Craftsman's Fair, 1949: Brasstown Carvers

Craftsman's Fair, 1949: Brasstown Carvers

Appalachians (People)

Brasstown Carvers

Craftsman's Fair of the Southern Highlands (1949 : Gatlinburg, Tenn.)

Handicraft

John C. Campbell Folk School

Southern Highland Handicraft Guild

Woodwork -- Appalachian Region, Southern

This color photograph by Bernice Stevens shows Jack Hall (1920-1984) and an unidentified woman demonstrating carving at the 1949 Craftsman's Fair in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Hall was born into a family of carvers living in the Warne community east of Brasstown. His father, A. Ben Hall, and uncles, John and Elisha, were well-respected carvers. With carving all around him, Jack began to try his hand at carving when he was just 11 years old. He carved throughout the 1930s and 1940s and was listed as having sold more than $150 of his work on a sales list dated 1942. During the war, Hall left the region to work first as a machinist in Ohio and then at a defense plant in Marietta, Georgia. After the war, he returned to Brasstown where he took up carving again. He was an assistant to John C. Campbell Folk School carving teacher Murrial Martin and, upon her retirement in the 1973, took over as carving instructor at the school.

Stevens, Bernice

Photographic Media

Hunter Library Digital Collections, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, NC 28723

1949-07-27

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/CNE/1.0/

jpg;

photographs

StillImage

15344

https://southernappalachiandigitalcollections.org/object/15344

2008-07-28

All rights reserved. For permissions and use, contact Southern Highland Craft Guild Archives, Asheville, NC 28815;

Appalachian Region, Southern

Craft Revival