Backcountry Makers

This new book brings to life the material-culture heritage of southwestVirginia and northeast Tennessee. In Backcountry Makers, Betsy K. Whiteexpands on her previous study of the region's rich decorative arts legacy,Great Road Style, to offer a closer look at the individual artisans responsiblefor the diverse works that constitute that legacy. Beautifully illustrated with some 230 photographs, most of themin color, this volume includes biographical sketches of seventy-fivemakers - potters, weavers, spinners, quilters, embroiderers, cabinetmakers,metalsmiths, clocksmiths, gunsmiths, and artists - who worked in the regionfrom the earliest eighteenth-century settlement days to the late twentiethcentury. The entry for each artisan is accompanied by one or more imagesof a signed or marked work, or, in a number of instances, an unmarked workwith certain provenance. These vignettes offer a fascinating glimpse of the people behindthe various pieces, describing their background, family life, and wherethey learned their trade. Using census records and other documentaryevidence, White has traced the earliest of these artisans from their originsin such places as Europe and Philadelphia down through the Great Valleyof Virginia to their ultimate destinations in southwest Virginia andnortheast Tennessee. Along with the photos displaying the products of theircraftsmanship, the book also includes a number of evocative images of theartists and their homes and towns, thus giving the reader a fuller sense of theregion where these gifted people lived and worked. One of the few studies to addresses handmade objects in thislocale - and one of the even fewer works to focus on the artisans themselves - Backcountry Makers will be of great value not only to scholarsof material culture and the arts in Appalachia but also to those who collectregional antiques and crafts and want to know more about the individualswho made them.