In this blog, we’re continuing our folk art theme here at the Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park. As we learned last time, sometimes the most common household goods can be classified as folk art just from little regional decorative touches. Quilts aren’t the only household items in the museum’s collection that can be considered folk art.

Several kitchen items in our collection have pretty touches, including two decorative carved wooden butter molds. When dairy farmers began to sell their butter commercially, it became important to differentiate their butter from other sellers, so they used butter molds as a sort of brand logo. The larger mold, big enough to hold a pound of butter, has the popular “sheaf of wheat” pattern, while the smaller one - used for individual “pats” of butter – incorporates the “cherry” motif.

Another example from the kitchen is the ubiquitous pie safe, popular in the 19th century. The museum’s pine pie safe was built to protect from vermin while allowing ventilation for cooling baked goods. The use of punched tin panels on the front and sides of the safe provided ventilation. The museum’s safe features decorative punched tin inserts with a Pennsylvania Dutch-inspired “paisley wheel” design and came to us from Ohio.

There are some types of hand-made dolls in the playroom that are also considered a form of folk art. We are fortunate to have the Lila Marshall Collection of corn shuck dolls on exhibit at the museum. Hailing from Scott County, Virginia, Lila Marshall was one of several Marshall family women who were nationally recognized for their skill in creating dolls from corn husks during the Great Depression and later. This craft using discarded natural elements and creating something practical is a testimony to the ingenuity so associated with our region.

In this same tradition, the museum created the Artisan Gallery at the Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park’s Gift Shop. The gallery showcases some of the area’s finest crafters. They carry on the practices of the earlier artisans in their ability to craft something both practical and aesthetically pleasing at the same time. We’re fortunate to have several highly skilled, juried crafters from Southwest Virginia selling their wares in the Artisan Gallery. Like with the folk art seen in the museum’s collections, no two of their creations are the same.

The Southwest Virginia Museum Historical State Park is open six days a week through December.