Join us for the 2007
Elizabeth Stevenson Ives Lectures

African American Artisans of the Antebellum South

Friday, April 13, 2007
9:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Roanoke-Chowan Heritage Center
Historic Hope Plantation
Windsor, North Carolina

The Historic Hope Foundation is proud to present the eleventh Elizabeth
Stevenson Ives Lectures. This annual series focuses on scholarship in  
the
fields of decorative arts, history, and historic preservation. Previous
presenters have included John Bivins, Wendell Garrett, Graham Hood,  
Dorothy
Spruill Redford, Susan Stein, and John Michael Vlach, among many others.

This year's speakers will examine the world of African American  
artisans in
the antebellum South. African Americans, enslaved and free, were key
participants in creating the material culture of the antebellum South.
Often their manual skills were coerced; at the same time, African
Americans’ creations expressed their independence, ingeniousness, and
desire for freedom. A panel of renowned scholars will discuss both the
context for and products of African American hands during slavery times.

The program is FREE and open to the public. Box lunches will be  
available
for $13.

Alice Eley Jones, introduction: “African American Artisans in the
Antebellum Roanoke River Valley”

Martha B. Katz-Hyman: “African Influences on the Decorative Arts of
Tidewater Virginia and the Carolinas Before 1800”

Barbara Heath: “Crafting Context: The Material World of Artisans at
Monticello and Poplar Forest”

Paul Baker: “North Carolina Plantation-Made Furniture”

Dale Rosengarten: “Sea Grass Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry”

Henrietta Snype: "Keeping Alive the Art of Lowcountry Basketry"

You can reserve a lunch by pre-registering for the program at
http://www.hopeplantation.org/ives.html or calling 252-794-3140.

This program is made possible through grants from the Institute of  
Museum
and Library Services, the North Carolina Humanities Council, the Bertie
County Arts Council, Roanoke Electric Cooperative, and the Members of
Historic Hope Foundation, Inc.

About the Speakers:

Paul Baker is an archivist at St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh. He has
worked at the N.C. Museum of History and done wide-ranging research on
plantation-made furniture in piedmont and eastern North Carolina and  
on the
work of Thomas Day.

Dr. Barbara Heath is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology,  
specializing
in historical archaeology. She holds a MA and PhD from the University of
Pennsylvania and a BA from the College of William and Mary. She has  
spent
more than 20 years studying slavery in the middle Atlantic and the
Caribbean. Dr. Heath has worked as an archaeologist for The Colonial
Williamsburg Foundation and The Thomas Jefferson Foundation  
(Monticello),
and from 1992-2006 directed the department of archaeology and  
landscapes at
Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest. She is author of "Hidden Lives:The
Archaeology of Slave Life at Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest" (1999).

Alice Eley Jones has written widely on African American history in North
Carolina, including the development of an exhibit on African American
artisans at Bellamy Mansion in Wilmington, NC. She owns and operates
Historically Speaking and Minnie Troy Publishers in her native
Murfreesboro, NC.

Martha Katz-Hyman is Architectural Fellow at Colonial Williamsburg
Foundation, where she also served as associate curator from 1985 to  
2005,
working primarily with the mechanical arts collections. She continues to
work as an independent curator and is currently engaged in projects
interpreting the lives of enslaved blacks in New Jersey and free  
blacks in
Virginia.

Dr. Dale Rosengarten is Curator of Special Collections at the College of
Charleston’s Addlestone Library. She is author of "Row Upon Row: Sea  
Grass
Baskets of the South Carolina Lowcountry" (1986) and has edited with
Theodore Rosengarten "A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of
Southern Jewish Life" (2002).

Henrietta Snype is a master basket-weaver and heritage educator from  
South
Carolina. She learned the art of basket-making from her mother,
grandmother, and great aunt in Mt. Pleasant, SC. Her work has been
exhibited at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., and the Arts
Festival in Birmingham, Ala. She has presented talks at many museums,
including the Smithsonian Institution.