Why it belongs in ORBIS
Grovewood Gallery presents American art and craft across two floors in Asheville's historic Grovewood Village, with work by makers from around the country. Established in 1992, the gallery occupies a site once used by Biltmore Industries for weaving and woodworking. Visitors can explore studio furniture upstairs and outdoor sculpture alongside smaller works ranging from glass to ceramics and jewellery.
Grovewood Gallery occupies the former weaving and woodworking complex of Biltmore Industries, on eleven acres beside the Omni Grove Park Inn in Asheville. Edith Vanderbilt founded that enterprise with two teachers, Eleanor Vance and Charlotte Yale. By the late 1920s, under Fred Loring Seely, it ran more than forty looms turning out handwoven wool fabric that shipped as far as China and Uruguay.
The customer list from those years ran to Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Helen Keller, along with several American presidents and first ladies.
The gallery that fills the site now represents over 350 artists and craftspeople from across the United States, in a collection running from tableware to furniture. It is not a museum shop bolted onto a historic site. Working artist studios sit on the grounds, and craft demonstrations run through the year alongside rotating exhibitions.
The rest of the village holds the Biltmore Industries Homespun Museum and an antique car museum. A docent-led history tour ends inside the original Dye House, which is otherwise closed to the public and still holds the dye vats and the spinning mule.