Olive Dame Campbell, who established the John C. Campbell Folk School, came up with the idea for the Guild. Campbell and other co-founders connected through the Southern Mountain Workers Conference, which began in 1900 in Knoxville. At the 1926 conference, Campbell proposed creating a formal crafts organization. In 1928 and 1929, planning meetings were held at the Spinning Wheel in Asheville, North Carolina, where the founding members determined the Guild’s objectives and bylaws.
In the 1940s, the Southern Highlanders was formed due to TVA work. This government-sponsored craft marketing organization had shops at Norris Dam in Tennessee and Rockefeller Center in New York City. Since the Southern Highlanders and the Craft Guild had significant overlap in region and purpose, they merged in 1951.
Membership in the organization is limited to those who represent John C. Campbell’s definition of Appalachia. Active members come from a nine-state region that includes counties within the Appalachian mountain area of Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Alabama. Only counties identified as “The Southern Highland Region” by John C. Campbell are eligible for membership in the organization.
A MUST SEE is the Southern Highlands Craft Fair – twice a year in Asheville