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MadeSouthAwards

in the

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This year’s honorees—from a smooth, sophisticated single malt to a timeless leather bag to a dreamy farmhouse

cheese—prove that Southern makers’ commitment to creativity, craftsmanship, and quality remains as strong as ever

Garden & Gun Presents the:

terrane glass designs

P r o d u c t : Decanter and glasses

M a d e i n : Spruce Pine, NC

e s t . : 2016

Overall Winner

Edited by Elizabeth Hutchison

Text byVanessa Gregory, Jennifer Kornegay, T. Edward Nickens,

and Jed Portman

photographs by WHiTNEy OTT

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 133

From their remote farmstead in the Ozarks, the husband-and-wife team Christian and Heidi Batteau craft luminous wallpaper for some of the world’s pickiest clients. Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, and London Jewelers have all hired Assemblage to give their boutiques an opulent feel. The Batteaus use traditional italian hand trowels to layer supple sheets of marble and mica plasters; the process builds a translucent stratum that reflects light and creates the illusion of depth. For their most luxurious designs, they add gold and silver leaf or crystalline jewels. The team works closely with business and residential clients no matter the size of the space, and mixes its own paints and plasters, so they can customize colors. The effect: minimal yet striking—like an abstract painting wrapped around an entire room.

P r i c e : $79–$310 w e b : assembledarts.com

P r i c e : $175–$1,000 w e b : monstu.com

P r i c e : $1,875 for a queen w e b : doormandesigns.com

Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, George Washington, and other early American figures fascinated Zack Worrell growing up in Char- lottesville—a city steeped in history that influ-enced this line of modern cutlery. The former furniture builder, who runs Monolith Studio Knives in his hometown, often grinds blades from repurposed steel and shapes wooden han-dles from a stash of walnut culled from a farm beside Monticello. Although rooted in colonial times, the sleek pieces take their visual cues from Japan, meaning they’re ergonomic, light-weight, and extra sharp. Worrell loves tweaking knives for professional chefs and home cooks alike. “Someone just asked me if i could make a handle out of a Nike sneaker,” he says, “and i was like, ‘Absolutely.’ it keeps the artistic exploration going.”

Alex Geriner’s Josephine frame exudes all the romance of an antebellum canopy bed with none of the fussiness. instead, the sculptural sleepers—designed to complement rooms in the Henry Howard Hotel, a circa-1867 town-house in New Orleans’ Garden District—fea-ture a scaled-back silhouette of black iron. in a nod to the inn’s Crescent City pedigree, Geriner added a subtle brass accent at the bed’s corners. From his Uptown warehouse, the self-taught furniture maker welds, assem-bles, and sands each frame before painting it a semigloss black. When he’s not working with steel, Geriner turns to reclaimed wood and antique ceiling tins. The pieces allude to New Orleans but don’t slavishly replicate its famed antiques. “What i’m trying to do,” he says, “is continue that story.”

P r o d u c t : Bespoke wallpaperM a d e i n : Witter, AR

e s t . : 2011

P r o d u c t : Canopy bedsM a d e i n : New Orleans, LA

e s t . : 2013

asseMBlage

P r o d u c t : Chef’s knivesM a d e i n : Charlottesville, VA

e s t . : 2013

doorMan designsMonolith studio knives

Sometimes the most sophisticated objects appear deceptively simple. Consider the spare “Oklahoma” barware made by Terrane Glass Designs in mountainous Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The flawless whiskey decanter and matching rocks glasses have heft without heaviness, clarity save for a few carefully placed tool marks, and a meticulous balance. Unlike much hand-blown glass, which is typically highly decorated, these pieces have neither flashy colors nor elaborate flourishes to hide imperfections. instead, the set’s classic marriage of form and function attests to the glassblower Colin O’Reilly’s skill and aesthetic vision.

The Oklahoma design began in a sketchbook in 2012. Some time later, O’Reilly reimagined the initial concept in his riverside Spruce Pine studio, tinkering with various shapes. After weeks of trial and error, he settled on an elegant, globe-topped decanter and a pair of colorless cylinders with thumbprint indentations, the better to see the amber liquid and feel its coolness—“something that for drinkers doesn’t take away from the experi-ence of the bourbon or whiskey,” O’Reilly says.

That philosophy sounds straightforward, but it took years of apprenticeships for O’Reilly, who is thirty, to consistently produce work so elemental and refined. The Kennesaw, Georgia, native and aspiring sculptor first glimpsed glassblowing on a family trip to Santa Fe. There, he stumbled across a little hippie operation in the high desert named Tesuque Glassworks and begged the artists to teach him their craft. They agreed, allowing him to earn daily access to the furnaces and tools in exchange for cleaning the machinery and sweeping the floors.

Still, nobody really taught O’Reilly how to handle glass; he just experimented. And at first, he broke almost everything he touched. But he grew to love the physicality and meditative rhythm of the medium: waiting an hour each morning for the furnace to heat hundreds of pounds of glass into a viscous honey, then gathering the bright orange syrup with a hollow steel pipe and blowing just enough air to form a bubble, next carefully working the shape, and lastly manip-ulating scissors and tweezers and blocks to fine-tune the piece before placing the object in a special oven, where it cools ever so slowly into something useful and lovely.

After Tesuque and a stint in California earning his bachelor’s of fine arts in glassblowing, O’Reilly briefly circled back South to take a course at North Carolina’s Penland School of Crafts. He then headed to Seattle, America’s glassblowing capital, and took a grunt job load-ing furnaces at the Schack Art Center, using the entry-level gig as a chance to work for—and impress—established glassblowers with national and international reputations. “He had a very calm approach to the material,” recalls the artist Janusz Pozniak. “you either have it or you don’t—and if you don’t, you have to work really hard to make up for a lack of intuitive skill.”

O’Reilly, his then pregnant wife, and their son left the Pacific Northwest about a year ago for Spruce Pine—a setting that’s influenced the fledgling Terrane line of modern barware and vases. “For Colin’s work to look as clean as it is, it’s a testament to how well it’s made,” says the sculp-tor John Kiley, O’Reilly’s other Seattle mentor. “Colin knows all those decorative forms. He’s choosing not to make them.” That choice has been inspired in part by the South’s subtle scenery. “i haven’t felt the need to design around brightly colored glass anymore,” O’Reilly says. “The beauty of clear glass is the beauty of this place, of letting something stand on its own.” Even his company name nods to regional identity; the word terrane refers to a rare geological feature found in Appalachia, the outcome of a piece of tectonic plate breaking and attaching to another. O’Reilly considers it a metaphor for how he and his family came to Spruce Pine.

He’s also experimenting with a series of vases that echo the topographic lines that mark the peaks and valleys of his beloved Blue Ridge. Eventually, O’Reilly hopes to open a shared studio in downtown Spruce Pine, so visitors can better access him and other artists—the least he can do, he figures, for the community that helped him reach a wider audience and a new level of artistic excellence. “it’s been unlike any other place,” he says. “it’s a place that just let us in.”

Best in glassGlassblower Colin O’Reilly crafts elemental barware as singular as the whiskey it’s designed to hold by Vanessa Gregory

playing with fire O'Reilly begins working a piece inside his workshop in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

7th annual made in the South awards

Overall Winner

P r i c e : $275 (for a full set) w e b : terraneglassdesigns.com

HOMerunners-up

illustrations by PhiliP banniSter

Bed

: Kat

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rald

photograph by andrew kornylak

Meet the

Judge➽

Name: Darryl Carter (Washington, D.C.) ProveNaNCe: “I’m a fan of the simple,” says Carter, a designer whose distinctive, unadorned style and ability to combine the deeply traditional with the daringly modern have earned him an A-list client base and home furnishing collections with the likes of Benjamin Moore and the Urban Electric Co. “The Oklahoma whiskey set is just that, with its subliminal, practical design.”

P r o d u c t : Sheep’s milk cheeseM a d e i n : Walland, TN

e s t . : 2004

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By age ten, Sam Addison was already work-ing on the brine that led to this ingenious sandwich spread, which marries the burn of mustard with the salty-sour kick of dill pick-les. The Virginia native moved to Austin for culinary school and now sells four popular kinds of cold-pack cukes. That means lots of leftover juice. Last year, he decided the excess had to be good for something. Then a friend’s lesson in mustard-making sparked an idea: What if he soaked mustard seeds in his dill and garlic recipe, which has the same basic components—water, vinegar, spices—as a traditional mustard base? That experiment led to this punchy condiment, to which he also adds extra dill, garlic, and secret ingredients. Addison likes to “spread it thick” on one of the staples of his adopted home state: a kolache.

With just a pat of butter and a sprinkle of salt, these velvety, Mississippi-grown rice grits—grains broken during the rice-polishing process, otherwise called

middlings—become an addictively nutty base for grillades and sautéed shrimp, or a worthy sideshow to bacon and eggs. For generations, Southern growers kept the leftover nubs for their own tables after selling the more valuable whole grains—certainly a habit of David Arant, Jr., who runs Delta Blues Rice with his father, David, and his uncle, Hugh, in Ruleville. After friends and relatives began raving about the Arants’ version, the side’s popularity spread to Southern restaurants such as Angeline in New Orleans and Saltine Oyster Bar in Jack-son, Mississippi. Now that the rest of us are catching on, Delta Blues ships hand-packed bags of their white and brown varieties all over the country to meet the appetite. “We can’t keep up with demand using only our acciden-tally broken grains anymore,” Arant says.

P r i c e : $8 w e b : poguemahonepickles.com

P r i c e : $5 w e b : deltabluesrice.com

P r i c e : $14 w e b : blackberryfarmshop.com

P r i c e : $11 w e b : frenchbroadchocolates.com

With a rich, fudgy consistency and a palate-tickling lactic bite, Little Ewe makes a strong case for why expert cheese makers should partner with responsible shepherds. “Happy animals make happy milk,” says Blackberry Farm’s Chris Osborne of the pasture-raised sheep whose milk he sources from nearby indian Crest Farms. But there’s more to this rustic round than grass-fed magic. Osborne, who shares Blackberry’s obsession with qual-ity, takes a methodical approach to his craft, constantly tweaking the farmhouse cheese through its two-week aging process. “What i do is art combined with chemistry,” he says. Even so, he isn’t above a jam garnish: “Our preserva-tionist makes a strawberry rhubarb preserve that’s a match made in heaven.” As is pairing a wedge with a glass of champagne.

To create this creamy, nostalgic offering, the owners of French Broad Chocolates had to think like kids. “Malted milk is such a beauti-ful childhood flavor,” says Jael Rattigan, who runs the Asheville bean-to-bar company with her husband, Dan. The combination of dark milk chocolate and toasted malted barley from nearby Riverbend—one of the few small-time malt houses in the country—also suits their microregional mission. While the couple im- ports cacao from Peru, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, they process the whole beans on-site and then lace the chocolate with local ingredients such as sorghum, strawberries, and now malted barley—a natural pairing considering their suds-soaked hometown. Try the 44 percent cacao bar with a stout. Or, as Jael says, “it makes one hell of a s’more.”

P r o d u c t : Dill pickle mustardM a d e i n : Austin, TX

e s t . : 2012

P r o d u c t : Malted milk chocolate barsM a d e i n : Asheville, NC

e s t . : 2006

BlackBerry FarMPogue Mahone PicklesFrench Broad chocolates

against the grainA tasty by-product of the rice-polishing process becomes a best seller for a family of Mississippi farmers

FOODrunners-up

delta Blues rice

P r o d u c t : Rice gritsM a d e i n :

Ruleville, MSe s t . : 2014

Food Winner

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 135

Meet the

Judge➽

Name: alton Brown (Marietta, GA) ProveNaNCe: Scientist, cook, comic—Brown spent sixteen seasons at the helm of his groundbreaking food show, Good Eats. Along the way, he hosted Iron Chef America and penned seven books. He now anchors the Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen. Brown’s latest book, EveryDayCook, came out in September, and his gastronomic variety show, Eat Your Science, launched last spring.

great Wagon road distilling co.

P r o d u c t : American single-malt whiskey

M a d e i n : Charlotte, NC

e s t . : 2013

Drink Winner

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Great on the rocks but even better in a Bloody Mary, James River Distillery’s Oster Vit relies on the subtle minerality of oyster shells to even out the robust flavors of aquavit, a Scan- dinavian spirit traditionally infused with caraway and often fennel, dill, and orange. The shells come from the Chesapeake Bay, via the Rappahannock Oyster Company. Third-generation oysterman Travis Croxton is mar-ried to James River Distillery’s Kristi Croxton, who—with partner Jonathan Staples and dis-tiller Dwight Chew—brainstormed the Old Dominion riff after tasting oysters sprinkled with aquavit at Travis’s Richmond restaurant. With only fifty or so shells per batch, this spirit isn’t as salty as it sounds. Kristi recommends using it as a base for cocktails, especially classic drinks that call for gin.

P r i c e : $37 w e b : jrdistillery.com

P r i c e : $53 w e b : gwrdistilling.com

P r i c e : $3 per bottle w e b : yaupontea.com

P r i c e : $9 w e b : ashburnsauce.com

Back in the 1700s, British settlers desper-ately tried to grow tea in the Lowcountry, but couldn’t see the forest for the trees—well, shrubs. Clearing land for their doomed foreign plants, they cut back acres of native caffeine in the form of yaupon holly bushes. Native Americans in the South drank yaupon holly tea, and it later became a coffee substi-tute during lean stretches of the Civil War and the Great Depression. After discovering the plant in Georgia’s coastal underbrush, Lou Thomann experimented with picking, roast-ing, and steeping techniques before releasing this local brew—an infusion of wild-harvested leaves from Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. Judiciously enriched with cane sugar, Asi’s “sweet tea” variety is light and refreshing, lacking black tea’s tannic finish.

Willard Ashburn knows shellfish. Before he started making cocktail mixers, the Virginia Beach native oversaw a thousand-odd crab pots off the coast. So he thought it made per-fect sense to add the ubiquitous local seafood to his morning Bloody Mary. Not everyone agreed—at first. “Some people thought i was crazy,” says Ashburn, whose Crabby Mary blend includes not only Chesapeake Bay crab but also dehydrated East Coast lobster and shrimp. Just one sip, though, convinced the skeptics. “They started asking me, ‘you got any more of that mix?’” he says. Kettle-cooked with tomato juice, hot sauce, horseradish, Wor- cestershire, and clam juice, the crab breaks down to produce an umami-rich flavor and a texture similar to spicy cocktail sauce—a welcome taste of the coast at Sunday brunch.

good sPiritsWith irish roots and North Carolina soul, Ollie Mulligan’s mellow single malt will warm your winter nights

Two hundred–some years ago, scores of Scotch-irish settlers poured into North Carolina on the Great Wagon Road, which ran from Pennsylvania through

the Tar Heel State to Georgia. in 1994, a late arrival from ireland followed suit. “Those settlers are the reason there’s moonshine in Appalachia,” says Ollie Mulligan, who came of age in County Kildare and named his Char-lotte distillery after the historic thorough- fare. “i grew up hearing stories about my irish grandpa’s moonshine,” Mulligan says. “People just did that back then—in ireland and Appa-lachia. They made their own butter, cheese, and whiskey, and they shared it with the neighbors.” These days, Mulligan’s more com-plex Rúa single-malt whiskey is a neighborly endeavor, too: The Olde Mecklenburg Brewery, across the street from headquarters, makes the mash. After distillation, Mulligan brings the spirit down to eighty proof with water from cool, clean mountain springs in North Caro-lina’s yancey County. “i go up every ten days or so to get it,” he says. The final product is a polished winter warmer with hints of coffee, toasted grain, and dark chocolate. “it’s mellow enough to enjoy straight, with a nice, long fin-ish,” says Made in the South Awards judge Alba Huerta. Now a naturalized American citizen, Mulligan takes pride in making a world-class single malt that could only come from North Carolina. “Next time i go back to ireland,” he says, “i’m taking some with me.”

ashBurn sauce coMPanyjaMes river distillery asi tea coMPany

Drinkrunners-up

P r o d u c t : Bloody Mary mixM a d e i n : Virginia Beach, VA

e s t . : 2000

P r o d u c t : Oyster-infused aquavitM a d e i n : Richmond, VA

e s t . : 2013

P r o d u c t : Yaupon holly sweet tea M a d e i n : Savannah, GA

e s t . : 2013

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 137

Name: alba Huerta (Houston, TX) ProveNaNCe: “Taste, authenticity, and creativity,” says the master mixologist of the criteria she considered when selecting this year’s winners. Huerta honed her palate at Houston’s Anvil Bar and Refuge before opening two other acclaimed bars, Pastry War and Julep—and there’s a Mexico City project in the works. The Southern Foodways Alliance board member is also writing her first book of cocktail recipes.

Meet the

Judge➽

P r i c e : $425 w e b : dower.co

Jack Sherman Lloyd launched Dower, his hand-sewn leather-goods line, about a year ago, but his blush-colored Alie handbag feels timeless—the kind of Grace Kelly–esque ac- cessory that would pair well with a tailored white shirt and wide-leg navy trousers. Lloyd spends eight hours sewing each one and will do repairs “as long as i’m alive,” but he keeps the classic handbag’s cost down by selling direct and working from his parents’ Arkan- sas basement. The arrangement is apropos: His mother taught him to sew when he was a mere Boy Scout, years before he studied fash-ion in Dallas or honed his skills in New york. When Lloyd came home, he decided to focus on the feminine. “i’m a mama’s boy,” he says. “And i’ve always appreciated women.” His graceful, season-shifting bag is proof.

P r o d u c t : HandbagsM a d e i n : Little Rock, AR

e s t . : 2016

doWer

i think most Southern women like color—and like to look good in a pretty print,” says Susan Carson, the designer behind Carson & Co.’s figure-skimming tea-length

skirt. And few prints are prettier than the heron pattern featured in her “July” apparel line. “The pussy willows, the frogs, the little fish, the heron itself, are individual prints that we combine to create one tableau,” Car-son says. Each detail originates from one of the eighteenth- or nineteenth-century botanical prints she began buying in English, Parisian, and stateside flea markets more than twenty years ago. in her studio, Carson works with her digital designer to “cut” the images and pair them with contrasting backgrounds: lattice-work, dots, stripes; her experience in interior design informs the mixing of bold patterns. in 2010, she first turned her attention to tex-tiles and introduced a line of lushly decorative fabrics and scarves, along with several dress and skirt styles. Her made-to-measure skirt, with its nipped waist and fluid lines, stood out for its ability to elevate a day-to-day look. “The bright, graphic colors are fun and playful, as is the occasional print crossing over into the color-blocked borders,” says Made in the South Awards judge Lela Rose. if wading birds aren’t your thing, any of Carson’s botanical-print scarves can also be sewn into this effortlessly chic silhouette.

P r i c e : $900 w e b : carsonandco.com

P r i c e : $850 w e b : andreadonnelly.com

Richmond’s urban landscape works its way into Andrea Donnelly’s intricate scarves, which the textile artist weaves from soft alpaca, cotton, and silk on a floor loom. “There’s this great old house with a tiled walkway and wrought-iron gate,” she says. “it’s the layering of these pat-terns that just filters into my brain.” Those observations emerge in Donnelly’s Skeleton Key series, for instance, with subtle color varia- tions and depth influenced by ikat, an ancient technique that’s a sort of ultrasophisticated tie-dyeing. While Donnelly’s fine art—to be featured in a solo show next year at the North Carolina Museum of Art—asks existential ques- tions, her scarves remain blissfully uncompli-cated. “These are made in the service of being beautiful,” she says. it doesn’t hurt that the stylish wraps will keep you plenty warm, too.

natural BeautyVintage botanical prints turn colorful made-to-measure skirts into wearable art

P r o d u c t : ScarvesM a d e i n : Richmond, VA

e s t . : 2010

andrea donnelly studio

The word handmade gets tossed around a lot, but Marcell Mrsan’s chocolate-colored box calf leather oxfords are the real deal. He cuts each to measure from a single piece of leather, with limited machine sewing and no synthetic glue. They’re classic yet unpre-tentious—perfect for daytime suits. Mrsan, who hails from a line of Hungarian shoemak-ers, began studying his trade at age fourteen. “i was mystified with the magic of taking a flat piece of leather and making it into a shoe,” he says. “After thirty years, it is still magic.” Mrsan arrived in Georgia in 2011, toting a suitcase of heirloom tools to teach his craft at Savannah College of Art and Design. This year, he opened Savannah Cordwainers, a workshop and store featuring less expensive pairs for a more casual Southern clientele.

P r i c e : $850w e b : koronya.com

P r o d u c t : Men’s leather shoesM a d e i n : Savannah, GA

e s t . : 2011

koronya

STylerunners-up

carson & co.P r o d u c t :

SkirtsM a d e i n :

Charleston, SCe s t . : 2010

Style Winner

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 139

Name: Lela rose (New York, NY) ProveNaNCe: The Texas native’s high-end women’s-wear brand encompasses a diverse ready-to-wear collection as well as a bridal line, found in clothing shops from Mobile, Alabama, to the Middle East. In 2011, Rose opened a flagship shop of her own in Dallas. Her retro feminine silhouettes have attracted such marquee names as Amy Adams, Mindy Kaling, and even the Duchess of Cambridge.

Meet the

Judge➽

Can

oe: S

hirle

y A

bner

At first glance, you may be tempted to scoff at this Tree Swing 2.0. What’s wrong with old-fashioned ropes and a board seat? Or the venerable tire swing? But then you try it. The hand-formed, -sanded, and -finished maple “swingboards” feel comfortable enough for a classic playground back-and-forth, but stand up on the curved seat and the well-placed handles allow you to carve the air like a kite-boarder. The Arkansas native and Charles-ton transplant Rob Bertschy didn’t set out to reinvent the backyard swing. He first built the U-shaped balance board to keep his young children busy playing on the beach while he surfed. Hanging the contraption from a tree branch just seemed like the next logical step. But buyer beware: The kids won’t be the only ones waiting in line for a turn.

P r i c e : $130–$160 w e b : swurfer.com

P r i c e : $3,800–$12,000 w e b : firstmountainwoodcraft.com

P r i c e : $100–$275 w e b : birdstrap.com

When Carley and Shirley Abner built their home in tiny Jasper, they laid out the workshop first and planned everything else around it. “Woodworking has been an integral part of our lives for almost fifty years,” Carley says. That dedication shows in the couple’s handcrafted cedar-strip canoes, which come in three basic styles and sizes. Each hull is a near-sculptural reimagining of what a small craft can be, com-posed of hundreds of pieces of western red cedar joined bead-and-cove style, sans screws or nails. The Abners finish every element by hand, down to the cane seats. One canoe takes about four months to build, “and it’s hard to let them go,” Carley admits. “you put a lot of you in a canoe, then somebody takes it away. But that’s the satisfaction, too: watching somebody paddle something you loved on for so long.”

Leather has never been just an accessory for Anthony Vaughan. The South Texan rodeoed through college, and operates a saddle shop that caters to folks for whom a broken cinch might lead to a broken back. He tools his bird straps for similar tough duty. The handsome items—designed to carry ducks and geese in from the field—are cut from American steer hides or alligator skins. Brawny six-loop drops and heavy brass hardware can handle every-thing from teal to big honkers. After prodding from his brother, Vaughan ponied up ten bucks for an internet domain name, and now he ships his wares to hunters across North America. The first duck strap Vaughan remembers was his father’s. “One day it disintegrated,” he recalls. The ones Vaughan makes will, too, one day. your great-grandkids can worry about that.

P r i c e : $125–$1,200 w e b : jerrytaltondecoys.com

duck WorkA Tar Heel outdoorsman makes decoys the old way, preserving a proud water-fowling tradition

The first time Jerry Talton ever held a duck decoy, he carried it around for two weeks. “i couldn’t put it down,” he recalls of that formative moment in his

mid-twenties. “i love history, and it seemed to carry so many old stories.” That was about fifteen years ago, and other than those nights at the hospital when his daughter was born, he says, “there hasn’t been a night my head has hit the pillow that i wasn’t thinking about ducks and decoys.” And perfecting a particu-lar niche: carving and painting “contemporary antique” redheads and scaup and wigeon that look and feel as if they could have seen hard duty on a nineteenth-century hunt—beauti-fully wrought replicas that perform as well on a bookshelf as they do in the field.

Talton crafts the classic North Carolina Core Sound decoys from two pieces of wood hollowed out with simple tools: a bowl adze and a spoon gouge. “i want the inside to be just as pretty as the outside,” he says. “if some-one busts it open a hundred years from now, i want them to go, ‘Wow, look at all the trouble this fellow went to.’” He fashions heads simply in the Core Sound style, with dainty bills and no eyes or eye channels.

Then Talton turns back time. He colors the wood with a homemade stain—he won’t divulge its ingredients—and adds details with pigments he mixes from scratch. Finally, the antiquing begins. “There are certain places and ways decoys wear when they’re hunted,” Tal-ton says, “and i work hard to make them look greasy and used, not just aged. it’s fun when i see people arguing over which decoy is the oldest on the table when some are seventy years old and mine is a month old.”

P r o d u c t : Wooden canoesM a d e i n : Jasper, GA

e s t . : 2012

P r o d u c t : Tree swingsM a d e i n : Charleston, SC

e s t . : 2014

P r o d u c t : D-ring bird strapsM a d e i n : Winnie, TX

e s t . : 2012

First Mounta in WoodcraFtsWurFer BirdstraP leather co.

OuTDOOrS runners-up

jerry talton

P r o d u c t : Core Sound decoys

M a d e i n : Stella, NC

e s t . : 2002

Outdoors Winner

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 141

Name: T. edward Nickens (Raleigh, NC) ProveNaNCe: An expert sportsman and the author of The Total Outdoors-man Manual and an upcoming companion book on camping, Nickens puts his vast sporting knowledge to good use as a Made in the South Awards judge. “I always look for ways the nominees amplify what is essentially Southern,” he says. “Like decoys that reflect a particular body of Southern water.”

Meet the

Judge➽

For all the attention we pay food in the South, Leanne Moe-McQueen believes what we serve it on deserves equal thought—a notion mani-fested beautifully in her Speckled Ware. Tiny brown flecks of clay peek through the dishes’ soft gray glaze, and naturally undulating edges complement instead of compete with the food they hold. This rustic, ageless look landed the line in restaurants such as J.C. Holdway in Knoxville and Sean Brock’s Husk Nashville, but it’s just as happy in homes. Born from a childhood love of playing tea party and an adult fascination with pottery’s intersection of art and chemistry, all of Moe-McQueen’s plates, cups, bowls, and servingware are hand formed and glazed—and designed to last. “i hope to have people using our pieces and handing them down fifty years from now,” she says.

Whether buzzing through a bluegrass tune or tackling Beethoven’s Fifth, string musicians in North Carolina and beyond rely on John Montgomery

for exquisite handmade instruments. Mont- gomery—whose customers include members of the National Symphony Orchestra—studied his craft in France and was honing it in New york City when he decided to return to his ancestral roots in 1983. “My father’s family is from the state,” he says, “but i also worked with a lot of North Carolina musicians, so i knew there was talent here.”

Montgomery spends much of his time rehab-bing pieces, as well as maintaining the Smith-sonian’s and the Library of Congress’s stringed collections, but he also makes at least a quar-tet—two violins, a cello, and a viola—every year. Each instrument takes a month to finish, starting with his design: “They have to sound good, look good, and be easy to play,” he says. Next, he fashions a mold and selects the woods, coaxing them into graceful hourglass shapes. A wood-resin varnish, using a method he’s fine-tuned over decades, provides the final touch.

Of the pieces Montgomery made this year, his viola, constructed from a mix of American maple and European spruce, hit an especially sweet note. “it has such a rich, full tone,” he says. He knows because he tests his creations, but that’s the most playing he does. “you don’t want to come to a concert featuring me,” he jokes. “My instruments are my legacy.” P r i c e : $190 per place setting

w e b : mcqueenpottery.comP r i c e : $22,000–$23,000

w e b : montgomeryviolins.com

P r i c e : $1,000–$10,000 w e b : jerysbaskets.com

P r i c e : $22–$1,300 w e b : studiokmo.etsy.com

The idea that the places we live in and love shape us is hardly uniquely Southern, but our region’s passion for holding onto these locales—in whatever way we can—runs deep. The mapmaker and artist Karen O’Leary taps into that heritage by creating maps that high-light cities’ geometrical patterns in stark relief. The former architect’s process is simple but slow; she uses existing maps for reference, hand draws their myriad lines and shapes on crisp white watercolor paper, and uses an X-Acto knife to painstakingly cut away parks, rivers, and blocks, leaving behind a spiderweb of streets. “People often use my work to capture special moments and memories tied to a spe-cific place,” she says. She keeps popular areas in stock, but you can commission just about any city or neighborhood on the planet. G

The artisan Jery Bennett Taylor intertwines her Gullah heritage with West African tradition in each meticulously woven Beaufort Basket, paying homage to centuries of handiwork. Taylor was just five years old when she began learning the Lowcountry tradition of sweet-grass basketry from her grandmother in South Carolina. When sweetgrass became scarce, she taught herself how to use the bulrush employed in her Beaufort Baskets. Cajol-ing the darker, more brittle marsh grass into the tight spiral lines requires a skilled hand. Museums such as the Smithsonian and pri- vate collectors alike prize Taylor’s work, but that’s not what motivates her. “i was always right by my grandmother’s side, soaking up everything she did,” she says. “i do this to carry on her legacy.”

string theoryWith his world-class instruments, luthier John Montgomery carries on a centuries-old practice

P r o d u c t : Paper-cut mapsM a d e i n : Charlotte, NC

e s t . : 2009

P r o d u c t : DinnerwareM a d e i n : Maryville, TN

e s t . : 2013

P r o d u c t : BasketsM a d e i n : St. Helena Island, SC

e s t . : 1958

studio kMoMcQueen Pottery jery Bennett taylor

CraFTSrunners-up

john MontgoMery, inc.

P r o d u c t :

ViolaM a d e i n :

Raleigh, NCe s t . : 1983

Crafts Winner

Dec. 2016 | Jan. 2017 GardenandGun.com 143

Name: Natalie Chanin (Florence, AL) ProveNaNCe: Chanin switched from costume design to fashion with a mod-est line of hand-stitched clothing. Today her company, Alabama Chanin, comprises locally produced ready-to-wear collections and a brick-and-mortar location called the Factory. She also runs the School of Making, with workshops and a manufacturing facility open to textile companies seeking responsible U.S.-based production.

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