An Online Database of Western North Carolina Crafts

One of the great things about living in North Carolina is that we have both mountains and beaches. And there's more to these places than just breathtaking views, great skiing and fishing, and amazing sunrises and sunsets. There's the North Carolina culture.

Western Carolina University has put up a great exhibit of mountain culture in their new Craft Revival Project, available at http://craftrevival.wcu.edu/. This new site provides information about craftmanship and crafts in western North Carolina. The site isn't finished -- not by a long shot -- but there's already a collection of almost 200 images available.

When you first go to the site, you can visit one of the three big panels -- "The Story", "The People", or "The Crafts" -- but a lot of that content is still under development. Instead look for the "Search for Images" or "Browse Images" links at the bottom of the screen.

The "Browse Images" link is just like it sounds -- a big list of everything available -- but the Search Images Page allows you to search by several different parameters, including craft, decade, topic, and county. (And keyword, of course.)

I did a plain keyword search for Cherokee and got 83 results, with thumbnails of pictures on the left and descriptions on the right. The results ranged from postcards with pictures from Cherokee NC, to Cherokee-woven baskets to a lace table runner made in Cherokee County.

Click on the pictures in the search results for detail pages. Often you'll get a much larger picture of the craft/person/postcard (but alas, not always, especially in the case of the postcards.) You'll also get details about the image including extensive description, date the item was created (sometimes), the collection from which the image is derived, and a direct URL for the image.

There's already a lot to see here, but I can't wait until it's finished; it looks like it'll be a terrific overview of western North Carolina craftsmanship.