Susan Morgan Leveille + Oaks Gallery

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Shawl by Susan Morgan Leveille.

Again I'm recommending weaver Susan Morgan Leveille (commission a coverlet, shawl, table covering, more!) and her Oaks Gallery at Riverwood (Dillsboro, North Carolina) for weaving and mountain crafts. Susan's great-aunt, Lucy Morgan, founded The Penland School of Crafts and taught a multitude of western North Carolina mountain women the crafts that had once been the birthright of many Scots-Irish settlers. Many surviving overshot coverlets and other weavings are evidence of her important work, as is the flourishing of Penland. "Founded in 1929 by Lucy Morgan, Penland School was originally an outgrowth of a craft-based economic development project she had started several years earlier."

Almost a century later, her great-niece Susan teaches weaving, is a superb weaver (starting when she was barely school age at Penland), and owns The Oaks Gallery with her husband. The Oaks Gallery sells jewelry, handmade clothing, pottery, carvings, metalwork, and more, all from first-rate craftspeople in North Carolina and beyond, and is a part of the Riverwood studios founded by Susan's parents, Ralph and Ruth Morgan.

Susan's work is beautiful; it also has the same sort of collectible cachet that accrues to, say, the Ben Owens family line of potters in Seagrove. The history of North Carolina mountain crafts is tied to the Morgan family in important, remembered ways.

Leveille specializes in overshot coverlet weaving, a form common in the mountains for generations. She says that she enjoys "sharing how these coverlets were made, and sharing their structure." She teaches every chance she can get, she says, both privately and in many workshops and craft schools throughout the region. Among the other traditional weaving styles she teaches are lace weave of huck toweling, and the Summer and Winter weave that was popular in colonial times. She loves teaching children and adults, and can gear workshops to any age or skill level. In her frequent school visits, she particularly loves "helping teachers relate weaving and fiber to whatever they might be teaching," from arithmetic and geometry to history and music. These concepts all come together in surprising but natural intersections in the art of weaving.

Leveille has taught at Penland, the John C. Campbell Folk School, and numerous other important craft centers. She is also one of the co-founders of the Stecoah Valley Weavers, a guild that operates from Robbinsville's Stecoah Valley Center on a principle of economic and individual development much like her great aunt's vision for the Penland School.

The Western Carolina mountains are a frequent destination for East Coast travelers. Take a vacation at Campbell or Penland and take a class with Susan--or meet her in Dillsboro, where she also teaches. She is superb weaver, and one of those people who are a thread in the fabric of a better, more beautiful world.

Susan Morgan Leveille, detail showing Norwegian krokbragd weave

Susan Morgan Leveille and Oaks Gallery

If you would like a gift certificate or gift promise here on Christmas Eve, I'm recommending Susan Morgan Leveille's Oaks Gallery in Dillsboro, North Carolina. If not, I'm suggesting the gallery and Susan as a future source of gifts.

The Morgan family is responsible for much of the revival of western North Carolina crafts in the early twentieth century. Lucy Morgan, Susan's aunt, was the founder of the Penland School. Her parents were the founders of Dillsboro's Riverwood studios. The Oaks Gallery has suffered from the recession and from the loss of a train line into Dillsboro. A few of their items are on display at the website... Please keep them in mind if you are wandering in western North Carolina.

Susan is a superlative weaver and teacher of weaving, a great person to commission. She is in demand for shawls and scarves, and you can't find a better at overshot coverlet weaving--a thing that often seems a lost art. She has taught at Penland (where she started weaving at the age of seven) and the John C. Campbell Folk School, is a lifetime member and former president of The Southern Highland Craft Guild, and is a co-founder of Stecoah Valley Weavers.

The Morgan family transformed crafts in the mountains of North Carolina. Susan is a flower on that illustrious branch. I recommend her work and gallery.