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‘Miss Lucy’s’ Penland story reissued with archival photos
By Lynn Hotaling
When Rufus Morgan asked his younger sister Lucy to assist him with a school he’d started, he couldn’t have foreseen the consequences Lucy’s arrival in Penland would have on the crafts community in North Carolina and beyond.
According to weaver Susan Leveille of Webster, the Morgans’ great-niece and owner of Oaks Gallery in Dillsboro, the effect of the Penland School, which was founded by Lucy Morgan as a production weaving program for mountain women, has been enormous.
Weaver Susan Leveille of Webster attributes her love of looms and yarn to her great-aunt, Lucy Morgan, who founded Penland School in Mitchell County as a way of preserving vanishing traditional crafts and creating income for cash-strapped area residents. Morgan’s 1958 book “Gift from the Hills,” tells Penland’s story and has been reissued by the school. To mark the occasion, Leveille plans a Friday, Sept. 29, open house and program at Oaks Gallery that will feature some of Morgan’s handwoven pieces and a talk by Penland archivist Michelle Francis. – Herald photo by Nick Breedlove
“There are very few of the artists whose work is on display at Oaks whose lives have not been touched by Penland in some way,” Leveille said. “Either they studied there or they learned their craft from someone who did. Penland has had a profound influence on the craft world in this country.”
Rufus Morgan, an Episcopal minister, was sent by the church to the Penland area to start a school for boys as part of the church’s outreach effort. Lucy Morgan, who had studied education at a normal school in Mount Pleasant, Mich., arrived at Penland’s railway station on June 1, 1920.
The 1958 memoir that tells Lucy’s story, “Gift from the Hills,” was reissued last year by Penland School. Written with journalist LeGette Blythe, the book begins with Lucy’s arrival at Penland and traces the events that caused her to begin the crafts school as an outgrowth of the cottage industry she founded. The initial publication of “Gift from the Hills” – a 100-copy limited-edition hardback bound in handwoven fabric – sold out quickly.
Lucy Morgan, left, and Howard Ford with the “Travelog” that carried Penland products to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. Morgan, who founded Penland School, was never shy about promoting the school and its crafters, said her great-niece, Susan Leveille of Webster. This image by early 20th-century N.C. photographer Bayard Wooten is from Morgan’s 1958 book, “Gift from the Hills,” which has recently been reissued by the school in paperback with additional photographs from Penland’s archives.
First reprinted in 1971 by the University of North Carolina Press, the current edition includes a new preface by Jean McLaughlin, who is Penland’s current director, and an introduction by Leveille. It also features a new selection of photographs from the Penland archives, including many pictures by Bayard Wooten, a well-known North Carolina photographer who was Lucy Morgan’s cousin.
To celebrate the new edition of her great-aunt’s book, Leveille plans a Friday, Sept. 29, open house and program at Oaks Gallery that will feature some of Morgan’s handwoven clothes and other pieces as well as a talk by Penland archivist Michelle Francis. The event will be from 4 until 8 p.m., with Francis’ talk scheduled for around 6 p.m.
Soon after her arrival in Penland, Morgan became acquainted with the last weaver in the area and decided, with her brother’s encouragement, to go to Berea College and learn to weave.
Morgan’s plan was to start a cottage weaving industry, and Leveille said her purpose was twofold – to preserve a vanishing art and to develop a way for area women to earn a cash income.
According to Leveille, by the early part of the 20th century, “store-bought” things were becoming more readily available and, as a result, older household skills had begun to lapse. Lucy Morgan, who never married or had children, didn’t learn spinning and weaving from her mother, but she taught and encouraged Leveille and other women in her family.
Once Lucy Morgan mastered the art of weaving, she returned to Penland and trained one local woman to weave. The woman sent her husband to deliver her first woven goods to “Miss Lucy,” as she was known around Penland. The husband got a check in payment for items his wife had made, and the woman later told how “everyone along the way home knew how much money she made before she did.”
That word-of-mouth advertising did the trick – by the next morning, women were lined up at Lucy Morgan’s door to learn to weave so they could make money, too.
Two or three years later, as more and more people outside the area learned about the training Morgan was offering to weavers, Penland School was born.
Another weaver who was influential in Penland’s history was Edward Worst of Chicago. Known as one of the nation’s better weaving teachers, Worst spent a number of summers teaching at Penland after Lucy Morgan invited him to the school. She had traveled to Chicago to study with Worst, a technical school teacher who wrote a book on handweaving that’s still used today.
As the school grew, Lucy Morgan gave up teaching to became its administrator. She added pottery and other crafts, and Penland attracted a number of international students.
After retiring in 1962, Lucy Morgan spent her remaining years in Webster. According to Leveille, “Miss Lucy” maintained her connection to Penland but didn’t “meddle.”
“She retired gracefully,” Leveille said. “She knew if she stayed on at Penland, which she was asked to do, it would be hard for the new director to manage the school.”
Lucy Morgan wrote about her school because people kept asking her to record the story of the perseverance, vision and faith that led to Penland’s founding Leveille said.
“I don’t mean so much religious faith, though that was part of it, but more her faith in the rightness of her goal and her faith in the community,” Leveille said. “Lucy won the hearts of everyone in the community.”
Penland’s first building – the weavers’ cabin – was built by the community from materials they donated.
“People brought a wagon load of stone, or four logs – each representing a day’s worth of work – and contributed their labor because they believed in her school and what she was trying to do,” Leveille said.
The cottage industry Lucy Morgan started persisted for a number of years, Leveille said, and her aunt used her connections with the Episcopal church as a means to market the Penland weavers’ wares.
“She’d go to conferences and set up a table and sell to the church officials’ wives,” Leveille said. “Lucy was a tiny woman, but she was not one bit shy about asking people to support her school and the families she helped.
“Her attitude wasn’t that ‘it’s my school this is for me’ – it was that it was about the people she helped,” Leveille said.
Lucy Morgan’s school launched the career of another member of her family – pioneering Sylva cardiologist Ralph Morgan, who was Leveille’s father. Dr. Morgan, who learned pewter-making at Penland while he was in high school, used those skills to put himself through college and medical school, Leveille said.
After Ralph Morgan set up his practice in Sylva, he again called on that legacy to begin Riverwood Pewter.
“He started the pewter business because he believed in the importance of handmade items and wanted a place people could watch artists at work,” Leveille said. “He thought it was important for people to understand and appreciate handmade things. He taught Dee and Ray Shook to make pewter and operated from his basement until he bought Riverwood in 1957. We always had people in to see pewter being made – Daddy liked to share all that.”
It was important to Leveille to mark the book’s reissue in some way because of the powerful influence Penland has had both on the crafts community and on her own family, she said.
By the time Lucy Morgan retired and moved to Webster, Penland had acquired an international reputation. A community activist, a cultural entrepreneur, an educational pioneer and a woman of indomitable vision and faith, Lucy Morgan received a posthumous award for lifetime achievement from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Her legacy lives on at Penland, Leveille said.
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