Craftsman's Fair, 1950: Jack Hall

Jack Hall (1920-1984) is shown here demonstrating carving at a table displaying finished animals and rough-cut items in progress. This photograph was taken by an unknown photographer at the 1950 Craftsman's Fair of the Southern Highlands in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Hall was born into a family of carvers living in the Warne community east of Brasstown. His father, A. Ben Hall, and uncles, John and Elisha, were well-respected carvers. With carving all around him, Jack began to try his hand at carving when he was just 11 years old. He carved throughout the 1930s and 1940s and was listed as having sold more than $150 of his work on a sales list dated 1942. During the war, Hall left the region to work first as a machinist in Ohio and then at a defense plant in Marietta, Georgia. After the war, he returned to Brasstown where he took up carving again. He was an assistant to John C. Campbell Folk School carving teacher Murrial Martin and, upon her retirement in the 1973, took over as carving instructor at the school