For Sue and Stan Jennings, woodworking isn’t just a way to make a living, it’s a way of life. What started out as a passion for the craft was born out of necessity. Over the last 30 years, the Jennings have developed a thriving business making wood objects called treenware — small wooden kitchen utensils.
This story originally aired in the April 21, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
For Sue and Stan Jennings, woodworking isn’t just a way to make a living, it’s a way of life. What started out as a passion for the craft was born out of necessity. Over the last 30 years, the Jennings have developed a thriving business making wood objects called treenware — small wooden kitchen utensils.
The Jennings learned to make spoons through a lot of trial and error. But both of them can trace their passion for woodworking back to their childhoods.
Sue grew up helping out her father who was a contractor. Stan’s father had a sawmill and his grandfather was a carpenter. “I had a little bit of woodworking in my DNA,” Stan says.
Their mutual love of woodworking ended up being the foundation for their own relationship as a couple.
“When I met my husband, we were both working in the coal mines underground. And when we first started getting to know each other, the question we would ask is, ‘If you had anything in the world you wanted to do, what would be first on your list?’” Sue says. “And I said I wanted to be a woodworker. And he had the same dream. So right off the bat we knew there was something pretty special there.”
The chance to chase their dreams came sooner than expected. Not long after the couple met, Sue and Stan were laid off from the mines.
“We all walked in and got our pink slips and that was the end of our coal mining business,” Sue says. “And that’s how this evolved, because we needed a way to make a living.”
To make ends meet, the couple started selling odds and ends at craft shows. During that time, both experimented with making spoons.
Stan says the first set of spoons he made were less than impressive, but were created from the heart. And because he needed a cheap present for Sue.
“I suppose I was too tight to buy a Christmas gift,” Stan says. “I made her a set of dogwood spoons. And that was actually the first set of spoons we made. I’m ashamed to even show people, it turned out so bad, but Sue hung on to them.”
Sue also caught the spoon-making bug and tried to make a set herself. “The first spoon I made was a set of measuring spoons, and I made it out of rhododendron [wood],” Sue says. “And that’s because we had gone to a show and we met a spoon maker, and we talked and talked about him. I was fascinated from the very beginning.”
The Jennings discovered there was a whole culture around wooden utensils when they stumbled upon the book Treen and other wooden bygones. This book ended up changing the direction of their business. But they almost didn’t buy it.
“At the time it was like a $50 book and we stood there and agonized over spending $50 on this book because we couldn’t afford a book for $50,” Sue says. “So there was our first exposure to the word ‘treen.’”
Sue Jennings holding her copy of Treen and other wooden bygones, a book by Edward H. Pinto.
Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Treen is a Saxon word that refers to wooden items made from the tree for use in the kitchen or dairy. After buying the book, Allegheny Treenware was born. Much of the inspiration for their product design — and the name of their business — has come from the book.
Over 30 years later, the book is still on their shelves. It’s thick and well-worn, filled with photos of wooden kitchen items. There is a clear design connection between what is in the book and what the Jennings make today. The items are both functional and beautiful.
Over the years, the couple has grown as craftspeople thanks to a combination of grit and learning from other woodworkers. Now, times are not as tight and their process is much more sophisticated. They have several employees and a workshop full of high-end equipment. Their treenware is sold online all around the world, and the spoons are coveted collector’s items.
There’s a lot of action on the shop floor to fulfill these orders. Staff shift between workstations dedicated to a specific purpose. Each spoon starts with a pattern that is traced onto a board of wood and cut, just like a clothing pattern for fabric.
“When we make the spoon or whatever, there’s no duplicating machines, there’s no computerized equipment. Everything is truly made by hand here at this shop,” Sue says.
While there is now a team behind Allegheny Treenware, the Jennings reserve the most difficult part of the process for themselves: the shaping finish of the spoon. This requires very coarse sandpaper on a spinning disc which can cut your hands if you’re not careful.
Sue says her approach to shaping is different from Stan’s. She pre-shapes the spoon first, while Stan starts by planning things out before he sits down at a machine. “We’re different sides of the brain and we go about things differently,” Sue says. “[Stan’s] very methodical and I’m not, but we end up in the same place.”
Patterns used to make wooden utensils at Allegheny Treenware.
Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The Jennings also have complimentary skills as business partners, especially when they were selling at craft shows.
Sue reflects on how she and Stan would interact with customers. “I’m always at the booth selling and his job was to entertain,” she says. “He’d be hand-carving a spoon and he’d be telling stories, entertaining the men while the women went shopping. It worked perfectly.”
Before a spoon is complete, there are some finishing touches put on it. They burn their initials “SJ” into the spoon and then soak it in food grade oil to bring out the color of the wood.
Back of a classic wooden “granny spoon” made by Allegheny Treenware.
Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public BroadcastingDetail of engraving on the back of a wooden spoon made by Allegheny Treenware to indicate it is made of cherry wood. Initials “SJ” indicate the product was made by Sue and Stan Jennings.
Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
These spoons are much more than wooden utensils. They represent the sweat equity of one couple who has stayed true to their dreams, and each other, for over three decades.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
Every spring, violets bloom across Appalachia, a carpet of purple, white and yellow. These unassuming flowers do everything from spruce up a cocktail to fight cancer. Here are a few of the ways herbalists use them for food and medicine.
This story originally aired in the April 14, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Brandy McCann is a self-taught herbalist from Blacksburg, Virginia, who considers violets a personal gift. She was born in late April, when the flowers typically bloom.
It has always delighted McCann that she was born on Earth Day. When her mother went into the hospital, things were a bit dark and dreary, but when she emerged a week later, violets were in bloom.
“So that’s always been a very special thing to me, when I see the violets blooming, every spring around my birthday, I just feel like it’s such a gift from Mother Nature,” McCann says.
McCann enjoys reciprocating the gift of violets by using them to make presents for friends and family. In her sunny kitchen with a view of the flowers growing in her yard, she demonstrates how to make skin toner.
“I have a jar full of dried violets and I harvested them probably a couple of weeks ago. I let them air dry on a towel and put them in the jar,” McCann says. “And then I have here some jojoba oil, or you can use olive oil, any kind of carrier oil that’s good for the skin. And then I pour the oil and fill the jar, leaving just a tiny bit of headspace and then set a lid on it, and give her a good shake out every day.”
For a month or so, McCann says to keep the infused oil in a clean glass jar away from light, heat and dampness. Then strain out the plant material and keep the oil.
Brandy McCann makes skin toner from violets and jojoba oil. She has made gifts from violets for more than a decade.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
That’s one fun project people may want to try with violets, but there are many uses for these flowers. Nica Fraser studied at the Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. She teaches her daughters herbalism as part of their homeschool curriculum. One of their projects is making violet lavender sugar.
Tastes differ, but Fraser suggests one to two tablespoons of culinary dried lavender combined with two cups of sugar is a good base. To this you can add a fourth- to a half-cup or so of dried violets — leaf and flower, not roots. Start with less and add as you go, then blend the mixture until smooth. Taste, then add anything you think it needs more of.
A blender can be used to make violet sugar. A mortar and pestle will also work.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Learning with violets can be fun, and Fraser particularly likes that the violets add vitamins to the sugar all children love.
“I think per gram, you get about double the dose of vitamin C in a gram of a violet leaf than you do in a gram of an orange. They’re also rich in vitamin A, they’ve got great magnesium content, and they’ve even got calcium in them,” Fraser says.
Fraser’s youngest fills a flower bowl for processing back at the house. Fraser has taught her daughters to forage for spring violets, along with other edible flowers.
Photo Credit: Nica Fraser
That high vitamin content is also why Fraser likes to watch her daughters pick flowers during playtime — and consume them.
Of her oldest daughter, she says, “One of her favorite things to do is to know that she can just be walking outside playing, take a break, eat some flowers and keep going.”
Fraser learned to love foraging from her grandmother, who taught her as a child to hunt morels.
“She was actually the person who planted that seed in me, that you could find nourishment out in nature.”
It is a seed Fraser delights to see growing in her children as they forage on the family homestead in southeastern Ohio.
“I get to take my two daughters out into the woods, and I teach them what I know, and they are so very interested,” Fraser says. “They light up … they love taking this in and they retain it. They apply it, they ask questions, and it’s just really, really enjoyable to watch these little budding herbalists run around in the yard every day with their inquisitive minds.”
Those minds have retained a great deal of information, even at their tender ages. Fraser asks her kids whether they should eat violets that grow near poison ivy, and they come up with excellent information.
Violets are versatile and vibrant.
Photo Credit: Nica FraserFraser’s daughters head toward a favorite foraging spot. They have been learning about plants during home school lessons with their mother.
Photo Credit: Nica Fraser
“We definitely don’t want to pick it because it will put the oils on from the poison ivy,” the girls reply, more or less in chorus. They add not to pick near busy roads where car exhaust would saturate the petals and leaves, or in a barnyard pasture, because — poop.
Keeping all those caveats in mind, violets are still one of the safest flowers for new foragers because they’re so easy to identify.
Dr. Beth Shuler and a patient at Powell Valley Animal Hospital. Shuler studied herbal medicine for animals as a supplement to her licensed veterinary practice.
Photo Credit: Powell Valley Animal Hospital
Dr. Beth Shuler, a veterinarian who studied at Purple Moon Herbs and Studies, loves violets.
“They just make me smile. I like that they’re gentle, they’re easy to find,” Shuler says. “It’s so safe and easy to use that you can put it in your cocktail or your salad, but at the same time it’s very strong and powerful enough to help cure cancer.”
Shuler owns Powell Valley Animal Hospital in Big Stone Gap, Virginia, and often uses violets in her practice. She says they’re a good herb for breast care in dogs and people.
“Most of the dogs that we would use violets for are dealing with breast cancer, mammary cancer or mastitis,” Shuler says. “We would do a combination of oral treatment with a tincture.”
Violets are also a great cleanser for infected wounds. Shuler’s youngest dog, Sirrus, is about to get a special treat because Shuler wanted the flower power working inside of him. He had cut his foot on some ice, and it was a little bit swollen.
Or, as Shuler puts it, “he’s got mild lymphatic inflammation up in his axillary lymph node draining from that injured toe. So I’m placing some tincture, violet tincture in ethanol, on a corner of a piece of toast.”
Sirrus chows down. Shuler’s pleased by that, adding that giving dogs toast is not a common thing in her household, since bread is not good for dogs as part of a daily diet.
“But it does act as a very nice absorptive sponge for tinctures to go down easily. And less mess,”
Schuler explains that humans and dogs have multiple lymph nodes; think of them as internal trash cans trying to keep the garbage away. When people get sick, lymph nodes under our arms sometimes swell up and ache. But lymph nodes have no pump. Violets are excellent at breaking up and dispelling lymph from our bodies. Just another reason to love it, in Shuler’s opinion. But also a reason to treat it with respect and not eat too many of them at once.
“The violet is very powerful and easy to find. But again it is not a simple herb,” Shuler says.
In other words, don’t go eat a bunch of violets — or rub them on your dog’s feet — and expect either one of you to feel better right away. Shuler’s dog Sirrus got a few days of tincture toast.
Sirrus, the youngest of the Shuler/Tester family dogs, is happy to have eaten violet toast live on the radio. He had a mild cut that became inflamed, so Shuler treated him for a few days with violet tincture.
Photo Credit: Brandon Tester
“It’s not a one dose and done,” Shuler says. “These are built up in the body as repetitive use, it’s not an overnight fix.”
Literally safe enough for small children to swallow as a snack, violets can clean wounds, fight cancer or spruce up a gin and tonic. Violets are nothing if not versatile.
Violet gin fizzes are wonderful drinks. Shuler made two for drinking in her back garden, as a celebration of violet versatility.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public BroadcastingDr. Beth Shuler and her husband Dr. Brandon Tester both took classes held on the North Carolina coast from Purple Moon Herbs and Studies. She is a veterinarian; he is a chiropractor.
Photo Credit: Brandon Tester
For a fun list of things to do with violets, check out Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine. Remember, never try a new unidentified plant or medicine without first consulting an expert.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
In 17th century Europe, caned chairs were all the rage. You know the kind — a wooden frame with a seat woven onto it. Nowadays though, you don’t see many caned chairs around. That’s because cane doesn’t last forever. Eventually the material breaks down and needs to be replaced. Here at the Seeing Hand Association in Wheeling, West Virginia, folks are giving new life to these old chairs, and finding community along the way.
This story originally aired in the March 31, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Bianca Miller is standing eye level with a wooden chair that’s been placed on top of a table. Now, usually chairs go under the table and usually chairs are for sitting. But if you sat on this chair, you’d fall right through. The seat is gone.
Miller is weaving a new seat onto the chair’s empty wooden frame. She’s using a material called rush, which looks almost like a long, thick shoe string.
“Under, over, under, over,” she says to herself, weaving along in synchrony.
Hammer in hand, Miller secures a piece of rush along the seat’s perimeter.
“Let’s say a little prayer,” she says as she swings the hammer. “I like my fingers.”
Bianca Miller (left) and Debbie Hatfield are chair caners at the Seeing Hand Association in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Photo Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
In 17th century Europe, caned chairs were all the rage. You know the kind — a wooden frame with a seat woven onto it. The trend spread to Appalachia, where chairs were often woven with strips of hickory bark. Nowadays though, you don’t see many caned chairs around, except for maybe at your grandma’s house or the occasional garage sale. That’s because cane doesn’t last forever. Eventually the material breaks down and needs to be replaced. That means a lot of caned chairs end up in the trash. But here at the Seeing Hand Association in Wheeling, West Virginia, folks are giving new life to these old chairs, and finding community along the way.
The Seeing Hand Association in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Photo Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
As Miller weaves, she pulls at the rush to tighten it.
“Super duper tight, super duper tight. Make sure your fingers turn the darkest red they can possibly turn. And if you lose the first few layers of skin, it’s okay, because that means you’re doing the best thing you can,” Miller says. “It’s all for the chair.”
Miller canes by memory, touch and whatever level of vision she has that day.
“With my disease, I never know if I’m going to wake up with vision or not,” she says. “Today I have floaters and flashes and it’s a little bit cloudy, almost as if you’re looking through a lava lamp. You just never know what to expect.”
In 2020, Miller was diagnosed with an inflammatory eye disease called Uveitis. In the process of getting treatment, she ended up going totally blind for 10 months. Eventually she did regain some vision, but it’s unpredictable.
Although Miller’s sight isn’t guaranteed day to day, it’s not really necessary to do this job — and to do it well. In fact, everyone in this workshop has limited visual ability.
Seeing Hand is a nonprofit that provides employment and specialized services for folks that are blind or visually impaired. Employees are trained in skills like refurbishing fire extinguishers, making and restoring mops, and caning chairs.
“The fire extinguishers, the chairs, the mops, the brooms, it all makes sure we have a job,” Miller says. “It’s job security.”
Miller came to Seeing Hand about two years ago.
“I kind of forgot about this place until my mother had reminded me that my grandfather was here,” she says. “He had went blind all of a sudden in his early thirties, which is when I went blind.”
It’s been years since Miller’s grandfather worked here, but Seeing Hand is still around — marking nearly a century of providing services and support in the community.
Mike Cunningham joined Seeing Hand last year. He works three days a week at the workshop. It’s the first job he’s had since 2012.
Employees restore caned chairs at the Seeing Hand workshop in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Photo Credit: Employees restore caned chairs at the Seeing Hand workshop in Wheeling, West Virginia.
“Before this job, my activities outside of the house were 45 minutes to the grocery store, and that was it,” Cunningham says. “Basically, I was stuck in the house for ten years.”
Cunningham is totally blind in his left eye. The vision in his right eye is slightly better, but not great.
“I split my eye on my bedside table in 2012. And when they sewed it up, the scar goes right down the center of my vision,” he says. “So I have zero straight lines. Every straight line is curved. So it’s more of a distortion than it is blindness. It’s a definite impairment.”
The frame of a wooden chair that is ready to be recaned.
Photo Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Cunningham is nearly done with the chair he’s working on. He’s using cane, a material that’s thinner and more delicate than rush. Following an intricate pattern, he carefully threads a strip of cane under, over, under, over. He says this has been his hardest chair yet.
“Sometimes you talk to the chair,” he says with a chuckle. “If it’s not going very easy, you don’t say very nice things.”
Cunningham’s work table is right across from Jeannine Schmitt. Now 82, Schmitt learned to cane chairs over 40 years ago, before experiencing vision loss. These days, she largely relies on muscle memory.
“You almost can feel if it’s right after a while,” she says. “It’s like second nature. Your fingers are on automatic.”
Jeannine Schmitt weaves a new seat onto an old hand caned chair.
Photo Credit: Clara Haizlett/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The chair she’s working on is probably 100 years old, she says. Once repaired, the chair will have a new life ahead of it. But not all caned chairs are so lucky, especially as the skills needed to repair caned chairs become less and less common.
Miller points out a row of chairs that are patiently waiting their turn to undergo chair surgery. There’s an old rocker, covered in dust. There’s one with a fist sized hole right through the cane.
“I love the dirty and ugly… or I wouldn’t say ugly — unique,” Miller says. “It’s actually beautiful. And we get to work on these. You know how old these chairs are?”
Most chairs here are brought in by customers from around the Ohio Valley but the chairs themselves come from all over.
“Some of them are stamped Italy or Germany, and some of them are stamped like Indiana or New York,” Miller says. “And you wonder how did this even come about? My brain can go on forever about it and it’s just a chair, for gosh sakes!”
When Miller started working at Seeing Hand, she was struggling to adapt to her vision impairment.
“I was depressed. I gained a lot of weight. I was on a lot of meds,” she says. “Some days I’d come here and just cry, like I shouldn’t have even came.”
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But in time, things started to change.
“Then you meet these people and you hear all their stories and you see what they’ve had to overcome and that they smile and they laugh every day,” she says. “It got me out of my funk. It brought my confidence back.”
Schmitt says her fellow employees are like “brothers and sisters.”
“Most people really have no idea of what certain things can do to you when you’re vision impaired,” Schmitt says. “It’s nice to have people, that if you explain to them, they know what you mean. This is my second home, let’s put it like that.”
Schmitt and Cunningham are nearly finished with their chairs. When they’re done, the chairs will be sent downstairs, to join the ranks of the other finished chairs, all freshly stained and tightly caned. And in a few weeks, Miller’s chair will be done, too — repaired and ready for another 100 years.
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Production assistance for this story was provided by Ella Jennings.
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
Here’s a story about a unicorn. Well, it’s really a story about an artist in Appalachia who lost her mojo. And it’s about the woman who helped her get her mojo back. With the help of the unicorn.
This story originally aired in the March 24, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Once upon a time there was a girl named Ashley Nollen, who loved unicorns. In her own words, “I have been a unicorn fanatic since I was a little girl. My favorite movie in the world growing up was The Last Unicorn and I really feel like unicorns, for me, symbolize hope.”
Growing up in northern Virginia, Nollen went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival every year with her family, but they couldn’t afford to buy things there. So she made an internal vow.
“I’m going to grow up and become an adult and have adult money and spend it here.”
Her vow didn’t take long to fulfill. At age 17, Nollen landed her dream job: working in a bookstore. When her first paycheck arrived, she set it aside. Now she had cash, she knew exactly where she would spend it: at the renaissance festival.
Nollen circled the entire event twice before choosing a blue speckled mug with a braided handle. The man who sold her the mug was a jouster named (fittingly enough) Lance. Lance told Nollen to not stir inside the mug with a spoon and that it was dishwasher safe, but not to let it straddle a pin when going through the dishwasher.
Nollen loved the mug. “It had a little unicorn in it that was sitting in it looking up and it had crossed legs and cloven hoofs and such detailed hair in its mane. It was unique.”
She took good care of it, and the mug accompanied her to college a couple of years later. Her junior year, Nollen acquired a roommate, a nice guy who did dishes. One day he put the unicorn mug in the dishwasher. Over a pin.
“I didn’t know, or maybe I could have saved it,” Nollen recalled. “And when I pulled it out, the whole thing just kind of broke apart into pieces and flew across my kitchen.”
Her roommate promised to replace the mug next year. But when they got back to the festival, the shop was gone. Nollen could remember its location within the event, but not the name. She began asking vendors about “the place that sold mugs.” (If you’ve never been to a renaissance festival or faire, a lot of places sell mugs.)
Nollen, who enjoys role-playing games (RPG), had to laugh as she recalled that day. It became something of a live RPG.
“This turned into like a real-life quest where each little vendor or shop I went to … you would talk to them and they would each give you, like, a little piece of the story.”
Since Nollen didn’t know that Lance had only sold her the mug, not made it, she was actually asking the wrong question without being aware of that: did anyone know how she could find Lance? And people kept telling her he had gone north, or south, or been in a joust gone bad and died.
“There were several reports of his demise,” Nollen said.
Meanwhile, the person who had actually made Nollen’s mug was alive and well in Lancaster, Ohio. Her name was (and still is) Anj Campbell. Like Lance, she is not dead.
Campbell first took up making mugs, as a hobby in Dayton, Ohio, back in 1982.
“I was a quiet and well-behaved suburban housewife,” Campbell said. “And the city of Dayton Parks and Recreation Department had an absolutely wonderful fine art and crafts center with incredibly reasonable pricing. It was the Riverbend Art Center. It was in an old Quonset hut down on the river in downtown Dayton. And they offered pottery.”
She tried several classes, but when she got to pottery, it just clamped a hold of her and never let go.
“It took over my life,” Campbell said. Campbell fell in love with the sound of the wheel and the feel of the clay.
“When everything sings, and you get the clay centered, and it’s not fighting you, and you’re literally listening to the clay with your hands, you can do it with your eyes shut. And everything just flows together. And it’s a wonderful, fluid, almost meditative tactile experience. And it just makes my heart happy. When I hit that zone, when everything flows. It’s like a prayer. That is the point at which work is prayer. And everything you are and everything you have experienced ends up in that clay somehow, some way.”
While Campbell was falling in love with the clay, people were falling in love with Campbell’s work. She took third place in the Riverbend Art Show with a mask she made. People began noticing her talent. A local artist approached. Did Campbell want to join him selling mugs on the renaissance faire circuit? Campbell wanted to, but she knew her work would have to stand out in a literal crowded field.
“So I started including drinking companions. Yes, drinking companions, because everybody and his brother will make a mug. But mine come with someone you can talk to who will never ever ask you for money.”
The little unicorn that captured Nollen’s heart was part of a long parade of mythical mug-dwelling creatures.
Campbell began describing creatures she’d fashioned. “So there are dragons, some of whom are grumpy, some of whom are pleasant, some of whom are downright curious as to why you’re drinking their bathwater. There are unicorns there are Pegasus, or Pegasi, if that is the correct Greek plural, mermaids, fairies, fawns, anything that people can think of ends up in a mug. Someone else wanted a pig so she ended up getting a pig with wings. That way, you will always have someone to drink with you and you will never spend the morning alone.”
Assorted drinking companions.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Faire-goers loved the whimsical practicality of Campbell’s work; her mugs flew off the shelves. Campbell’s husband pointed something out to her.
“He said I could make at least as much money making and selling pottery as I was making at a retail job. And he was right.”
Campbell began circuit riding to renaissance faires around the country. Occasionally, she got to put on medieval garb and an Irish accent to banter with customers, but usually she was backstage somewhere working the clay.
“It was a case of literally hauling the wheel and the kiln around with us so that when I was based somewhere, I would have the opportunity to work,” Campbell said.
Sales were great — until the 1990s recession hit. As sales slowly dried up, Campbell and her husband divorced, and she made another difficult decision.
“The pottery just wasn’t going to be making enough money to allow me to continue to depend on that as my sole income,” Campbell said. “So given a choice between continuing to live indoors and enjoy the immense pleasure of running water, and heat and light. I stopped pottering full-time and started working again.”
Nollen — the high school student who spent her own money to buy her own unicorn mug — didn’t know it, but she bought it around the last year Campbell sent her wares to the Maryland Renaissance Festival.
Campbell moved to Lancaster, Ohio — without husband or kiln. And soon pottery became part of her past life.
She worked in the photo lab at Walmart, worked in the pharmacy at Walmart, worked as an alcohol and substance abuse addictions counselor. Then she was offered her current position of leasing agent, at an apartment complex in Lancaster, Ohio.
“It seemed I never had enough time or energy simultaneously, to go and get the shop set up and make the trip out there to continue to try to work on the pottery,” Campbell said. “So up until a couple of years ago, I wasn’t pottering anymore. I was just working. But then something very strange happened.”
COVID-19 hit. The renaissance faire and festival community set up a Facebook page so artists could sell their creations online during the lockdowns. That’s how Nollen, now living in Virginia with a husband and two children, figured she could finally replace her beloved unicorn.
“All of a sudden I had access to vendors that were all across the country,” Nollen said. “I put out the request, I described the mug.”
Soon the owner of the shop where Campbell had sold her mugs was tagged. He gave Nollen Campbell’s name and told her she was on Facebook.
“I found two people with that name. One had a picture of a cat and I just figured that had to be her,” Nollen said.
Campbell recalled the Facebook message. “I got contacted out of the blue by an absolutely delightful young lady named Ashley Nollen, who explained to me that she had been trying for more than 10 years to find me.”
“And she just couldn’t believe that I’d been looking for her for a decade,” Nollen said.
Nollen’s search had made Campbell famous in the online festival and faire community. People who owned one of Campbell’s mugs were proudly posting photos and turning down offers doubling the original purchase price. People who didn’t have one were demanding details on how to place an order.
Nollen put it well. She said that Campbell “had to go on her own journey and her own quest.”
Campbell sat a few months with the news that someone had been looking for her that hard, that long, wanting what she had made that much. Her kiln was in a faraway outbuilding at a friend’s farm in rural New York, covered with dust and a tarp. She had no idea where her clay mojo was. But she liked Nollen. And she remembered the times the clay sang in her hands.
Campbell and her son made a winter’s journey together. “And I got my stuff from my friend who had been keeping everything stored in her barn,” Campbell said. They hauled the kiln several hundred miles to Lancaster, Ohio.
Campbell fired off a series of unicorn mugs. She also shaped dragons, cats, hedgehogs and myriad other drinking companions for the community clamoring for her work. But Campbell made sure the first unicorns went to the Nollen family.
The package arrived the day before the mail stopped running for Christmas. Campbell had included a few extra surprises. There were nine mugs in the package.
The bunny mug with its inspiration.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Nollen had told Campbell about her children: her son Jerome’s passion for red, her daughter Cordelia’s favorite book Honey Bunny. Campbell sent a child-sized mug holding a cheerful waving bunny. Plus, a small unicorn mug (Cordelia was three at the time.). There were also two mugs for Jerome, one housing a red dragon, and a red mug housing a green dragon.
“It was fabulous. It was Christmas before Christmas,” Nollen said. “And in the nature of children everywhere, my son wanted my daughter’s unicorns and she wanted his dragons. Nothing unusual there.”
Nollen paused. “You know, just having her having her create again, it felt amazing to be part of that journey and part of her journey, too.” Then she grinned. “I mean, my baby’s gonna need a mug.”
Oberon, the son who joined Nollen’s family in 2023, will be getting his own mug soon. “We figure on starting him with a unicorn,” Nollen said. Nollen’s husband also suffered dragon envy. Originally, he told Nollen just to get mugs for the children, but when he saw the special personalized creations of the bunny, dragons and unicorns, he felt a little left out. This will be rectified with the next order, Nollen said.
Campbell and her kiln still live in Lancaster. Five days a week she works in an office helping people rent apartments, and on the sixth day, she creates things. Campbell no longer depends on pottery for her living, which means she can experiment with designs.
“I can drag out those notebooks from 40 years ago, when my husband would look at a sketch I’d come up with and say, ‘You can’t do that. Nah. You’ll never sell it for the price it will be worth, and it’ll take up too much of your time.’ Forget that,” Campbell said. “So, yes, I still have all those notebooks from 40 years ago. And yes, now I’m getting to play with those things.”
“Artists need community,” Nollen said. “They can get too much up in themselves. They need to be appreciated. [Campbell] didn’t realize how much her art could mean to someone else … And I’m just so glad she came back to it.”
Nollen is a creative writer and avid book reviewer. She keeps her new unicorn mug by her side when writing. “It gives me writing mojo … We have to appreciate each other, so we all keep making stuff.”
Ashley Nollen holding two of the mugs Anj Campbell sent.
Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Potter Anj Campbell modeling an All Souls shawl.
Photo Courtesy of Anj Campbell
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
In walked Travis Stimeling. Burly and ebullient, Stimeling grew up playing guitar in church as a child in Buckhannon, West Virginia, then went on to study trombone in college. That eventually led to a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a teaching gig at Millikin University in Illinois.
This story originally aired in the March 10, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Sophia Enriquez didn’t know it at the time, but one music history class in her freshman year of college would change the entire direction of her life.
It was 2013, and the music department at West Virginia University (WVU) was looking to hire another professor. As part of the interview process, the university wanted finalists for the position to teach a sample lecture. A “job talk” in academia lingo.
“I was in the guinea pig class that they gave their job talk to,” Enriquez said.
In walked Travis Stimeling. Burly and ebullient, Stimeling grew up playing guitar in church as a child in Buckhannon, West Virginia, then went on to study trombone in college. That eventually led to a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a teaching gig at Millikin University in Illinois.
Now Stimeling was looking to come back home.
“They gave a job talk for music history class and talked about country music and Taylor Swift. And that had everyone so excited,” Enriquez said. “So that’s how I met Travis.”
Stimeling, whose pronouns were they/them, got the job. It was the beginning of what would be an extremely fruitful period, both for Stimeling and WVU’s music program.
Over the next decade, Stimeling established Appalachian music and Appalachian studies minors at the university. They published reams of articles and a shelf full of books. That includes co-authoring the autobiography of legendary session musician Charlie McCoy, and compiling a book of interviews with modern West Virginia songwriters.
Nashville Cats, one of Stimeling’s many books, is about the backing musicians who made Nashville into “Music City.”
Photo Credit: Zack Harold/ West Virginia Public Broadcasting
All these books and articles established Stimeling as a leading scholar in the study of traditional Appalachian music. But Stimeling wasn’t only a scholar — they were a musician, too. So they founded the WVU Bluegrass and Old-Time Band in addition to their academic pursuits.
Enriquez joined the band in her junior year. She originally came to WVU to study orchestral trumpet, but caught the bluegrass bug from some friends.
“I just walked right into Travis’s office one day and said ‘I think I want to do this,’” she said. “They said ‘OK, well sing me something.’”
Enriquez didn’t really consider herself a singer. But soon she was belting out the old Flatt and Scruggs tune “Rollin’ in My Sweet Baby’s Arms” with Stimeling backing her up on flat top guitar.
“So then they’re like, ‘OK you’re in,’” she said.
But Stimeling didn’t just help Enqiruez find her voice onstage. When she was nearing the end of her undergrad, she was unsure what to do next. One day, Stimeling sat her down and laid out the options.
“They said ‘I don’t think you’d realize you’d be really great at doing what I do,’” Enriquez said.
Enriquez went on to earn a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology. On the day she received her doctorate, she received a voicemail from Stimeling.
“Dr. Enriquez, this is Dr. Stimeling, calling on important doctor business,” they said. “But really, congratulations. I’m just so dang proud of you, so I thought I’d call and wish it to you directly. Looking forward to celebrating with you the next time we’re together. Talk to you soon. Bye.”
Enriquez said Stimeling referred to themselves as her “academic papa.”
“I know they played that role for a lot of other people. A lot of my close friends, we were all mentees of Travis’ at some point,” she said.
Another of Stimeling’s many academic offspring was Mary Linscheid.
Linscheid grew up in Morgantown, West Virginia, the child of two classical musicians. She began studying classical violin at the age of five. But she fell in love with old-time and bluegrass music as a tween.
In eighth grade, Linscheid made a fateful trip to WVU’s Mountainlair Student Union to see the university’s bluegrass band perform.
“So I graduated high school and applied to WVU — that’s the only school I applied for because I knew I didn’t want to leave,” she said. “I wanted to be in the bluegrass band. That was one of my top reasons for going.”
Stimeling, second from right, and the WVU Bluegrass and Old-Time Band pose with WVU President Gordon Gee, center.
Photo Courtesy of Mary Linscheid
Linscheid ended up in Stimeling’s Appalachian music and Appalachian studies minors, and she joined the bluegrass band. And like Enriquez, it was in that band that Linscheid found her voice.
“Travis actually got me singing. Before college I would never sing, especially in public. I went to church and everything, and I lip-sang,” she said. “But Travis was like, ‘If you’re going to be in the bluegrass band, everybody has to sing.’”
Linscheid started writing songs, compiling enough to record her debut album, A Place to Grow Old, in 2022. Stimeling produced that project and played and sang backup on several tracks.
“Travis was always my first listener. My first reader of anything,” Linscheid said.
Stimeling and Linscheid performing together.
Photo Courtesy of Mary Linscheid
The two became close friends and bandmates outside the university. They first performed together in a square dance group. Recently, Linscheid and Stimeling had started playing gigs as a duo. They had their first big performance last summer, at Jerry Run Summer Theater in Webster County.
“Travis just seemed like they were finally free in their music and ready to take off with that and go in a whole different direction with their life,” Linscheid said. “They were really excited about this next phase of their life.”
Stimeling and Linscheid were set to go into the studio to record a duet album but ended up postponing the session at the last minute. Then, just a week later, Stimeling was gone. They died unexpectedly in their home on Nov. 14, 2023.
Now, instead of recording an album, Linscheid was left to organize a memorial service. She knew she would need to include Ginny Hawker on the set list. Hawker is an expert in the old-time Primitive Baptist style of singing, so Linscheid asked her to lead the crowd in “Amazing Grace” — sung in the call-and-response style of the Primitive Baptists.
Hawker doesn’t remember exactly how she and Stimeling became friends.
“Our paths keep crossing,” she said.
Ginny Hawker (left) and Mary Linscheid sing from the Primitive Baptist hymnbook in Hawker’s Elkins, West Virginia home.
Photo Credit: Jennie Williams/West Virginia Folklife Program
Stimeling became fascinated by Hawker’s style of singing and the two were beginning a formal apprenticeship.
“I think we were going, Dec. 10. We were supposed to go to a Primitive Baptist church in Clay County and just listen,” Hawker said.
As they dove into the repertoire of the Primitive Baptist church, Hawker and Stimeling came to make a vow. Whichever of them died first, the other would sing the hymn “Dear Friends Farewell” at the other’s funeral.
Hawker didn’t think about her promise as Linscheid was preparing the setlist for the memorial service. She never imagined she would have to keep her end of the bargain. She assumed it would be Stimeling, singing at her funeral.
But as she sat there, listening as the WVU Bluegrass Band finish up their set with songs like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and other classic country songs Stimeling loved — Hawker remembered.
She climbed back onstage, stepped up to the mic and kept her promise to her friend:
“Dear friends, farewell, I do you tell, Since you and I must part; I go away and here you stay, But still we’re joined in heart.”
——
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
On a foggy morning, Angela Wynn heads into the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. Normally, she’d be starting a day of work as a housekeeper here. But today, she’s at the school for a different reason. She’s here to learn how to cut out wood blanks from Richard Carter, a longtime Brasstown Carver.
This story originally aired in the March 3, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
On a foggy morning, Angela Wynn heads into the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina. Normally, she’d be starting a day of work as a housekeeper here. But today, she’s at the school for a different reason. She’s here to learn how to cut out wood blanks from Richard Carter, a longtime Brasstown Carver.
The Brasstown Carvers were once so celebrated that in the 1930s, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt purchased some of their carvings as state gifts. Today, only a handful of Brasstown Carvers remain. But a dedicated teacher, an enthusiastic student and a supportive community are helping to keep this local craft tradition alive.
Wynn pays close attention as Carter flips through a binder of photos, diagrams and instructions. Using this pattern book as a guide, they’ll use a bandsaw to cut out wood shapes to carve into animal figurines.
Finished and in-progress carvings sit in front of a box of wood “blanks” or “patterns.” Carter is responsible for cutting out all the blanks for the Brasstown Carvers. The carvers then carve, sand, buff, finish and detail each figurine to arrive at the final product.
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Wynn began learning to carve about a year and a half ago, after moving to Brasstown from Florida. She had tried different crafts before, but this just felt different.
“I was instantly hooked,” Wynn says.
Well, almost instantly.
“The first carving night, I absolutely was clueless and I didn’t even know where to start,” she says. “I could see what I wanted to do, I just didn’t have the nerve to do it.”
Then, Wynn got some help from Carter.
“He was very generous with his praise on my first carving,” she says. “I look at it now and … it’s pretty sad. It was a squirrel. I still have it. I laugh at it now.”
There’s a long tradition of whittling and woodcarving in Brasstown, but being an official Brasstown Carver is a special honor.
“People want to know, ‘How quick can I get to be a Brasstown Carver?’” Carter says. “And it’s not quick.”
Big Carving Dreams? Start With Tiny Beavers
Some of the Brasstown Carvers’ signature carvings are “least ones” — tiny animal carvings that stand under two inches tall. Carving small is hard, which is why “least ones” are on the list of carvings that aspiring Brasstown Carvers must master. Wynn carved this pig and “gossiping goose,” two classic Brasstown animal patterns.
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Now 73, Carter grew up near the Folk School and has been a Brasstown Carver for almost 50 years. He says each aspiring Brasstown Carver has to complete a checklist of challenges to prove their skill and consistency. One of those challenges is carving “least ones” — tiny animal carvings that stand under two inches tall.
Carter and Wynn compare “least one” beavers. Carving side by side allows Carter to give Wynn feedback and demonstrate techniques in real time. It also encourages ample chit chat — another time-honored woodcarving tradition.
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Wynn has already successfully produced a “least one” goat, bear, goose and pig, among others. Today, she and Carter are carving tiny beavers out of basswood. As they work, Carter shows Wynn some shortcuts and tricks.
Wynn says she’s learned a lot from carving — including patience.
That’s something I can relate to on a personal level. I used to work at the Folk School, and I attended the carving nights that the Brasstown Carvers hold every week. I loved chatting with my neighbors while my hands were busy, but it was hard for me to see anything in the wood. I usually felt like I was getting nowhere.
But Carter says Wynn showed promise from her very first carving night.
“We watch people in here and we can tell when they’re going to be able to do real well and she does real good,” Carter says.
Being able to visualize the animal that a block of wood “wants” to become is key — and it’s one of Wynn’s favorite parts of carving.
“For me, the joy is just finding the animal in there and making it my own,” she says. “It’s just like a little surprise every time.”
Carter agrees.
“I know one of my great friends, he was here a month ago,” he says. “He took a bird home with him. And he brought it back last week and it was a little gnome.”
Although Brasstown Carvers all work from the same patterns, Wynn has enjoyed seeing her own personal style emerge as her carving skills have progressed. She has also developed her own original carving patterns, such as these walnut-shell hedgehogs on display at the John C. Campbell Folk School’s craft shop.
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Carvings Fit For A Future Queen
Brasstown Carvers Sally and Clarence Fleming carve on the porch of their house in Brasstown, North Carolina, circa 1935. Sally was known for carving pigs with curly tails. Brasstown Carvers hailed from around the region, including the nearby communities of Warne, Gum Log, Pine Log and Martins Creek.
The Brasstown Carvers were started by Olive Dame Campbell in the mid-1920s, a few years after she co-founded the John C. Campbell Folk School. The carvers were encouraged to carve what they saw — typically animals — and they became famous for their realistic figures. According to Caroline Baxter, the Folk School’s craft shop manager, the Brasstown Carvers program was part of Campbell’s larger vision of an economic future for Appalachians that didn’t require moving away from home.
“One of [Campbell’s] goals was to provide economic development for the carvers, give them a way to make money in the season where their fields were not being worked and they kind of had downtime,” Baxter says.
For many Brasstown Carvers, the earnings that they received from carving served as an important source of supplemental income. To express their gratitude, in 1947, the Brasstown Carvers organized a letter-writing campaign to Murrial “Murray” Martin, who was the carving instructor of the John C. Campbell Folk School from 1935 to 1973. In 2024, revenue from selling carvings is still a meaningful source of “side money” for Brasstown Carvers, although the money doesn’t stretch as far as it did in the 30s, 40s and 50s. The letters also mention other benefits of carving such as friendship, community, a meaningful and productive artistic hobby – which remain important to Brasstown Carvers today.
Photo Credit: Doris M. Reece/Courtesy Western Carolina University, John C. Campbell Folk School Records
The Brasstown Carvers soon began selling their work in shops across the country. By the 1930s, says Travis Souther, the Folk School’s archivist, Brasstown Carver fame had reached the White House.
“Some of those woodcarvings were purchased by [President Franklin D. Roosevelt] and Mrs. Roosevelt,” Souther says. “They were later given as gifts to a young lady who was living in England at the time.”
The young lady? Future Queen Elizabeth II.
There’s a legend in Brasstown about a family that was able to purchase a house during the Great Depression with the money they earned from carving alone. For today’s Brasstown Carvers, carving is still a meaningful source of extra income, but the earnings don’t stretch as far as they did during the carvers’ heyday. For one thing, carving requires immense hand strength and physical stamina, and many of the carvers now are in their 70s and 80s. For Wynn and Carter, carving is also something they fit in between other jobs and home and family responsibilities.
“It’s only side money now,” Wynn says. “I would love to be able to carve full-time, but I’m not to that point.”
A New Generation Of Carvers
These days, Wynn is more than just a student of Carter’s. At age 53, she’s the newest official member of the Brasstown Carvers, representing a new generation. To support her continued training, the North Carolina Arts Council recently awarded Carter and Wynn a folklife apprenticeship grant. Wynn says she looks forward to passing on what she learns to the nextgeneration of Brasstown Carvers.
On Thursday nights, the Brasstown Carvers host their free weekly carving night at the Folk School. It’s a place for experienced carvers to spend time together and talk shop.
A collection of Wynn’s “least ones” carvings at different stages in the carving process. From left to right: a wood blank of a goat; a carved and sanded bear; a finished pig and “gossiping goose.”
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public BroadcastingEvery Thursday night, Brasstown Carvers, Folk School students and staff, and Brasstown locals of all ages gather for the Folk School’s community carving night. Attendees get to know each other as they try their hand at a new or long-loved craft.
Photo Credit: Stefani Priskos/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
It’s also a place for newcomers to try out carving. Carter and Wynn especially want to encourage young people to come.
“We got a young one, a nine-year-old, coming tonight, so hopefully he’s excited to get into this,” Carter says. “I’ve got a six-year-old at home that wants to do it, but I’m trying to hold out on that for a while. I may give him a bar of soap and something to let him work on.”
As the newest Brasstown Carver, Wynn has some advice for beginners:
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be intimidated,” she says. “Just give it a shot. You never know what you can do until you try it.”
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.
