Tryon Toy Makers and Wood Carvers
1915 - 1940
by Michael J. McCue.
In 1915 Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale, the co-founders of Biltmore Estate Industries, moved to Tryon and founded a new craft industry that flourished for the next quarter century. In the mountain village they trained young people to make some of the finest hand-carved wood objects and hand-painted toys ever produced in the United States. The operation became nationally recognized; it was one of the original members of the Southern Highlands Handicraft Guild. The sophisticated designs and remarkable execution of the Tryon toy makers and wood carvers are not typical of Southern "indigenous" highland craft. This introduces collectors and cultural historians to the uniquely cosmopolitan design influences of this distinctive oeuvre.
Published in conjunction with the exhibition at Tryon Fine Arts Center in 2004, this monograph has been updated in 2012 as a Second Edition with captions citing the location of important primary-source matericals now in The Pauline Miller Cowan Collection at University of North Carolina's Ramsey Library in Asheville. Full color, 32 pages $15.
