Tryon Arts and Crafts is celebrating this month 50 years as a creative organization and artistic educational center.
The organization is planning events throughout the year, but the celebration will officially kick-off on Saturday, April 24, with a reception and auction benefiting the arts and crafts center. Everyone is invited to attend this evening. Tryon Arts and Crafts will reflect on the past and look ahead to the future.
In the winter of 1959, Tryon was hit by a blizzard of a magnitude that had never before been experienced by local residents in our area.
One Tryon resident, Grace Hall, who had been trapped in her home for three weeks because of the snow, wrote to the local paper, the
This simple letter seemed to engage the community with the idea of organizing a crafts center. Letters were written and published for weeks in the local paper promoting the project. In April of 1960, area residents were invited to a meeting in the old Oak Hall Hotel to discuss this idea and to gauge the communitys interest. In addition to compiling an inventory of local talents, some 200 area residents pledged a $1.00 membership fee in support of the fledgling organization which would later become known as Tryon Crafts, Inc.
After initially operating in the present location of The Book Shelf in the old Preston Building, Tryon Crafts took residence in the new Tryon Fine Arts Center in 1969. In 1986, Tryon Fine Arts Center acquired the building now known as Cate-Hall Weaving Cottage which had served the fiber arts teaching requirements of Tryon Crafts for the last 20 years. The annex known as the Arts Pallette was donated to the center around the same time. At that point, pottery and lapidary were added to the curriculum.
Five years ago, the organization changed its name to Tryon Arts & Crafts to more accurately reflect the groups broad mission. It relocated its teaching activities to 373 Harmon Field Road in the former Tryon Middle School in the summer of 2006. This 10,000 square foot facility now houses the organizations offices, a library, gallery, gift shop and seven professionally equipped studios for classes and workshops.
Tryon Arts and Crafts is a school for the imagination: a place to explore, discover and create, the kind of place where people can learn it, live it, and share it. Its a place where you can get your hands on a potters wheel, a scroll saw, a chasing hammer, a grinding wheel, or a loom. Tryon Arts and Crafts offers year-round instruction and provides the equipment, supplies and experienced instructors eager to serve young and old alike. Classes and workshops are offered in weaving, pottery, silversmithing and jewelry, fused and stained glass, woodturning, blacksmithing, copper enameling, silk painting, basket making and lapidary.
The public is invited to join the Board of Directors, membership and friends of Tryon Arts and Crafts as they celebrate this milestone. The first anniversary event will be held at 373 Harmon Field Road on Saturday, April 24, from 6 to 9 p.m. Enjoy food, music, art and the company of friends. This evening will feature an auction and a special musical performance. The auction will offer a variety of goods from artwork to golf packages to a hand-built Lichty guitar.Tryon Daily Bulletin. She expressed the need for a local crafts center to instruct and encourage leisure time talents in area residents so that they would have something to do in the event of future similar weather situations.
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