Heirloom Arts at the Weyerhaeuser Museum

 

In 2013 the Morrison County Historical Society mounted an Heirloom Arts Exhibit at The Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum in Little Falls, MN. The exhibit featured a wide variety of handmade items and tools from MCHS collections, showcasing skills as varied as tatting, woodworking, knitting, rug making, blacksmithing, leather tooling, crazy quilting, bee keeping, weaving, and violin making. The purpose of the exhibit was to celebrate the creative skills practiced and shared by Morrison County’s ancestors.

To launch the exhibit, we hosted Heirloom Arts Day on June 8, 2013, and asked a number of local artisans to share items they had produced. The wide array of creative products, from willow baskets to lamp shades to fairy furniture to a restored car to a knitted scarf to amazing wood replicas of vehicles, prove that the skills of our ancestors continue on, with the current generation re-imagining handcrafts to meet current needs, desires and imagination.

This online version of the Heirloom Arts Exhibit allows us to share a portion of the physical exhibit with our internet audience. Click the photos below to view each online exhibit “case”.

Crazy quilt on table runner - MCHS Collections, #1971.10.28
Crazy Quilting
Embroidered autographs - MCHS Collections, #1971.10.296
Embroidered Autographs
Heirloom Arts Day
Heirloom Arts Day
Lace medallion - MCHS Collections, #1982.57.43f
Lace
Gros Ventres buckskin shirt - MCHS Collections, #1966.5.1
Leather & Beads
Mitten - MCHS Collections, 1953.31.5ab
Mittens
Queen Bee Cage - MCHS Collections, #2006.91.1ab
Queen Bee Cage
Rug fringe - MCHS Collections, #2005.12.2
Rug Making
Shoe last - MCHS Collections, #2010.6.2
Shoe Making
Wood comb - MCHS Collections, #1977.27.5
Wood Carvings
Wood inlay table
Wood Inlay Table

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