“Asheville's HandMade: Western North Carolina Craft, Architecture & Design Expo highlights craft as design element”

Asheville's HandMade: Western North Carolina Craft, Architecture & Design Expo highlights craft as design element

Posted: 13 Jun 2010 08:56 AM PDT

ASHEVILLE — Joel Adams didn't want just any table for his conference rooms. He wanted one that conveyed a spirit of creativity.

He had only to look in his backyard to find craft artists capable of projecting, through the furniture they built, the attitudes he wanted his wealth management office to inspire in clients.

A new event, HandMade: Western North Carolina Craft, Architecture & Design Expo, will show participants how Adams and others in WNC have incorporated craft into homes and offices. The two-day expo June 25-26 at the N.C. Arboretum will show builders, architects, designers, craft artists and homeowners how easily and elegantly craft can be a part of new or existing construction.

Including it at the very beginning can make a project even more wonderful that you might have envisioned, said Jenny Moore, associate director of HandMade in America, which is sponsoring the expo. My experience in working with artists is they're very creative, and they come up with wonderful ideas, so including them at the beginning is important.

And people in the building industry, they're accustomed to ordering something from the manufacturer that they can get immediately. So if they don't think in advance about a stained glass window or a handcrafted door, there's not enough time to get it made in time for the job.

A multi-faceted event

The expo, which will include workshops, presentations, home tours and model rooms, emphasizes craftsmanship in architectural elements and design for both high-end and mid-range homes.

Furniture, door handles, tile countertops, stair railings and floor covering are some of the design and structural components that can be handcrafted.

It will be easy to visualize the possibilities during the expo. Spaces will be designed by teams led by architects, landscape architects and craft artists. People will be able to see their collaborations in a bedroom, a sunroom, a bathroom, a library, a studio anything you can think of in terms of living space, project manager Barbara Benisch said. And they're fully furnished, so you can see how people used craft to design or decorate a space.

Furniture Bedroom

Sunday, June 13, 2010