Kayland Partee
Mississippi's famous traditional chair craftsman, Greg Harkins
In his feature story in this “Deep South Design” issue, contributor William Browning recalls the words of a cobbler he once knew, mourning that our “throwaway world” has undone its own need for craftsmanship. Browning drives out to the home of premier Mississippi chairmaker Greg Harkins. Harkins, now seventy-six, still creates chairs “the old way”—drawn from a trusted tradition that has gone untinkered with since the 1800s, passed down from one generation to the next.
[Read Browning's story on Greg Harkins, here.]
In the story, Browning obsesses over the anxieties of such a craft coming to an end, the possibility that the technique and the artistry will be inevitably lost with the last of the masters like Harkins. But while he worries over the future, and tries to get Harkins to worry with him, the craftsman keeps turning back to the past, speaking of his ancestors, his mentors, his hometown—the things that came before him, shaped him.
At the very same time, in Lafayette, Louisiana architect Kevin Gossen is making every effort imaginable to return an old iconic building to the glory of its past life. Students at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette are creating a haven of creative thinking using the most primitive of architectural forms. And New Orleans artist Carlie Trosclair is making art of broken plaster and torn wallpaper in abandoned buildings, meditating on the past and potential future inhabitants within their walls.
As insistent as the new may seem—the past presses forward, in our designs and in us, too.
