Saving a Dying Craft

Saving a Dying Craft

At her home in rural West Virginia, where houses are 10 miles apart and the nearest major grocery store can be an 80-mile drive, Donna Morgan uncoils several rugs, shawls, blankets, table linens, and decorative articles. Each item, intricately woven and alive with color, is a study in precision and utility—but they weren’t purchased in a department store or out of a catalog. Morgan handwove each piece herself.

A lifetime member of the Mountain Weavers Guild in Randolph County, W. Va., Morgan has immersed herself in the ancient craft for 35 years. In addition to producing items for herself and her family, she also teaches weaving at community centers and a local college, and sometimes brings a loom to her elementary school class.

“It makes me happy that young people still want to learn to weave,” she says. “My 12-year-old niece was just fascinated with the process. She was amazed that you could make cloth out of a bunch of strings.”

Morgan was a child when the guild was organized in the 1970s, born of informal meetings among the few remaining weavers in the region. The craft had been nearly lost when technology made store-bought fabric and clothing affordable.

The 30-member group meets quarterly and hosts at least two workshops per year. But its greatest legacy may be the involvement of some of its members in establishing the Augusta Heritage Center, a series of workshops at Davis & Elkins College in Elkins that teaches folk arts, including weaving, spinning, and dyeing. Thousands of people from all parts of the globe attend these one- to five-week programs.

The federal government also recognized the importance of preserving this skill. As part of a Works Progress Administration project under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an artisan community called The Homestead was established in Randolph County (pop. 28,262). Residents learned or perfected various folk arts, including weaving, which supplemented their incomes and helped offset the effects of the Depression. This is how Morgan and her mother learned to weave—by taking classes from a Homesteader.

Only a few members of the guild earn money from their efforts—most are more likely to give away their creations. But the emotional gains are huge.

“You could weave every day of your life from the time you’re 7 until the time you die, and you’d never weave the same design twice or the same article twice,” says Willetta Hinkle, a guild member. “There’s just that much variation, that much possibility, that much creativity. It’s just a wonderful thing to do.”

Hinkle learned to weave from her grandmother, who also raised, processed, and spun her own flax for weaving. She subscribed to the pioneer ethic: Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

“I think my mother invented recycling because we saved everything, and that’s what weaving is all about,” she says. “You didn’t throw away good woven material that had any bit of life in it, because you’d worked so hard to spin it and weave it. You braided it into rugs or wove it into blankets, clothing, carpets.”

Hinkle teaches beginners to make rag rugs, “because they’re very colorful, they’re really recycled material, they’re very functional; everybody can use rugs.”

More advanced projects require a higher level of concentration and a bigger time commitment: “You have to keep your mind on what you’re doing. If you miss one little thread, one little pitiful thread can throw the whole design off.”

Weaving on a loom involves using your feet to depress treadles that move the lengthwise threads up and down while at the same time throwing a shuttle back and forth with your hands to move the horizontal threads.

Hinkle says she’s enjoyed her years of weaving, but emphasizes—like Morgan and the rest of the guild—that her “main aim was always to keep the pioneer skills going. Let our nation be proud of the things that the people did.”

Kara Carden is a regular American Profile contributor.

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