Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 25, 1994 TAG: 9411080055
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Since moving to the Roanoke City Market in June, they haven't had that problem. What they have is a promising future in a prominent spot in a commercial section that offers crafts of many kinds, from pottery at Emerson Creek to steel furniture at Twist & Turns to imported and designer crafts at other galleries and boutiques.
With 4,000 square feet in their Blue Ridge Crafters' Emporium on Campbell Avenue, Baldwin and Booher have plenty of room for inventory. They and the other members of their nine-member jury have approved displays by 85 crafters, who rent space at $40 to $200 per month and pay 10 percent on their sales to the store owners.
The business is beginning to pay for itself, they say. Perhaps surprisingly, ``Fifty percent of the sales have been to people bringing relatives to the market area to visit,'' Baldwin says.
``If someone said to me, `Name me the number-one thing that will draw tourists,' I'd say, `Develop a crafts business over almost anything else,''' says Pamela Sears, executive director of the Southern Highland Handicraft Guild in Asheville, N.C.
Cynthia Cassell knows what she means. Sixty-five percent of the furniture she and her family sell at Twist & Turns on the City Market goes outside the area to tourists and relatives of Roanokers. The pieces range from steel tables and chairs to sleigh beds and pool furniture, an artistic expression that grew out of her husband's experience in the steel business.
Convinced of its wide appeal, she and her husband will open a shop on Cary Street in Richmond on Oct. 1, and plan other shops for Alexandria, Raleigh, Charlotte and Nashville.
Crafts are a quiet but expanding business built on highly individual merchandise sold at a variety of outlets. The Roanoke region is covered in crafts, though you might not realize it. Two big crafts fairs are held on the Virginia Tech campus each year; area malls invite crafters in to sell to their legions of shoppers; the Roanoke Civic Center is host to a pre-Christmas craft show; the Virginia Mountain Crafts Guild puts on three events per year, and seemingly every festival, from folklife to pancake, has handmade items on sale.
Whether it's as utilitarian as a potholder or as pretty as a hand-painted blouse, a craft is something you won't find in every retail outlet across the land. And that's a large part of its appeal.
For many crafters, self-expression is the key - that, and the freedom to work whenever they want to.
``This is a retirement hobby,'' says Malcolm Black, who lives in Floyd County and makes and sells ceramic bells on which he paints wildflowers. ``I work at my own speed, and I don't worry about how long it takes or how much time I might be wasting.''
His bells range in size from 1.5 inches to 10 inches tall and in price from $3.75 to as much as $35. A retired high school art teacher from Indiana, he developed the decorative objects on his own. He makes the molds, pours the liquid clay and does the painting, the glazing and the sealing. He figures each bell gets handled 25 times before it's finished.
He sells the bells at a handful of craft fairs in the area, by mail order, at a local shop or two and through a chain of gift shops on the East Coast. Fairs are his least favorite outlet.
``To me, it's boring to sit three or four days at a fair not being able to produce,'' he says. ``I'm not an outgoing person.''
Herman Lowe of Salem is just the opposite. Retired for 10 years from the Virginia Department of Transportation, he's a woodworker who sells a lot of small furniture for the American Girl Collection of dolls, among other things.
``I love to meet people and talk,'' he says. He and his wife, Norce, take in some 20 craft shows per year, and he has his products in shops in Chase City as well as in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
He, too, ships by mail. At times, he spends up to 40 hours per week in his shop, building his inventory.
Ken Hamblin of Salem keeps his involvement low-key. The maker of dulcimers, banjos and other instruments crafts walnut, cherry and other woods into his inviting products. Prices start at $185. He figures his interest in wood goes back to his grandfather, who was a coffin maker, and his father, who was a carpenter. He sells at a few fairs, but not many.
Retired from Hercules Inc. at Radford, he has other interests, including playing with the musical group the Home Folks at the Homeplace Restaurant in Catawba every other Saturday night. The instrument-making business ranges from a pleasure to a struggle, depending on the circumstances.
``If my inventory is low and people start bothering me about something else, then it bothers me,'' he says. ``I have the strength to just turn 'em off and say, `I've got other things to do.'''
Marge Anderson of Roanoke says her painted furniture, popular in the north, is an outgrowth of her interest in antiques and experience in marbleizing and other decorating techniques.
``I call myself the ultimate recycler,'' she says. Depression furniture from the 1920s and '30s is popular with her customers, but she has been around enough to know that crafts run in phases, like everything else. ``I think you really have to keep up with it,'' she says. You need ``an eye for not just what's popular now, but a feel for what's going to be.''
Elizabeth Watkins, a 38-year-old Roanoker, says her entry into crafts has been recent. A self-taught painter, she has issued notecards with Civil War scenes and another series of old Roanoke landmarks. Her main interest is in art, but she also makes jewelry and stained glass.
``I do the jewelry so I can afford to do the stained glass,'' she says. ``Jewelry is fun, like therapy. ... The stained glass I have to do alone because there's flying glass and molten lead and toxic fumes. ... Every time I'm in the middle of it, I go, `Why am I doing this?' The satisfaction is different from anything else you can do.''
Her big fear is that her reputation as an artist, if she develops one, will suffer because of her involvement in crafts.
Roddy Moore, the director of the Blue Ridge Institute at Ferrum College, thinks the definition of crafts ought to be broader than it is. He would expand it to include carpentry, car customizing and cooking. They, too, require fine skills.
``What was a craft in the 18th and 19th century is what we think of as an everyday job,'' he says.
He is concerned that many of the old-time crafts might be disappearing, because the market for them has shrunk.
``Even in crafts you have fads and phases,'' he says. And sometimes, original crafts are co-opted by the commercial world. The American Country style of furniture has hurt some crafters. Quilts from China undercut the prices of American quilts.
Moore organizes the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival every October. He has found that many old-time crafts still exist, but go unpublicized. People produce items at home, the way their parents and grandparents did.
That not only keeps the the spirit of crafts alive, but also their history and our region's identity.
You can find two or three styles of basketmaking in Franklin County, Moore says, and two or three others in Floyd and still others in Botetourt. Cabinetmakers, gunships and other crafters have distinctive styles as well.
``A lot of these things, if you don't know to ask, people don't tell you,'' he says. ``Some things are getting harder to find, and some are passing away.''
by CNB