III. The Traditional Music and Crafts Trail
Description
A directory of performing arts venues and craft workshops where travellers can experience an authentic regional tradition of music, potters and other craftspeople.

Significance
The Deep River region is one of the last places in North Carolina’s Central Piedmont where traditional arts and crafts have maintained a tenuous existence. Numerous "old time" and traditional musicians have been documented, and many families have preserved a musical heritage. The earliest documented banjo player in the state is Manley Reece of the Franklinville-Ramseur area, who migrated to the Galax, Virginia area in the 1850s and founded that nationally-significant musical culture. Daner Johnson of northeast Randolph founded a distinctive style of three-finger banjo picking. His student Charlie Poole, born in the Millboro vicinity to a family of textile workers, became the formative voice of southern string band music of the 1920s. Fiddler’s Contests have survived more than half a century in places such as Star and Seagrove.

The region’s potters have been recognized as a cultural asset for 80 years, and have become nationally known during the last quarter century. During the nineteenth century, potters could be found in every county of the region; they still have significant presences in Randolph, Moore, Montgomery, Chatham and Lee.

Local Quakers were active in the necessary crafts of spinning, weaving, dyeing, cabinetmaking, and blacksmithing. Guilford, Randolph and Moore counties have long been recognized by collectors for their beautiful early handmade furniture. Numerous important examples of local weaving have been preserved, but the continuous local tradition was lost in the early 20th century. (It is interesting that the same early interest in handicrafts that preserved the pottery tradition in the Piedmont preserved the handweaving tradition of the Appalachians.)

Charles Toney, a free black man, was an important antebellum chair maker; his work can be recognized by its distinctive blue paint with yellow decoration.

Assets
There are significant local collections of furniture Randolph County, including those of Bill Ivey, Ralph Newsome, Tommy Cranford and Calvin Hinshaw. The collection of Oren Capel in Montgomery County is important.

Bill Ivey’s collection of southern longrifles is the best in the United States.

Mac Whatley’s collection of local weaving patterns, or "drafts," and other local textiles, is probably the broadest and most extensive in the region.

There are many significant private collections of pottery in addition to the collection of the Seagrove Pottery Center.

The annual "fiddler’s contests" (now largely bluegrass music) at Star and Seagrove.

Documentation
Although a significant amount of research has been done on Piedmont arts and crafts, virtually none of it has ever been published. Although there are no more than a handfull of journal or magazine articles on the subject, the word-of-mouth knowledge available to collectors is extensive, but not widely available.

It is interesting, given the current significance of the furniture industry to the regional economy, that almost nothing has been written about the important tradition of Guilford and Randolph County cabinetmaking. The career of the free black craftsman Charles Toney has never been documented.

The regional pottery tradition has received the most scholarly attention, although the vast majority of important pieces are in private collections. It is ironic that the one large public collection, willed by Dot and Walter Auman of Seagrove, went outside the regional to the Mint Museum in Charlotte. The archaeological history of the 1790-era Mt. Shepherd pottery has been published in the MESDA Journal, although numerous other potteries could and should be excavated and the results published.

The Calvin Hinshaw collection of Quaker weaving drafts [now owned by Mac Whatley] should be published and the 200-odd patterns for coverlets, bedspreads, towels and curtains reproduced. Other surviving examples should be examined and published.

The region’s musical tradition has been documented by graduate students and enthusiasts for decades, but is largely unpublished. Scholarly collections of recordings exist, such as that at UNC-Chapel Hill, but little has been available for purchase. Bob Carlin, of Lexington, NC, has done extensive research on Piedmont musical traditions, some of which has been privately published.

Partners

• The Randolph Arts Guild
• The Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts
• Old Salem
• The Greensboro and High Point Historical Museums
• The Furniture Discovery Center
• The North Carolina Pottery Center

Funding

• N.C. Arts Council
• National Endowment for the Arts