Penland School of Crafts is a national center for craft education dedicated to helping people live creative lives. Located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Penland offers one-, two-, and eight-week workshops in books & paper, clay, drawing, glass, iron, metals, photography, printmaking and letterpress, textiles, and wood. The school also sponsors artists' residencies, community education programs, and a craft gallery.



Penland School of Crafts was started by a remarkable woman named Lucy Morgan--always known as Miss Lucy--who first came to Penland, North Carolina in 1920 as a teacher at the Appalachian School which occupied Horner Hall, Ridgeway, and several other buildings still in use today. In 1923, she spent three months at Berea College learning to weave. When she returned to Penland she began the Penland Weavers, a cottage industry which provided local women with looms and materials and then marketed their handwoven goods.

In 1928, she persuaded noted weaving expert Edward F. Worst to visit Penland and work with the weavers. When he returned in 1929, several out-of-state students joined a group of local women for a one-week class and Penland School was born. Within a few years, Morgan added other crafts and began to raise funds and construct buildings.