In mainstream America, domestic weaving was the stuff of grandmother’s day, but Appalachia seemed like a pastoral society to romantic reformers who perceived a home-craft economy as a dignified alternative to modern life and homogenization. A pre-industrial lifestyle survived until the railroad reached Asheville in 1880, where Goodrich found a folk society in proximity to a cosmopolitan city. Mountain families practiced a whole range of traditional skills due to the geographic and economic isolation of the region. Crafts from the Cherokee, white and black mountaineers were made from necessity and for trade. By 1897, Goodrich had built a log cabin alongside the main road to sell crafts, which was the first Allanstand Craft Shop.Ĭertainly, traditional mountain crafts were around when Goodrich shone a new light on them in the 1890s. By 1897, she had moved to Allanstand, a community in Madison County’s Laurel Country, where she found the population more generally involved in traditional fiber arts to the extent that they even tended to wear the same hand dyed colors – people said the Laurel folk could be told “by the red.” She called her organization Allanstand Cottage Industries. Handweaving was indeed the answer, and Goodrich began to organize mountain women to produce crafts that she would market nationally and regionally. Did she hold the clue to her puzzle in her very hand?” The brown had been dyed with chestnut oak, and was as fine a color as the day it was finished…Here was a fine craft, dying out and desirable to revive. As Goodrich tells it, just as she was “pondering the resources at hand for bringing healthful excitement into the lives of her neighbor women, one of them out of pure good will and affection brought to her as a gift a coverlet, forty years old, woven in the Double Bowknot pattern, golden brown on a cream-colored background. Goodrich’s combination of social work, teaching, and family counseling was appreciated by the mountain people she served however, something was lacking that she described as “healthful excitement.” She was sure that an interest that connected mountain women to the wider world would be beneficial, and if this produced cash, so much the better. She had not planned to work in the crafts field, but rather, the idea was thrust upon her in the form of an antique bedspread. Goodrich came to the region in 1890 to do educational and organizational work as a volunteer for the Presbyterian Home Mission Board. Goodrich, a founding member of the Guild. Many pieces date from the 19th century and were collected in the Asheville area by Frances L. The Southern Highland Craft Guild Collection represents the historical crafts of southern Appalachia.
CRAFT TRADITIONS THE SOUTHERN HIGHLAND CRAFT GUILD COLLECTION AN ONGOING EXHIBITION
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