Michaels craft straw broom9/13/2023 ![]() Around the turn of the century, the college’s third president, William Frost, went into the surrounding mountains to recruit students, and he bought traditional crafts, such as weaving and woodworking, from individual households along the way. To this day, every student works ten hours a week, earning them a modest paycheck. The school’s founders wanted to dignify manual labor, which was associated with slavery. From its inception, the college had a labor program intended to help students cover their expenses. The brooms not only reflect the college’s Appalachian surroundings, but also its remarkable history. (Even today, the poverty rate in Appalachia is higher than in the rest of the country.) At this time, the tuition-free college comprises roughly 1,600 “academically promising students with limited economic resources,” according to its website. ![]() Rogers, a first principal of the school, called the area “a neglected region of the country” after a trip through the mountains. From its early days, the college was committed to educating students primarily from Appalachia. The school welcomed men and women, including black men and women, making it the first coeducational and integrated college in the South. Fee believed that education should promote equality and excellence among men and women of all races. “We work at a fever pace to keep up,” Beale says.īerea’s broomcraft workshop is the only in the country to dye significant quantities of broomcorn.īerea College, in Berea, Kentucky, was founded in 1855-it began as a one-room school-by abolitionists Reverend John G. According to Beale, Berea’s broomcraft workshop is the only one in the country to dye significant quantities of broomcorn, which requires a lot of time. “It’s an object rich with meaning, beyond its practical purpose.” The roughly 5,000 brooms made each year at the college are sold through a website and distributed to a number of specialty craft shops. “There’s something very nostalgic and wholesome about a handcrafted broom,” says Aaron Beale, director of student craft at Berea. Celebrating its centennial this year, the program carries on an American craft tradition that’s rarely practiced today. Coveted by craft aficionados, these brooms are decorative objects, worthy of being hung on a wall.īerea is a liberal arts college, not a craft or art school, but nonetheless students there make brooms by hand, in the country’s longest continuously operating broomcraft workshop. Some are made with corn that’s been dyed a fiery red or deep purple, and often there’s intricate braiding where the bristles connect to the handle. The brooms that are made at Berea College, in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky, aren’t just for sweeping-as anyone can tell just by looking at them. ![]()
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