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<\/a>Neighbors in the Pine Mountain Valley with coverlet hanging behind mother, two children and dog. c. 1920s.<\/p><\/div>\n
Pettit\u00a0often traveled from Hindman in Knott County, where she had established her first school in the early years of the twentieth century. \u00a0Even before the founding of Hindman, in 1901, Pettit was into her third summer season\u00a0in the eastern Kentucky mountains at a location\u00a0known as “Sassafrass.” She and her adventuresome colleagues had already journeyed to many of the remote valleys and hollows of nearby Harlan, Perry and Letcher counties where she frequently\u00a0came into contact with mountain weavers. \u00a0She soon began to search for coverlets to purchase\u00a0and also found her interest in the craft gave her a sound introduction to many mountain families. While looking for homespun coverlets she soon discovered more than the coverlet.\u00a0 She discovered the weavers and their humble but rich skills, their ancient culture, and their stoic resourcefulness.\u00a0Theirs was a life-style that she would soon come to cherish, partially adopt and commit to “raising up.”<\/p>\n
<\/a>A Pine Mountain neighbor with her spinning wheel. c. 1915.<\/p><\/div>\n
In Harlan county she \u00a0found the distance from the rapidly industrializing world she desired and she expanded on her Hindman experiences. \u00a0She \u00a0rapidly reached out to her many contacts and built\u00a0a rustic home and a school dedicated to serving the people of the remote Pine Mountain valley and nearby hollows. She did not, however become a recluse.<\/p>\n
When she came to Pine Mountain in 1913, and with the help of William Creech\u00a0and the families living in the valley,\u00a0Pettit established\u00a0a school founded on the principles of the more urban settlement houses found in Chicago, New York, Boston and other locations. She recruited educators and workers from those early urban settlement schools and women’s colleges and sowed the seeds of a progressive educational program.\u00a0 What she created was a settlement school that adopted a unique response the urban settlement house ethos. \u00a0While weaving in the urban settlements had often depended on teaching weaving that was modeled\u00a0on practices found in the Arts and Craft’s Movement and in Scandinavian models, Pettit’s models were already established in the mountains of Kentucky and other areas of the Southern Appalachians. \u00a0 Weaving for Pettit and for the Pine Mountain community was an integral part of a response to the legacy of many families and the demands of a rural environment that was still in a pioneering and subsistence mode.<\/p>\n
Beating flax using a wooden flax beater. Ethel de Long [?] X_099_workers_2527l_mod.jpg<\/p><\/div>Farming was the other foundational principle she integrated into the school’s core mission. Weaving and farming\u00a0go together well and well they served Pine Mountain for many years. \u00a0Pettit’s interest and promotion of weaving pre-dates the important work of Eliza Calver Hall and her 1912, <\/strong><\/a>A Book of Hand-Woven Coverlets<\/strong>. <\/em>\u00a0No\u00a0<\/em>doubt Pettit was strongly influenced by Hall’s book, which she owned, and the work of the weaver Anna Ernberg\u00a0who had assumed the position of\u00a0superintendent of Fireside Industries at Berea College, Kentucky in 1911, but she was embedded\u00a0in the idea of weaving and settlement-work much earlier and had early connections with women who would later shape mountain weaving into an industry.<\/p>\n Pettit made the Pine Mountain valley and the Settlement School her home and along with Ethel de Long, whom she had recruited away from Hindman Settlement School, she began to build the second of her schools in the region. \u00a0Pine Mountain soon became one of the most unique\u00a0and viable\u00a0of the Southern Appalachian rural settlement schools. In that school the sound of the batten, weaving away, has rarely ceased it’s tempo.<\/p>\n At Pine Mountain Pettit and her staff did not live in isolation but challenged the people of the region to look beyond the walls of mountains surrounding their valley, to the flood of ideas, economies, and beliefs that would prepare the people of the region for the inevitable changes coming to the mountains. \u00a0Following the turn of the century, industrialization was moving ever closer to the Pine Mountain Valley and Pettit recognized the need to develop a marketing strategy for the mountain crafts to bring money into the area. \u00a0Weaving was part of her plan at “raising-up” the mountain people and she set about finding looms, building looms and establishing weaving as part of the school program.<\/p>\n 0050b P. Roettinger Album. “Swinging flax. Aunt Sal and Lizzie [Elisabeth Roettinger on right.]” [roe_017a.jpg]<\/p><\/div>Founded in 1913, Pine Mountain is now celebrating its 100th year of existence.\u00a0 Katherine Pettit retired from the School in 1936 but the school\u00a0archive contains\u00a0numerous directives, letters, invectives, and suggestions that show her connected to the School until her death in 1938. The models of education, farming, health-care, and civic responsibility that Pettit and others at the school provided the people of this long valley, to\u00a0Eastern Kentucky and to\u00a0the state, promised a rich future while preserving the best of the earlier cultural legacy. Weaving at Pine Mountain has had a continuous association with the school since it’s founding and today it continues to inspire ideas and pride in it weavers.<\/p>\n The beautiful homespun coverlets discovered by Pettit on her mountain rambles became a\u00a0visual passion for Pettit and for others who saw them.\u00a0 It is impossible not to have\u00a0a deep appreciation for the skill and artistry of the craft of weaving and for the women and men who wove the exquisite and complicated patterns found in Pettit’s collection of coverlets. The mountain coverlet in all its complexity and subtle colors has a deep and extended history in the lives of mountain families with a weft that stretches back to Ireland and to Scotland, to France and to England.\u00a0 \u00a0The coverlet is a visual testimony to the people’s deep intelligence, creativity, and manual skills, \u00a0Often described as “asleep”, “apart”, “lazy”, “dull”, or worse, the early mountain weavers produced some of the most elegant and complex and extensive repertoires of coverlets. \u00a0The Pine Mountain archive has long been the keeper of much of the history that documents the exquisite legacy of weaving in the Kentucky mountains.<\/p>\n From booklets that detail vegetable dying, such as the Katherine Pettit Dye Book<\/a>, to implements that can convey the tactile\u00a0activity of the weaver’s art, to correspondence related to the marketing\u00a0of mountain craft by novel cooperatives such as Fireside Industries , to the intimate stories of times spent\u00a0in homes where weaving was done,\u00a0 — the archives at the School\u00a0are rich in weaving lore.<\/p>\n\n\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n