A Baker's Dozen of Great Gatlinburg Craft Shops
Yes, you can hold time in your hands. And it feels wonderful.
In Gatlinburg, Tennessee, traditional mountain handicrafts still occupy a prominent place in the local culture despite the town’s thoroughly modern amenities.
Forget online shopping and look instead for the beautiful, distinctive, and practical gifts that local artisans produce in the Smoky Mountains. Brooms, baskets, woven textiles, pottery, furniture, even concrete yard art and chainsaw bears are made in and around Gatlinburg. They’re all built to last, and often the artists are working as you watch.
It takes more than a single day to visit Gatlinburg’s craft galleries and workshops, so plan to spend a few days learning how families have passed down their skills for generations and kept alive their mountain heritage. Every time I return to Gatlinburg’s famed arts and crafts community I find new marvels, and I’ve taken to stocking up on gifts for friends and family no matter what time of year.
Here’s a baker’s dozen of the best, many of them located along an 8-mile loop road lined with arts and crafts stores.
Ownby’s Woodcraft
Seven generations! That’s how long woodcraft, basketry, and other traditional mountain arts have been passed down through strands of the Ownby family. The shop is part museum, part antique shop, part basket and woodcarving store—and pure pleasure. Basketry is a family specialty, and someone is likely to be weaving a new basket right in the shop. They make it look easy.
The antique hand tools used for carving and cabinetry can help educate newcomers to those crafts, while budding basket makers will appreciate seeing coils of supple reeds and wood splits ready to take shape.
704 Glades Road, 865.436.5254 or 865.453.2384.
Ogles Broom Shop
David Ogle is at least the third generation broom maker in his family, creating brooms that can last for decades. The sturdy handles come from different sources: old hardwood tobacco sticks, big twisted vines, unusual branches from the forest. Then he adds broomcorn strand by strand around the handle with a stout binding; next he sews the broomcorn into a fan shape with a firm crisscross pattern and, finally, neatly trims any loose edges.
Visitors are welcome to watch him work, and can specify what kind of brooms they need, whether for clearing cobwebs up high, sweeping rugs, or using in the African-American wedding ritual called “jumping the broom.”
670 Glades Road, 865.430.4402, oglesbrooms.com.
Cliff Dweller’s Fine Crafts & Arts Gallery
Here’s a historic building that’s full of attractive items for the home. The collection is especially strong on woven goods like area rugs, placemats, table runners, scarves, shawls, and jackets. Local specialties include hand-spun knitting yarns in a rainbow of soft colors, plus fine baskets, caned or woven footstools, delicate painted gourds just right for hanging on a Christmas tree, and cheese boards with carved spreaders.
For personal adornment, see the extensive selection of locally made jewelry in various materials and styles. I’m especially fond of the fingerless gloves and mittens for cold-weather walks.
668 Glades Road, 865.436.6921, cliffdwellersgallery.com.
Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts
This renowned school in downtown Gatlinburg takes traditional crafts and blasts them into the future: old techniques with fresh vision. When it was founded more than a century ago, Arrowmont concentrated on general education but soon added a craft-oriented curriculum to preserve and encourage old-time expertise. Today the school welcomes students from all backgrounds who want to enhance their lives in a studio setting.
Spectacular modern works with traditional roots are displayed in expanse of well-curated galleries. The gift shop offers art supplies as well as a delightful selection of coffee mugs and other useful souvenirs. Don’t miss it.
556 Parkway, 865.436.5860, arrowmont.org.
Rocky Flats Pottery & Soap
Here’s an attractive destination for household wares made the old-fashioned way—by hand and one at a time. The ceramic cookware is especially handsome: casserole baking dishes, pie pans, and bread loaf pans that combine simple lines with subtle colors and great performance. I treated myself to a loaf pan and have taken up baking bread again; everything I make in it comes out with a marvelous crust.
The homemade soaps are wonderful, especially a cake of dish soap which gets the job done without excess bubbles or plastic bottles. And there’s much more, including handmade notecards, vases, and classic brown jugs.
1360 East Parkway, 865.387.5556, rfpotteryandsoap.com.
Smoky Mountain Farms
What’s a trip to the Smokies without stocking up on traditional jams, jellies, butters, fruit syrups, ciders, and relishes? For nearly 60 years this country kitchen has been producing authentic mountain recipes from local fruits. If the timing is right, visitors can watch the latest batch of pumpkin butter, muscadine jelly, huckleberry preserves, black walnut conserves, or elderberry syrup get cooked and canned right on the premises.
The brilliant colors of thousands of jars of preserves make the interior of this shop sparkle like a jewel box. Inventory also includes sorghum molasses, local honey, sugar-free selections, pickles … even moonshine jelly.
458 Brookside Village Way, 865.436.4049.
The Wood Whittlers
It takes a special kind of artistry to make wood speak, telling tales in so many beautiful and durable forms. A visit to The Wood Whittlers may take hours because there is so much to see. Established in 1944, the shop features small decorative pieces like carved birds and wooden “flowers,” household accessories like lazy Susans and fine bowls, and massive animal carvings and mantelpieces fit for a palace.
Out in back visitors are welcome to tour the hangar-like workshop where resident craftsmen continue to interpret both native and exotic woods. Their combined expertise spans centuries yet always feels fresh.
1402 East Parkway #6, 865.436.7187, thewoodwhittlers.com.
The Chair Shop Woodcrafts
Randy Ogle is nearing retirement age himself, a maker of fine furniture who says he is the third or fourth generation of his family to practice the craft. The modest showroom gleams with the burnished native hardwoods that produce exquisite rocking chairs, dining tables and chairs, desks and bookshelves, and smaller items like rolling pins and candlesticks. The shop is in the back.
Customers may specify any design, but be aware that an order may take a year or more to complete. Caning on chair bottoms and footstools comes in choices that include traditional corn shuck fiber.
30 Cantrell Circle, 865.436.7413, ogleschairshop.com.
Mountain Stitches by Susan
Owner Susan Dudley learned quilting from her grandparents, so her knowledge of the craft runs deep. Her colorful shop is neat as a pin, and serves as local headquarters for quilting fabrics and supplies, quilting kits, and patterns. There are even historic quilting books, like the Civil War designs for history buffs. The range of fabric is astonishing, all with the crisp “hand” that’s so important to quilting enthusiasts.
Susan also makes quilts herself, which she sells at the shop. The prices reflect her consummate skill and the intricacy of the designs: true heirlooms that could grace any home for generations.
601 Glades Road, Suite 13, 865.436.0077, mountainstitchesbysusan.com.
Jake and Angie’s Woodart
Chainsaw-carved bears are standard fare around the Smoky Mountains, but Jake and Angie Madsen take that art form to a new level. Jake says he learned to carve from his mother, a top international chainsaw artist. Today the couple not only carve and finish their bears in a range of sizes and poses—richly detailed in their expressions—they also produce custom pieces and carved interior installations for the home.
The “studio” for carving bears is located outdoors, which makes for a convenient stop on a main road into Gatlinburg. The wood of choice is Royal Polonia, and the carvers provide instructions for care.
1435 East Parkway, 865.209.9473, jakeandangieswoodart.com.
Concrete Statuary Designs
Concrete yard art is a real thing. Just ask the collectors who flock to this fabrication plant and large display yard, where everything from concrete frogs to giant yetis are on silent parade (and of course bears of all sizes). The Teague family has been in the business for four generations—about 75 years—passing down their skills. Benches, fountains, planters, and other accessories are available in stock or by special order.
The manufacturing process involves several steps: mixing the raw materials, casting them in molds, trimming and smoothing the completed works, and in many cases painting by hand. Closed January-February.
701 Glades Road, 865.436.3534, facebook.com/gardenstatue.
Smoky Mountain Spinnery
Spinning and weaving have always been two crucial chores in mountain life, and they persist today as forms of creativity and utility. The Spinnery is a resource for anyone who spins, felts, weaves, or knits—or who wants to learn how. A knowledgeable staff stocks all necessary equipment and supplies, and can help with technical questions as well as pattern requests. The woven vests for sale are lasting fashion statements.
The shop floor is a swirl of colors and textures, thanks to hundreds of different yarn selections, everything from gossamer mohair to super-chunky cottons. The motto is “history at work.”
466 Brookside Village Way, 865.436.9080, smokymountainspinnery.com.
Ely’s Mill
Tucked right next to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and watered by scenic Roaring Fork Creek, this mill site serves as a living history museum, workshop, and country store all in one. Built almost a century ago, Ely’s Mill with its towering water wheel originally powered a furniture factory. Today it offers visitors a glimpse into the simple but challenging ways of the past. Be sure to pay the small fee for a tour of the mill and blacksmith shop.
The cozy shop stocks all sorts of handmade goods, including walking sticks, sorghum drop candies and spicy crackers, antique baskets, sun bonnets, and placemats woven on the loom that’s set up inside.
393 Roaring Fork Road, 865.719.4078, elysmill.com.
About the Author
Nan K. Chase moved with her young family to the mountains of Western North Carolina in 1981, and she has lived within a few miles of the Blue Ridge Parkway ever since. The rich, handcrafted heritage of the early pioneers and the Cherokee before them was all around: massive log cabins, practical and beautiful baskets, woven or quilted textiles for the home, home-grown foods to preserve by canning or fermenting or dehydrating. For her, the value of these traditions lies in the love of nature’s bounty and in the skills that still flower in the midst of a computer-driven age.
Now living in a 120-year-old mill house in Southwest Virginia, Nan and her husband have furnished it with artifacts from the turn of the last century. For this story she headed to the quiet roads around Gatlinburg and returned home with several handmade brooms, ceramic cookware, old-timey soap, woven placemats and table runners, a caned kitchen stool, local berry preserves, and enough yarn to knit a shawl for winter.
She is the author of Asheville: A History and Lost Restaurants of Asheville, and co-author of several other books, including Bark House Style: Sustainable Designs from Nature and Drink the Harvest.