[folk quartet playing "Joy to the World"]
- Jan Davidson: John C. Campbell Folk School
is in the western end of North Carolina,
and we've been here since 1925 making things.
We teach pottery, fiber arts, all kinds of iron work.
We also teach cooking, one of my favorite crafts.
- Instructor: That's very nice, Paula.
- Jan: It's not college.
It's not art school.
It's mountain life.
And in the old-time mountain life,
the music, the dancing and the making of things,
it was all together.
[folk quartet playing "Joy to the World"]
Olive Dame Campbell was from New England,
and she came to the South
trying to find an alternative education
that would help people learn things
that they could use staying here on the farm.
She came by one day to the country store,
and there's a bunch of loafers sitting there.
She said, "What are you carving?"
They said, "Shavings."
And she said,
"Well, can you make some other things?"
They said, "Well, yeah, we probably could."
And so, she would work with them
and they would develop carvings of animals
that they knew well,
and the folk school would help to sell them.
In the Depression, this was a major opportunity.
People could make a little cash
by carving ducks and geese and horses, things like that.
[gentle country music]
- Harley Refsal: We feel like we're standing
on the shoulders of giants when we sit here
and carve figures in the same room
where the men and women
of this community did many, many decades ago.
So you can control how much you want 'em to smile.
The straightness of the mouth has to change.
I've taught here at the John C. Campbell School
going back 20 years or so.
- How do you handle that with your knife?
- Okay, once...
There is a group of enthusiastic students.
And I typically carve down here.
And sure enough, we have a very good week.
[wood cracking]
- John Balzar: Why is Harley Refsal important?
Well, in order to really learn craft,
you have to learn from a master, I think.
And he brings thousands of years of Scandinavian tradition
and heritage to flat-plane carving.
- I typically like to sketch a few lines on there first,
so I know where it is I'm heading.
I think I'll put his hands in his pocket.
I grew up in western Minnesota, a little town called Hoffman.
Put his nose about there.
Hoffman had lots of descendants of immigrants
from Norway and Sweden.
So the whole notion of doing things with one's hands,
everyone kind of did that.
Now, this style of Scandinavian flat-plane carving
stems from the fact that these flat facets were there.
And the reason was that one was typically carving
just with a single knife
rather than a whole arsenal of tools.
What I'm doing is right in the same tradition
that has been going on in Scandinavia a long, long time.
People carved what they knew.
I enjoy carving farmers and fishermen and folks
that I just saw in everyday life when I was growing up,
and that I see around me today.
But I also enjoy very much carving figures
that are tied in with holidays.
[crows cawing]
People who live in the far north have been celebrating
the midwinter holiday, the solstice holiday
for time immemorial.
People realized that the days
were getting shorter and shorter.
It was a time to create light and warmth inside the house
because there wasn't that outside the house.
And many of the same images that were part and parcel
of the pre-Christian Norse mythology
wound up as part of Christianity as well.
I'm starting to get the head going now.
And I think I'll give him wooden clogs.
They go back a long way.
One of the characters that hearkens back
to pre-Christian times is a figure
that is referred to as the nisse in Norway,
the tomte in Sweden.
They're the people who are the Nordic versions
of Santa Claus or the bringer of gifts.
I don't know what kind of a cap he would wear.
Probably some fabric of some kind.
The predecessor of the tomte back in pre-Christian times
was often referred to as the haugbui.
Get some eyes in here so he can look back at us.
There was a strong belief that there was a little creature
that lived out in the private cemetery on the farm,
and that haugbui or the dweller of the mound
embodied the spirit of the farm.
And this is sort of my rendition
of a tomte or nisse with attitude.
One that you didn't look at and say,
"Wow, that's really cute."
I mean, how friendly and cozy he looks.
[all laughing]
[folk music]
- John: There's a simplicity
to Scandinavian flat-plane carving.
It looks so easy, and it's so deceptively hard.
So, now I'm in my fourth year of trying.
But I grew up in an era where my family
was an aspiring family,
and the worst thing that could have happened to us
was to to fall into the poverty of the handmade.
Today, something that is handmade
is one of the treasures you could have in your life.
[gentle music]
- Jan: Craft matters because people have this need
to tell other people who they are
and what they are like.
It's kind of like
a duck says quack, another duck says quack.
We're identifying each other as the kind of people
who make things and do things.
[bright music]