts at crafting? Usually from their elders.
Several craft schools were started in the twentieth century around the Appalachian Mountains...to make sure the skills were never lost. John C. Campbell Folk School, and Penland School of Crafts area couple still in existence.
There are annual craft shows by the Southern Highlands Craft Guild in Asheville NC twice a year...at least there were before the pandemic. I hope they return soon. They were held in the largest venue, our civic center, which has now got a new owner, it's Harrahs Cherokee Civic Center now.
And there's the Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Asheville. I'll have to check and see if it's even open. It looks as if it's open Tues-Sat, 10-5.
Jim Henry and his wife Kristine Bullin Henry of Mt Vernon, Rockcastle County, Kentucky. Photo by Coley Ogg, as posted on Facebook by Clementine.
A simple style kick wheel on which to make pottery...base can have bricks inserted between two horizontal circles of wood to be a good balance that will keep the wheel going for quite a while. Most used in America these days have concrete for the "flywheel."
A more practical activity, keeping food fresh. From Abilene Texas comes this 1915-20 photo of the ice man, Olen Stevens holding his tongs in front of his ice delivery wagon. Courtesy of the collection of Hardin-Simmons University Library in Abilene. As posted on Facebook for Traces of Texas.
My grandmother had one of these ice boxes in her home in Houston, which I visited in the 40's. She still used it with ice, though she soon had an electric refrigerator also. It had a little hose that drained the water through a hole in the floor to the crawl space under the house...which I found out by crawling around on the kitchen floor with my baby sister (I was a big girl of 5 at the time!)
I'm sharing these sepia photos with Sepia Saturday...they're on the letter "X" and my photos have nothing like the following one, so go on over to the link to see if someone has shared something closer to it!
Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like. -Will Rogers, humorist (4 Nov 1879-1935
I have a memory of the ice man when we lived with my grandfather in the fifties. He had an ice box.
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize until much later that my other grandparents also never owned a fridge.
When we lived in St. Louis from 1950-63, our first apartment was on an ally, and the ice man would come down it in a horse drawn wagon...I guess shouting out that he was coming. I just remember being amazed seeing him out there from a second floor window.
DeleteLove your new header photo with the snow top mountains.
ReplyDeleteMy parents retired for awhile in Elkins, WV where there was an annual craft festival called Augusta. I think it was part of Davis and Elkins College. I know both my parents enjoyed taking classes there. My dad did a pottery class and I have a couple of his pieces still.
I hope many artisans survive the loss of business during the pandemic...I love to go to arts and crafts shows, even if I'm no longer selling my pottery.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteI love your header photo, beautiful view! Hubby and I have visited the Folk Art Center, a great place. Take care, enjoy your weekend!
That one did come out well...nice of the geese and ducks to pose for me too! I used to volunteer at the Folk Art Center, upstairs where they have revolving exhibits. It was great because I could meet people from all over, who signed the guest book. And I would spend my spare time in their library...what a lovely collection of arts and crafts books.
Delete...I enjoy how necessity became an artform.
ReplyDeleteI guess many people who make anything at all can put special effort out to make a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Carpentry, house building, sewing etc.
DeleteI think my paternal grandparents had an ice box. I'm trying to envision their house and I don't remember a refrigerator. I'll have to ask my dad.
ReplyDeleteFor my memories, I think ice boxes were kept on a back porch also. And my grandfather was a bookkeeper at a packing plant, so would bring fresh meat home daily, to feed the family with 4 growing boys...I imagine.
DeleteI've never seen an icebox before, how interesting, thanks for sharing. Your new header is beautiful.
ReplyDeleteLiving in Houston must have meant ice was pretty expensive...having to have been shipped down from up north where it had been cut during the winter-time. It may have been stored in an ice house in Texas...I think I've seen photos of one. A lot of sawdust was used to insulate it from melting.
DeleteMany of us seem to be taken with your header photo. It is a beautiful scene. I hope the craft centers are able to reopen soon. Learning and preserving these arts and crafts are beneficial for the individual who learns as well as keeping us in touch with the past.
ReplyDeleteWonderful pictures, especially that last one. What in the world?
ReplyDeleteThat's the Sepia Saturday prompt photo...which I couldn't match, obviously! But others did!
DeleteLove that header photo. So beautiful. I came of age in the time of refrigerators, ice boxes were a thing of the past.
ReplyDeleteI had been waiting to take that photo for months...and even the geese and ducks helped me get it.
DeleteThe ice man cometh to our house when I was a little girl. We had a refrigerator but it required a huge block of ice every few days and I remember Mom having to remove the drip pan ever so carefully to empty it in the kitchen sink. We finally got an electric fridge - a Kelvinator and I remember being sad we wouldn't see the ice man any more because he was always so nice and funny and smiled a lot. When I decided to furnish my old doll house with Victorian furniture, I found a wooden ice box for the kitchen!
ReplyDeleteGood for you to replicate the ice box in a doll house. I called a fridge an ice box for years, and the counter a drain-board. My children would look confused and then figure it out.
DeleteIce boxes are quite a throwback to the past.
ReplyDeleteYes, and apparently they were built to last, so are still to be found in antique stores...though they aren't that good to look upon. I'll take a pie safe over an ice box any day.
DeleteI thought about you the other night while I was watching the 4th season of Outlander. Jamie and Claire are now in the mountains of North Carolina. They were drinking out of pottery/ceramic/whatever mugs. I wondered if they were one of your creations, ha ha. Seriously, I thought the nod to the heritage of arts and crafts was lovely.
ReplyDeleteThat's so great that you thought of my making pottery. I know lots of crafts are accurately portrayed in movies, for instance, the New Zealand potters made the dinner ware for Hobbits to use in the trilogy of The Lord of the Rings. I don't know about the ones in Outlander...which would probably be done by some better known potters!
DeleteWe have all been so inventive with this week’s prompt and I enjoyed your post on local crafts and craftsmen. As others have mentioned, your banner photograph is so peaceful and restful - beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThanks...that's where I look often when on my walks around that lake. It does let me sigh and relax.
DeleteI remember an icebox like this from a childhood vacation.
ReplyDeleteThat's great...and I bet someone filled it with a block of ice!
DeleteI connected with that icebox photo! I grew up when electric refrigerators had just come in, but many folks still had ice boxes. And I remember on the way to school, our bus would pass the home of an ice seller with a big sign in his yard -- my firs childhood memory of a soon-to-be-gone relic from previous generations. Great memories!
ReplyDeleteWonderful that you remember not only the ice box, but where you saw the sign of a guy who delivered ice!
DeleteThe icebox caught my eye, too! Many years ago, we owned a home on the high prairies of Colorado that was at one time the homestead of a farm and dairy. In one of the outbuildings, there still existed a *huge* icebox -- not wired, but intended to have big blocks keep cool the milk they sold in the little town down the hill. I had the idea of restoring it and bringing it in the house to use as a storage cabinet, but it weighed a TON! Made with real hardwood and lined with metal of some kind. It was a beautiful thing, though -- like most things a century ago, it was skillfully made to be both attractive and useful. And to last forever! I kinda wish we had restored it, darnit (maybe got a crane to move it -- or the football team at the town school or something...)
ReplyDeleteYou are so right...lots of heavy wood, as well as maybe a zinc lining. I dare say the big coolers wouldn't be moved very much!
DeleteMy favorite craft artists are those that combine an element of artistic design with the practical purpose of the object. When it's reversed and the art pretends to be something functional, I get confused as to what the useful value is and how to appreciate the artistic interest. For instance, I don't think an ice box would be improved if it was decorated with Rococo inlay and carvings.
ReplyDeleteAs a craftsman, I've often thought about how the functions of different shapes were important to the design of them...but I did have fun painting pretty flowers and bees on bowls...just for the fun of it!
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