2009 Projects

The Blacksmith Annex Project for next spring gets the green light! We are excited to announce our partnership with the John C. Campbell Folk School to build a 50' x 50' timber frame addition to the existing blacksmith shop. The roster is filled. Please send an email to if you would like to be placed on the waiting list.

This project is coming together with the help of John Clarke, Folk School Maintenance Director and Project Coordinator; Paul Garrett, the Folk School’s Resident Artist Blacksmith; and Charles Judd, the Guild's local organizer.

About the Project

The existing Francis Whitaker Blacksmith Shop is a historic structure, built originally as a timber frame milking barn; this shop needs expansion and repair. The new annex will provide a state-of-the-art working and teaching space for the Folk School's blacksmithing classes as well as space for future work on the existing shop.

The new shop is envisioned as a timber framed building with dramatic high ceilings for a spacious work area and passive cooling ventilation. The interior posts of the timber frame will help to define work areas and provide electrical and lighting service to the work tables and forges. The building is designed to wrap around two large silos, one silo will house a bathroom and the second may provide space to house a spiral stair. There will be a partial second floor with clerestory windows for a library/teaching space opening to a mezzanine where visitors to the shop can watch the blacksmiths at work at a safe distance.

The building site adjoins a running mountain creek and sits just below the historic Mill House. It is ideally situated for a blacksmith shop in a naturally cool environment where forge smoke drifts away from the rest of the campus. The integration of blacksmith details in the frame, as well as the beautiful setting in the mountains of Brasstown, North Carolina, are sure to make this an exciting and rewarding project.

About the Folk School

Though founded in the Southern Appalachians, the Folk School has New England ties. John C. Campbell, an idealistic young student educated in New England, brought his bride, Olive Dame of Massachusetts, to the Appalachians and they traveled throughout the area in 1908-09. While John interviewed farmers, Olive collected ancient Appalachian ballads and studied the local handicrafts. The Campbells talked of establishing a school in the rural southern United States as an alternative to the higher-education facilities that drew young people away from the family farm.

After John's death, Olive Dame Campbell and her friend Marguerite Butler traveled to Europe and studied folk schools in Denmark, Sweden and other countries; they returned to the area and enlisted local support to found a similar school in Brasstown, North Carolina. In 1925, the Folk School opened its doors, with the dual purpose of helping provide supplemental income for the subsistence farmers in the area and to preserve and share the crafts of the area. The Folk School Craft shop still serves as a retail outlet for local craftspeople and an attraction to thousands of visitors to the area.