• What to know if you go

Grovewood Gallery (ENLARGE)

Asheville's 100-plus arts and crafts galleries represent a range of styles. This Adirondack Chair is by craftsman Fatie Atkinson of Clyde, N.C.

Southern Highland Craft Guild (ENLARGE)

Just a few inches tall, these wooden bears carved by Hal McClure can give city dwellers or suburbanites a touch of the outdoors that will fit in any size home.

Tim Barnwell/New Morning Gallery (ENLARGE)

This glass vase is by California studio Round the House. New Morning Gallery looks nationwide for fresh takes on furniture and accessories.

Paul Jeremias/New Morning Gallery (ENLARGE)

Venezia is a colorful and contemporary furniture line at New Morning Gallery which integrates brushed steel and stained wood.

Southern Highland Craft Guild (ENLARGE)

Allanstand Craft Shop, in the Southern Highland Craft Guild's Folk Art Center, was started in 1895 by a Presbyterian missionary to help mountain people earn money from their handiwork.

Asheville, N.C. — The cool temperatures and stunning vistas of western North Carolina beckon in summer, but there's more than nature's handiwork to see around Asheville.

You can spend many a pleasant afternoon in the city's 100-plus arts and crafts galleries, checking out the spin that artists put on nature's materials. As you finger the delicate lip of a clay pitcher or trace the wood grain in a chair, you can share their pleasure of creation.

Longtime crafts tradition

The mountain crafts tradition began with southern Appalachia's earliest settlers, for whom the ability to fashion a wooden bucket or a quilt was a necessity of daily living. Over the years, institutions such as Penland School of Crafts and the Southern Highland Craft Guild helped artists refine the tradition and expand it to include all sorts of designs, traditional and contemporary.

Now, thanks to the thriving arts community that has grown up in the region's largest city, you can see pottery, furniture, jewelry, wearable art, blown glass and fine art. You can see items gathered not only from the Southeast, but from elsewhere in the United States and abroad. There's a Red Square Gallery of Russian Art & Culture downtown at 7 Rankin Ave., for instance.

Many galleries and studios are clustered in two areas: Asheville's historic downtown, where 1920s art deco architecture adds to the artistic flavor provided by some 30 galleries, and along the French Broad River to the west. More than 70 artists and crafters have carved studios from the former industrial buildings on the river's east bank to form the River Arts District.

Three of the largest and best-known galleries, however — New Morning, Grovewood, and the Southern Highland Craft Guild's Folk Art Center/Allanstand Craft Shop — are outside these areas.

From time to time, crafters collaborate on shows and tours, like the guild's upcoming Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands on July 20-23 in the Asheville Civic Center, with 200 exhibitors participating. Also, downtown galleries in a 2-mile radius around Haywood Street and Patton and Biltmore avenues will have a coordinated evening opening Aug. 4 to debut shows. And New Morning and Bellagio galleries will show work from 120 artists around the United States at their annual Biltmore Village Arts & Crafts Fair on Aug. 5-6. It's on the grounds of the All Souls Episcopal Cathedral, built in the 1890s by George Vanderbilt for his daughter's wedding.

For a whiff of history and tradition, visit Allanstand Craft Shop in the guild's Folk Art Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Grovewood Gallery in the shadow of historic Grove Park Inn, and New Morning. In distinctive settings and showing regional crafts, they're a direct link to an earlier Appalachia.

Allanstand

Allanstand, which is touted as the oldest crafts shop in the country, was started by Presbyterian missionary Frances Goodrich in 1895 to help mountain people earn money from their handiwork. She hit on the idea after her Northern friends exclaimed over a hand-woven coverlet she'd been given. The guild, which has more than 900 members, also arose partly from Goodrich's efforts.

In 1980, the guild moved Allanstand from the city to its new, contemporary-style Folk Art Center, which rises above the trees just off the Blue Ridge Parkway's Milepost 382, 10 minutes east of downtown. The guild also operates another Asheville retail shop at 930 Tunnel Road (U.S. 70).

At quilt-bedecked Allan-

stand, you can buy the carefully worked creations of guild members: cornhusk dolls, split-oak baskets from the Cherokees' Qualla Boundary, pottery, wood carvings, glass, fiber wearables, leather, porcelain and, of course, quilts.

Daily crafts demonstrations are given in summer, and for visitors who want to try their luck at a potter's wheel or with a wood-carving knife, there are hands-on programs on special weekends (southern

highlandguild.org). The center's three galleries include the Permanent Collection Gallery, which shows items dating to the 1800s, including the coverlet that started it all.

Grovewood Gallery

The invisible presence of millionaire George Vanderbilt's wife, Edith, lingers over Grovewood Gallery. After the couple's Biltmore Estate was built in the 1890s, she established Biltmore Homespun Industries to give the children of estate employees instruction in woodworking and weaving. A son-in-law of Grove Park Inn founder Edwin Grove bought the business after George Vanderbilt died, and in 1917 he moved it into stone and stucco cottages a stone's throw from the inn.

Business boomed for a time, but in the latter half of the 20th century, synthetics flourished, homespun faded, and the business closed. The cottages now house a homespun museum, an antique-cars museum, and the Grovewood Gallery, a widely respected showcase for several prize-winning furniture makers as well as other crafters.

The entire upper floor of the gallery is devoted to furniture of all stripes — literally. Craftsman Fatie Atkinson of Clyde, N.C., has been represented there by a chest in alternate stripes of light and dark wood. In a screen by Barry Tribble of Marion, N.C., dyed strips of veneer form a Mondrian-looking pattern.

The gallery also sells Atkinson's chairs, including his Adirondack Chair and Tuxedo Chair. The latter — its curved lines hinting at a bow tie — won the 2006 Niche Award in fine furniture design from Niche magazine. Brian Wurst, a national award winner in creative furniture design, exhibits there, as does John Clark, former head of Penland School's furniture program.

New Morning Gallery

In Historic Biltmore Village in south Asheville — across U.S. 25 from the Biltmore Estate entrance — is another highly respected crafts gallery. New Morning Gallery, specializing in "art for living," looks nationwide for fresh, sophisticated takes on furniture and home accessories.

The brightly colored Sticks line of furniture from an Iowa studio is typical. Hand-painted, hand-carved and with hand-sewn leather, "it's folky and whimsical, makes you smile," manager Sarah Marshall says.

Yet New Morning maintains a North Carolina room and shows work like Asheville craftsman Ed Firmender's "Yesterday's Windows." Firmender makes small tables and mirrors from windows of razed homes. He researches the homes' history and attaches a brass plaque with the owner's name and date of construction.

One of New Morning's sister galleries, Bellagio, features wearable art and shares the building. Another sister gallery, the 14,000-square-foot Blue Spiral 1, is devoted to fine arts and crafts and specializes in Southeastern work. It is downtown at 38 Biltmore Ave.

If you want to check out the downtown galleries, information is available from www.ashevilledowntowngalleries

.org. A Center City Galleries Guide including a map can be picked up at participating galleries and the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce at 36 Montford Ave., or by ordering from the Asheville Area Arts Council at 828-258-0710, Ext. 108 (e-mail: ericabell@asheville

arts.com).

Architectural art

Downtown Asheville itself is a work of art, with its 1920s and '30s architecture, some of which has been renovated for galleries and other businesses. The Grove Arcade, a trendy collection of restaurants, shops and residences in a 1929 shopping arcade, includes the Grove Arcade Arts & Heritage Gallery, showcasing western North Carolina crafts, and Mountain Made, where the work of 80 area crafters includes gourds and handmade books. The arcade is at 1 Page St.

Woolworth Walk, in a 1930s F.W. Woolworth store that has its terrazzo floors and high ceilings intact, shows work of 160 crafters in 20,000 square feet at 25 Haywood St. You can twirl on a red stool at the restored soda fountain and order club sandwiches and ice cream sodas from an original Woolworth's menu.

For information about the River District, near Riverlink Bridge and including studios on Roberts Street, Clingman Avenue and Riverside Drive, check www.riverdistrictartists.com. You'll find studios' phone numbers, individual Web sites and a map. These are working studios rather than galleries, so hours are limited, but many studios' Web sites list public hours. About a dozen studios give their hours on another Web site,

www.riverartsdistrictbiz.com, and sponsor a joint studio tour, with refreshments, 5-8 p.m. the first Friday of each month.

IF YOU GO

• Craft Fair of the Southern Highlands. Asheville Civic Center, 87 Haywood St. Southern Highland Craft Guild members' show with 200 exhibitors, demonstrations, children's activities, Appalachian music. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. July 20-22; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. July 23. Admission, $6; under 12, free. Directions: I-40 to I-240, Exit 4C (Montford Avenue/Haywood Street/Visitors Center), left onto Haywood at light at top of off-ramp. Or park and ride shuttle from Folk Art Center, every half-hour 9 a.m.-6 p.m. July 20-23, $2. 828-298-7928, www.southernhighlandguild.org.

• Folk Art Center. Milepost 382 on the Blue Ridge Parkway. 9 a.m.-6 p.m. daily; free admission. Directions: From I-40, Exit 55 to U.S. 70 (Tunnel Road). Left 2 miles to parkway. Center is half-mile north on parkway. Parking is free. 828-298-7928, www.southernhighlandguild.org.

• Grovewood Gallery. 111 Grovewood Road. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; 1-5 p.m. Sundays; free admission. Directions: I-40 to I-240, Charlotte Street to Macon Avenue, through Grove Park Inn entrance; go to the right; left at first stop sign; left at second stop sign; Grovewood Road is to the right. 1-877-622-7238, www.grovewood.com.

• New Morning Gallery/Bellagio. U.S. 25 at 7 Boston Way. Historic Biltmore Village. 10 a.m.-7 p.m. Mondays-Saturdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays; free admission. Directions: I-40 to Exit 50, a half-mile north on U.S. 25. 1-800-933-4438, www.newmorninggallerync.com and www.bellagioarttowear.com.

Resources

• Asheville Downtown Gallery Association: 828-258-0710, Ext. 108; www.ashevilledowntowngalleries.org.

• River District Artists: www.riverdistrictartists.com and www.riverartsdistrictbiz.com.

• "The Craft Heritage Trails of Western North Carolina" (Handmade in America, $19.95). 1-800-331-4154, www.handmadeinamerica.org.

• Asheville Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, 1-800-280-0005, www.exploreasheville.com.