
Folk Art Center
The Folk Art Center is a museum of
Appalachian arts and crafts located at milepost 382 on the
Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville, North Carolina. It also
houses offices for three separate Parkway partners: the
Southern Highland Craft Guild, the National Park Service,
and Eastern National (known as EN).
The Center, a cooperative effort
between the Southern Highland Craft Guild, the National Park
Service, and the Appalachian Regional Commission, features
many one-of-a-kind handmade crafts and is the most popular
attraction on the Parkway, seeing a quarter of a million
visitors per year.
Opened to the public at its current
location in 1980, the Center contains three galleries, a
library, and an auditorium, and also houses the Eastern
National bookstore and information center. Admission is
free. One of the Center's main attractions is the Guild's
century-old Allanstand Craft Shop, changing exhibitions in
galleries from its permanent collection of 3,500 pieces of
craft objects dating back to the turn of the 20th century.
The Center also features an exhibition of traditional and
contemporary southern Appalachian crafts.
Frances Goodrich, a Yale graduate,
moved to the Asheville, North Carolina area in 1890 to do
missionary work for the local Presbyterian Church. She found
a few women who were still weaving traditional coverlets in
wool and cotton. Goodrich was then inspired with the idea of
a cottage industry that would assist mountain families. She
founded Allanstand Cottage Industries in 1897 in Madison
County, North Carolina. This ultimately became Allanstand
Craft Shop. She then moved the business to downtown
Asheville in 1908 and from her College Street headquarters
she worked with other leaders of the southern Arts and
Crafts movement.
In 1928 the idea of the Southern
Highland Craft Guild was formed. Chartered in 1930, it would
grow to become one of the strongest craft organizations in
the country. Second in age only to the Boston Society of
Arts and Crafts, the Guild now represents over 1000
craftspeople in 293 counties of 9 southeastern states. The
Guild has partnered with the National Park Service for more
than fifty years and moved their headquarters permanently to
the Asheville location in 1980.
Folk Art Center is located at
Milepost 382 Blue Ridge Parkway, Asheville, NC
Open: Jan-March 9am-5pm daily;
April-Dec 9am-6pm daily
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas and
New Year’s Day
828-298-7928 Free Admission, Free
Parking
Campgrounds or Cabins within 50 miles
Cottages within the area. |
Campgrounds |
Catawba Falls Campground Old Fort, 828-668-4831 Wi-Fi available |