People of the Mountains

“Making jewelry is really and truly something I love to do,” states Margaret Parker, North Carolina silversmith. “And I work in my basement,” she says with a smile.

The bedcover we know as a quilt is much more than the sum of its parts. In the Southern mountains, and across the globe, quilters hold a sacred place as documentarians of culture.

Young has been turning wood for 50 years. “I was a medic in the Air Force back in the 1960s, and now I’m telling my age,” he says with a laugh. “It seems like I’ve always worked with wood, and I’ve really gotten into it in the last 20 years or so.”

Eleven years ago, groups of college exchange students traveled 7,700 miles from the U.S. to the town of Jingdezhen in southern China. On that trip Seth Guzovsky and Andrea Denniston first met… and then went their separate ways.