Traditional Handcraft Sells
and Sells and Sells in the Ozarks

hey call it the “War Eagle weekend” in northwest Arkansas, but the thousands of visitors who descend there each fall shop at many more venues than just the 50-year-old War Eagle Fair. According to the Arkansas Department of Tourism, hotel accommodations are scarce and booths for more than 20 craft fairs are “set up in the open air, under circus-style tents and in fair buildings, pavilions, shopping malls, convention centers and historic sites” throughout the Ozark Mountains on the third weekend of each October.

I visited five of these craft shows on two days in 2003. I arrived in the late afternoon on the first day of the Ole Applegate Arts and Crafts Festival, set up at two sites in and around Bentonville, Ark., but found substantial crowds still shopping.
Prices at the Ole Applegate shows ranged from $2 to $1,000 and all the artists we queried told us they made more than their costs for the show. However, Illinois artists Charles and Maxine Weber, who make one-of-a kind pine needle baskets, vases and clocks, say they had “complaints from buyers of too many imports” at their show. “Also, this show was only half as big as it has been in the past,” they report.

A few Ole Applegate artists had very distinctive work, including D.J. Silas Reece and Jim Reece of DJ’s Clocks and Whats with workshops in Tennessee and Arkansas. The uncle and nephew create hand-carved, wooden buildings, some free-standing and looking like large Victorian dollhouses, and some that hang on the wall, into which they set clocks. The older Reece says he started doing the craft for fun after he retired and it “turned into a darn job.” Prices for their works range from $300 to $1,000.

Mesquite Burl Nature Edge Vessel, 6-inch diameter, by Kip Powers.	Hand-painted jewelry by Jenny Licht.

On the second day, I went to the War Eagle Fair, the premier show of those I saw in the region. This was the most crowded craft show I’ve ever attended anywhere. Local newspapers reported they expected 200,000+ people to shop at this 300-artist show in four days and bring $21 million into the state from visitors to this show and others on this same weekend. (See “Regional Review,” page 46.)

War Eagle Mill sits on a hill surrounded by rural farmland and woods about a one-hour, winding drive from Bentonville. There were easily 50,000 visitors or more when I arrived at the fair on Thursday morning, with cars and buses parked on grassy fields as far as the eye could see. The reason was simple: the quality of the traditional craft at the War Eagle Fair was exceptional.

All the work was beautifully crafted and displayed. Although one exhibitor reports, “some buy/sell was able to sneak in,” this wood artist and others also say that the promoter is “very strict about the work accepted” for the show and does “a lot” of advertising.

All of the 11 artists we surveyed say they made more than their costs for the show. In addition, only one reports sales below that of previous years. Most say their sales were “good” and Jerry and Judy Lowenstein of Mt. View, Ark., say sales of their hand-tied Grassy Creek Brooms were “almost 40 percent” better than in 2002. Their broom prices top out at $150.

Tom Hess of Hess Pottery in Reed Spring, Mo., says the War Eagle Fair was “well-attended and people came to buy.” In business for 30 years, sales for the pottery and baskets of Hess and his partner, Lory Brown, were “better than in previous years.” Prices for their work ranges up to $225.

Jenny Licht of Chippewa Falls, Wisc., says this was one of the best War Eagle shows she’s had in the four years she has been exhibiting there. In business for 19 years, Licht’s hand-painted jewelry pieces, each signed by the artist, range in price from $4 to $36. “War Eagle has very faithful clientele who are true buyers,” she says. “They look for quality and they find it at War Eagle.”

As with other craft shows around the country in 2003, War Eagle found customers among the affluent. “From conversations with other exhibitors,” reports wood artist Kip Powers of Rogers, Ark., “I have a feeling that high-end customers were spending, but the middle class were watching their budgets.”

Powers, who moved to Arkansas from Houston, Texas, about two years ago, has been in the craft business for 10 years. His wood-turned work is also sold in three galleries in Arkansas. “I would like to get in one or two more,” Powers says.

War Eagle features handmade items from weavers, woodworkers, carvers and basket makers and artisans of stained glass, pewter, leather and metal as well as oil and acrylic painting, watercolors, sculpture and photography. Because the War Eagle Fair is dedicated to preserving Ozarks crafts, exhibitors primarily come from Arkansas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri.

In addition to that already mentioned, the work ranged from dolls, wooden pull-toys, old signs, and stuffed rocking horses and elephants to Christmas ornaments, quilts, gourd containers, fine jewelry, knives and hand-woven clothing. Glenda Allison of Berryville, Ark., says the Mountain Melody thumbdrums made by Allison and her husband “are a unique product that appeals to folks.” With prices from $10 to $50, Allison says “using gourds in our instruments attracts folks at this show” and sales were way up in 2003.

Pamela Kelley of Leatherwood Arts in Marshall, Ark., was selling framed and matted decorative scenes hand-painted on arrangements of turkey feathers. Her framed works of a single feather start at $100 and larger, multi-feather prints sell for up to $3,000.

Customers inside a tent at the Bella Vista Arts Festival.

Kelley says many shops carry her work and her business is “mostly wholesale.” War Eagle, “the best craft show in Arkansas,” according to Kelley, is the only retail show she does.

The Andrews family of Grant City, Mo., had booths on this weekend at both War Eagle and the Bella Vista Arts and Crafts Festival, north of Rogers near the Kansas border. Selling lamb’s wool cleaning tools of all types, the parents say they got into the crafts business 21 years ago after their son had to do a 4-H project. Today, the whole family, including their daughter and the son and his wife, are making and selling these works at shows.

They also have contracts to supply products to Fuller Brush and Williams-Sonoma as well as other companies. Jo Andrews says they have 76 “grandmas” who help make their patented, handmade products that also include steering wheel covers, seatbelt strap covers, slippers, gloves, mittens and earmuffs.

Two other art and craft shows across a bridge over the nearby War Eagle River were smaller than billed and seemed to have much more buy-sell, but were drawing large overflow crowds from the War Eagle Fair.

Like War Eagle, the 35th annual Bella Vista Arts and Crafts Festival had high quality “country crafts” for the most part. One Native-American silversmith at this show told me she “knew” the exhibitors in a corner of her tent were “jobbers” and she was going to report them to the show promoter. This artist also told me she no longer does some other October shows in the area because they allow “a lot of buy-sell.”

Many exhibitors at Bella Vista had small pieces that went for $10 or less, and even those with high-priced work said they try to “price-to-sell” for this market. Consequently, prices at Bella Vista were mostly under $100, with top prices reported at $450 for Bill Koch’s hand-turned bowls and vases of tamarisk, cherry, box elder and other wood. Koch, who has a studio in Jay, Okla., also embellishes his work with turquoise, coral, brass, silver and leather.

Koch has been doing the Bella Vista show for seven of the nine years he’s been in business. “This is a very good, quality show!” reports Koch. “[But] the current market seems to be down somewhat and most of my expensive stuff hasn’t sold in 2003.”

Most of the artists I spoke to at the Bella Vista and War Eagle shows told me these are the top-grossing show of the year for them. I could easily believe it as I saw almost everyone leaving these shows loaded down with bags and others who brought along carry-alls and shopping carts for their purchases. At the hotel in Bentonville, shoppers were coming back from the shows in groups and unloading carloads of purchases that were obviously handcrafts.

Mary E. Petzak is editor of The Crafts Report.