The focus of the exhibit is furniture handmade in Western North Carolina during the 1800s and early 1900s. “Plain-style furniture personifies the values of a 19th-century farming community more interested in function than finery,” said Scott Philyaw, museum director. “The plain-style furniture and architecture represent the embodiment of a Protestant European aesthetic as interpreted in the native wood of the Southern Appalachian forests.”

Guest curator Steve Lott, working with a group of generous collectors, gathered a significant number of furniture pieces never displayed publicly, Philyaw said. Among those items are several “Highway 10” painted cupboards, whose maker remains unidentified, but is a popular topic of discussion among serious antique collectors; a collection of children’s furniture; African-American-made furniture; and pieces created by Jesse Bryson Stalcup, a Macon County master carpenter and Baptist preacher.

The exhibit will remain on display at the Mountain Heritage Center through December 15. Several public events will be held on conjunction with the exhibit, and the museum staff is working on a catalog to document the pieces and serve as a resource guide for others seeking information about plain-style furniture.

The exhibit’s opening coincided with a symposium, “19th-Century Plain-Style Furniture,” that was co-hosted by the Mountain Heritage Center and the Cashiers Historical Society in late May. The museum, historical society and The Bascom art gallery of Highlands joined together to present the symposium, introduced participants to “the multiple and sometimes complex qualities” that make up plain-style furniture, Philyaw said.

Symposium speakers included Don Williams, senior furniture conservator for the Smithsonian Institute; June Lucas, director of research for the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts; Brian Coe, director of buildings and exhibitions at the Old Salem Museums and Gardens; Ken Farmer, a guest expert on the popular PBS series “Antiques Roadshow;” Joe Rhinehart, lead organizer for Shaker furniture at the John Campbell Folk School in Brasstown; and Jane Nardy, historian with the Cashiers Historical Society.

The Mountain Heritage Center is open free to the public on the ground floor of WCU’s H.F. Robinson Administration Building. Visiting hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday year-round, and the museum also is open on Sundays from 2 to 5 p.m. June through October.

For more information about the exhibit, contact the Mountain Heritage Center at (828) 227-7129 or visit its Web site.

Maintained by the Office of Public Relations
Last Modified: Tuesday, June 10, 2008