This pair of vintage Kenyan Besmo figurines belonged to Mamie Brooks-King, grandmother of Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator Maya Brooks at the North Carolina Museum of Art. The figurines were often sold as tourist items to Western audiences. Although sellers emphasized their connection to “traditional” Kenyan wood sculpting, they were usually a generic style of work that developed as a response to postcolonial demands for collectible “exotic” art. Eventually, these craft items became popularized by African Americans due to the simultaneous Black Power and Pan-Africanist movements that stressed reconnecting with one’s African heritage.

Maya Brooks is currently the Mellon Foundation Assistant Curator at the North Carolina Museum of Art, a position that forges her passion for technology with art history through exhibition curation. Her professional mission is to provide equitable museum experiences for diverse populations. Overall, Brooks strives to restore access, inclusion, and agency in the museum field for marginalized communities.

The work of art featured here is by Nneka Jones and is titled Layers of Identity. It is an exquisitely crafted piece of work that is deeply and conceptually rooted in social justice issues. Nneka says of her work, “Several layers of history and behavior that have been collaged, invented, and projected onto women from a very young age create an image that appears to be perfect, but when layers are stripped away, the raw reality begins to emerge.”

This piece is significant in the history of 2020 as it represents not only Nneka but also the African American experience that was going on in 2020—and the call to action of artists to make visible the injustices that were coming forward. It was part of the Black Lives Matter Movement. 

This piece embodies many of the driving forces behind Florida CraftArt's mission which is to grow the statewide creative economy by engaging the community and advancing Florida’s fine craft artists in their work. We feel that Nneka is a wonderful example of what we do and how an artist can grow with help from Florida CraftArt.

Florida CraftArt (FCA) is a member-supported, statewide nonprofit organization headquartered in the heart of downtown St. Petersburg’s art and culture district. Fine craft art is presented in the 2,500-square-foot retail gallery and in the adjacent Exhibition Gallery that features curated exhibitions and programming. Florida CraftArt’s mission is to grow the statewide creative economy by engaging the community and advancing Florida’s fine craft artists and their work.

Kathryn Boeckman Howd is a community volunteer and clay artist serving on the board of Florida CraftArt, the City of St. Petersburg Public Arts Commission, the Shine Mural Festival Steering Committee, and the Pier Education Advisory Group for St. Petersburg.

The object we selected is a sweetgrass basket made by Mary Jackson, titled Never Again. Mary Jackson is an internationally-recognized master of Gullah sweetgrass basketry, is a recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, and has work in major collections around the world that is prized by collectors and scholars alike. This recognition has brought the Gullah tradition of coiled basketry, one of the oldest art forms of African origin, to national and international prominence.

Brought to America from West Africa during the colonial era of slavery, coiled basketry has been practiced continuously since the 18th century. Baskets were used in rice cultivation and harvesting and also for storage. Modern basketmakers employ a variety of inventive forms and include nontraditional materials yet still use the same sewing techniques to make both practical and artistic works.

Sweetgrass basket-sewing techniques have been passed down for generations from parents to children, providing living links to heritage that survives in West Africa and the American Lowcountry. Jackson learned the art form from her mother and grandmother and is known for her highly inventive forms as well as more traditional baskets. Never Again measures 42 inches in diameter and is the largest basket she has ever created. Though designed as an art object, it was informed by traditional rice winnowing baskets known as “fanners.” Jackson took the practical shape of the fanner, a wide plate with raised edges, and folded the sides in, forming a cover with a wide opening. Strands of unsewn grass sweep whimsically over the top edge.

The Gibbes Museum of Art is home to the foremost collection of American art that incorporates the story of Charleston. The Museum connects the city and region’s artistic past to a vibrant contemporary art scene. 

Angela Mack is President, CEO, and chief curator for the Gibbes Museum of Art, the chair of the Charleston Heritage Federation, and a member of the Board of the Charleston Area Visitors and Convention Bureau. She also serves on the History Commission of the City of Charleston.

Mary Hambidge lived by the ideal that weaving was more than a practical skill; it was a spiritual expression. “When you’re weaving,” she recounted in 1969, four years before her death, “you go right into these threads, into that rhythm, into the whole thing… All the beauty and perfection is in the raw material. You draw it out and are one with it.” Mary’s shuttles, her silk and woolen threads, and the 80 year-old, still-vibrant fabric samples that she used to promote her prize-winning fabrics tell a story of living simply with and in nature with dedication to beauty, order, and perfection. With the assistance of the local residents who helped her and who adhered to the traditions of their Appalachian upbringing, she “grew” her threads from the ground up by carding, spinning, and weaving wool from her own lambs and sheep. She imported fine aniline dyes that she mixed according to Hambidge’s proportions of beauty to create the singular colors of astonishing vibrance that she employed in woven cloth coveted around the world. Some of her work remains with the Hambidge Center, though much of it is currently housed at the Atlanta History Center, as fresh today as the day it was created. 

Mary’s story is integral to the Hambidge Center, whose mission today is to support art and the artists who make it, created and sustained as Mary’s fabrics were woven—one thread, one person, one vision, one action at a time. These humble objects—thread, wooden shuttles, handwoven fabrics—are the simple, yet integral, parts of a story that is still unfolding today.

The Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences in Rabun Gap, Georgia, which operates today as a beloved and innovative artists’ residency program, was founded in 1934 by weaver and visionary Mary Hambidge as a self-sufficient artists’ enclave and sustainable farm where one could live in harmony with nature and design. 

Donna Mintz is a visual artist and Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Science Fellow. Her work is a meditation on memory, time, and place and can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the Mobile Museum of Art. She resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where she maintains a studio practice in an old cotton gin factory.

This settee is an object that has significance to me as its maker for a number of different reasons. Some have to do with when and where it was made, others have to do with how I made it and why. Ultimately, the process I used to build this chair, along with the tools and the traditional designs and joinery it depends on, can be read in the final product. For that reason, it’s an object with a story if you know where to look. 

It’s a wooden bench with a steam bent back and a woven seat. Built for two, during a year when two people would hardly be caught sitting that close, it’s a little bit hopeful. It presents itself as an object that would have been normal in the past, and will hopefully bring people together in the future. It’s just waiting. 

It’s significant that no element in this chair is novel or invented by me. All the techniques used to make it, and all the hand-cut joinery used to put it together, was figured out by other chair makers. In a way, this chair is a result of my curiosity about that collective knowledge: how can I process it and use it effectively? What experiences do I need to go through as a craftsperson to embed that knowledge in myself, and transfer it to the objects I make? This chair is a partial answer to these questions. 

When I built this chair, I was in a chair making mentorship at the John C. Campbell Folk School in the mountains of Western North Carolina. I had no responsibilities except to explore chairmaking, be curious, and try to develop my skills. I felt supported by others in the program, and by my mentors, and I felt like I could take some risks and try to build something I hadn't tried before. I think that feeling of being surrounded and supported by other creative people in a collaborative and joyful community really is what convinced me a few months later to make a big change. I moved to Brasstown to work at the Folk School. So, the impact that building this chair had on my life was fairly heavy, in the end. I could have chosen to take that feeling away and recreate it elsewhere, but it just felt like I wanted to be part of what happens at the Folk School. In a way, the fact that the chair exists speaks to how a process of self-discovery in a supportive arts community has concrete results.

Gabe Strand is a furniture and cabinet maker focused on green woodworking and chairmaking. Now living in Brasstown, North Carolina, Gabe is immersing himself in the craft of Appalachian greenwood chair making as well as Appalachian music and dance.

For 95 years, John C. Campbell Folk School has transformed lives and brought people together in a nurturing environment for experiences in learning and community life that spark self-discovery. The John C. Campbell Folk School offers year-round weeklong and weekend classes for adults in craft, art, music, dance, cooking, gardening, nature studies, photography, and writing.

Roberto Lugo’s Trails and Trials: A Century’s Journey to a Dream (2016-17) is based on the High Museum of Art’s iconic Century vase (1876), which comments on America’s colonial history and the country’s subsequent technological progress. Lugo made Trails and Trials to directly engage with Atlanta’s history, its place within the civil rights movement and larger discourses surrounding social justice, as well as broader cultural touchstones. In this work, Lugo has created an expressive, handmade object that understands tradition and history and is powerful in its engagement with the social implications of the medium. The piece communicates contemporary concerns about race and place in the United States.

With more than 18 thousand works of art in its permanent collection, the High has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American and decorative art; significant holdings of European paintings; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography, folk and self-taught art, and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists.

Monica Obniski is the curator of decorative arts and design at the High Museum of Art, where she is responsible for collecting, exhibiting, and programming a global collection of design, which includes a yearly architectural piazza commission. Her curatorial practice engages social issues and is rooted in architecture and design history.

My object is the c. 1810 architectural interior known as the Courtland Room located in the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I chose this object because upon first glance, it is not what it seems. Beyond the aesthetics of the space is the story of Black craft in the Chesapeake.

Founded in 2019, the BCDA brings together scholars, students, museums, and archives professionals and the public to collaborate and spread the story of Black craftspeople. The BCDA originally began as a project founded by Dr. Tiffany Momon and inspired by her research into John “Quash” Williams, an enslaved and later free Black master carpenter responsible for the carpentry and joinery work on the c. 1750 Charles Pinckney Mansion in Charleston, South Carolina. Momon’s research into Williams led to the development of a map tracing Williams’ life around Charleston and soon, that map incorporated places associated with the enslaved Black craftsmen who aided Williams in the construction of the Pinckney Mansion. By Fall 2019, the project expanded to include more Black craftspeople in Charleston involved in a variety of trades. The archive continues to grow daily.

Dr. Tiffany Momon is a public historian and assistant professor at Sewanee: The University of the South, and founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive.

One of my favorite objects in the Tennessee State Museum’s collection is an ornate cherry and tulip poplar dresser made by a Black cabinet maker named Lewis Buckner in 1889. Born enslaved in East Tennessee, Buckner was later trained as a carver and cabinetmaker post-Emancipation. Using timber from the nearby Smoky Mountains, Buckner created elaborate furniture and interiors influenced by Charles Eastlake and the Aesthetic Movement. He then elevated these designs by incorporating his own designs, likely influenced by his own community. Through his work, he brought international style and taste to his home in rural Appalachia.

Founded in 2019, the BCDA brings together scholars, students, museums and archives professionals and the public to collaborate and spread the story of Black craftspeople. The BCDA originally began as a project founded by Dr. Tiffany Momon and inspired by her research into John “Quash” Williams, an enslaved and later free Black master carpenter responsible for the carpentry and joinery work on the c. 1750 Charles Pinckney Mansion in Charleston, South Carolina. Momon’s research into Williams led to the development of a map tracing Williams’ life around Charleston and soon, that map incorporated places associated with the enslaved Black craftsmen who aided Williams in the construction of the Pinckney Mansion. By Fall 2019, the project expanded to include more Black craftspeople in Charleston involved in a variety of trades. The archive continues to grow daily.

Annabeth Hayes is the curator of decorative arts at the Tennessee State Museum.

This fireback is from the Vesuvius plantation located in Lincoln County, North Carolina. The date of creation is c. 1802-1816. The fireback is made of cast iron. With the name “J. Graham” in bas-relief on the object, it is believed that this fireback is an earlier production of Vesuvius Plantation. The fireback is in dialogue with the neoclassical movement, with such decorative elements as the flanking pilasters and arched roping across the top. The object has an overall height of 38 inches, overall width of 36 inches, and overall depth of 1 inch. 

I selected this object because of its ability to tell an assortment of stories that highlight African American skill and decorative arts and help us better understand the importance of skilled African American craftsmanship under the institution of enslavement. Moreover, iron furnaces are an often-overshadowed form of enslavement yet were critical to aiding early industrial investment in the South.

Founded in 2019, the BCDA brings together scholars, students, museums and archives professionals and the public to collaborate and spread the story of Black craftspeople. The BCDA originally began as a project founded by Dr. Tiffany Momon and inspired by her research into John “Quash” Williams, an enslaved and later free Black master carpenter responsible for the carpentry and joinery work on the c. 1750 Charles Pinckney Mansion in Charleston, South Carolina. Momon’s research into Williams led to the development of a map tracing Williams’ life around Charleston and soon, that map incorporated places associated with the enslaved Black craftsmen who aided Williams in the construction of the Pinckney Mansion. By Fall 2019, the project expanded to include more Black craftspeople in Charleston involved in a variety of trades. The archive continues to grow daily.

Torren Gatson is an assistant professor in the department of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Gatson is a trained public historian and a scholar of 19th and 20th century US, southern history, with an emphasis on the African American–built environment. He is a historic preservationist who conceptualizes the impact of African American material culture on the physical and cultural landscape. In the public realm, Gatson works with communities to build lasting public products that reflect the dynamic and difficult aspects of African American history. Alongside Founder Dr. Tiffany Momon, Dr. Gatson co-directs the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive.

The object we selected is a baby blanket made at Berea College Student Craft by student designer Emerson, class of 2021. It takes 12 hours to set up the loom, but once it’s ready, Emerson, who is also a dancer, weaves music into each item they produce. “Music and dance don’t seem like they would be directly applicable to weaving,” Emerson said, “but weaving is a physical thing. It’s a very rhythmic thing.”

Emerson’s specialty is the baby blanket, especially the Water baby blanket, which Emerson designed along with three others based on the four elements: water, earth, wind, and fire. The new line of baby blankets Emerson “composed” is a contemporary update to the traditional plaid, blue, and pink ones Berea College Student Craft has made for decades. “Part of my goal in designing this blanket was to move away from the standard gendered baby blankets that we’ve been doing for a really long time,” Emerson said. “I wanted to make a blanket that went beyond the gender binary and that was able to represent my identity as a non-binary person in something I designed and created.”

We chose to feature Emerson’s amazing work because it is representative of our goal to make sure all students working within the program can express their identities, their passions, and their core beliefs in every item we create.

Berea College Student Craft has been an essential part of the College's labor program since 1893. Today, the program provides opportunities for over 100 students each term to study, produce, and teach about craft with a focus on woodworking, fibers, ceramics, and broom-making. In addition to nurturing makers, we are committed to helping students express their identities and hone their design skills to share authentically student-designed products that support The Great Commitments of Berea College. Berea College Student Craft is committed to continuing the College’s founding mission of conscious inclusion of the historically excluded. 

Emerson, a native of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, graduated from Berea College in 2021 with a BA in biology and a minor in sociology. They spent all four years as a student working in the weaving studio after being recruited to work there as a first-year student. Upon graduating, they began working as a staff apprentice in Student Craft, helping to facilitate learning and production in the weaving studio.