| The Treasure Chest,
founded by Hugh C. Brown, Edwin Brown and W.H. Lashley flourished as a
retail outlet for local craft in the Asheville area from approximately
1926 until about 1931 when it became known as the Three Mountaineers
and combined with the the Log Cabin. The Three Mountaineers
flourished until its dissolution in 1992.
The Brown bothers, Edwin and Hugh, were engaged in a variety of retail businesses. Their hardware business was the location for the initial inventory of craft items. They soon realized the great appeal that handcrafted items had for urban dwellers and their hardware business eventually became secondary to arts and craft retailing. They began their craft endeavor at the local level but were soon providing craft items to representatives in New York, Boston, Chicago and eventually a representative in Los Angeles. The crafts were drawn from various artisans in the Asheville and western North Carolina area and included carving, pottery, weaving, hooked rugs, metal-craft, glass and other material formats. Even though some of the artisans were not immediately from the Western North Carolina area and several were a significant distance away, The Three Mountaineers pottery was always marketed as "mountain pottery." |
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W.H. Lashley, the third partner, was an artist
as well as an entrepreneur and marketer. He developed a series of
catalogs of the crafts by carefully drawing each of the items, and
contributed many of the designs and drawings used in the early craft
catalogs. One folksy folio catalog numbered over 50 pages and is the
best reflection of mountain craft for the 1920's and early 1930's for
the area. The quaint line drawings of Lashley gave way to photographic
reproductions of craft items in the 1940's and forward, though many of
the same craft items persisted. Lashley's advertising often used
the title of their enterprise, The Treasure Chest, literally, and
many of their catalogs followed this theme. For example, the cover to
the June 1927 Treasure Chest catalog to the left evokes the romantic
notion of pirates and treasure. However, the focus of the Treasure Chest
always remained high-quality mountain goods, and frequently invoked the
"Appalachianess" of place to suggest authenticity and to
ensure quality.
B.P. |
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