Join us for the 2007
Elizabeth Stevenson Ives Lectures

African American Artisans of the Antebellum South

The Historic Hope Foundation is proud to present the eleventh Elizabeth Stevenson Ives Lectures. This annual series focuses on scholarship in the fields of decorative arts, history, and historic preservation. Previous presenters have included John Bivins, Wendell Garrett, Graham Hood, Dorothy Spruill Redford, Susan Stein, and John Michael Vlach, among many others.

This year's speakers will examine the world of African American artisans in the antebellum South. African Americans, enslaved and free, were key participants in creating the material culture of the antebellum South. Many times their manual skills were coerced; in other cases, African Americans’ creations expressed their independence, ingeniousness, and desire for freedom. A panel of renowned scholars will discuss both the context for and products of African American hands during slavery times.

The program is free and open to the public. Box lunches will be available for $12.

Alice Eley Jones, introduction: “African American Artisans in the Antebellum Roanoke River Valley”

Martha B. Katz-Hyman: “African Influences on the Decorative Arts of Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas Before 1800”

Barbara Heath: “Crafting Context: The Material World of Artisans at Monticello and Poplar Forest”

Paul Baker: “North Carolina Plantation-Made Furniture”

Dale Rosengarten: “Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry”

Henrietta Snype: "Keeping Alive the Art of Lowcountry Basketry"

You can reserve a lunch by pre-registering online or calling 252-794-3140.

For additional information, please contact Glenn Perkins, curatorial consultant.

This program is made possible through grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Bertie County Arts Council, Roanoke Electric Cooperative, and the Members of Historic Hope Foundation, Inc.

About the Speakers:

Paul Baker is an archivist at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh. He has worked at the N.C. Museum of History and done wide-ranging research on plantation-made furniture in piedmont and eastern North Carolina and on the work of Thomas Day.

Dr. Barbara Heath is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, specializing in historical archaeology. She holds a MA and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from the College of William and Mary. She has spent more than 20 years studying slavery in the middle Atlantic and the Caribbean. Dr. Heath has worked as an archaeologist for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and The Thomas Jefferson Foundation (Monticello), and from 1992-2006 directed the department of archaeology and landscapes at Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. 

Alice Eley Jones has written widely on African American history in North Carolina, including the development of an exhibit on African American artisans at Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, NC. She owns and operates Historically Speaking and Minnie Troy Publishers in her native Murfreesboro, NC.

Martha Katz-Hyman is Architectural Fellow at Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where she also served as associate curator from 1985 to 2005, working primarily with the mechanical arts collections. She continues to work as an independent curator and is currently engaged in projects interpreting the lives of enslaved blacks in New Jersey and free blacks in Virginia.

Dr. Dale Rosengarten is Curator of Special Collections at the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library. She is author of Row Upon Row: Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry (1986) and has edited with Theodore Rosengarten A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life (2002).

Henrietta Snype is a master basket-weaver and heritage educator from South Carolina. She learned the art of basket-making from her mother, grandmother, and great aunt in Mt. Pleasant, SC. Her work has been exhibited at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., and the Arts Festival in Birmingham, Ala. She has presented talks at many museums, including the Smithsonian Institution.