Museum celebrates fall line culture 11/27/2009 12:33 AM By DR. TOM MACK Columnist
The geographic term "fall line" refers to the point where a coastal plain ends and an upland region begins.
In the case of South Carolina, the fall line runs from Cheraw to North Augusta. To the northwest of the line is the Piedmont and to the southeast is the Lowcountry.
Where rivers bisect the line, the drop in elevation often results in rapids and waterfalls, and the consequent energy release associated with these landscape features led early entrepreneurs to construct mills operated by water power. Thus, because of their position on the fall line, a number of river towns in our region, including Camden, Columbia and Augusta, developed rapidly as centers for the processing of agricultural products and lumber.
Since 2002, the South Carolina Fall Line Consortium, composed of 10 institutions in the middle of our state, has focused attention on the tangible history of the inhabitants of this transitional zone between the mountains and the sea.
Until March 22, a special exhibition titled "From the Pee Dee to the Savannah: Art and Material Culture from South Carolina's Fall Line Region" is on display at the South Carolina State Museum in Columbia. The exhibition, which dominates the first-floor Lipscomb Gallery, includes "furniture, paintings, textiles, pottery, silver, weapons, architecture and other objects that were made, sold and used by individuals from the fall line region."
Area residents will be, I think, particularly intrigued by articles produced locally for, as readers may already have assumed, Aiken is also a fall line municipality. Among a number of artifacts in the show with ties to our town are two photographs by J.A. Palmer, who set up a studio in Aiken around 1870 and produced for the next 30 years innumerable images that he marketed to those who regularly wintered in our town.
His specialty appeared to be stereograph cards made of a pair of pictures or one picture composed of two superimposed images; when viewed through a stereoscope, an optical instrument with two eyepieces, the stereograph card achieves a three-dimensional effect. Palmer is thought to have made 1,000 stereograph images. One in the current show features a panoramic view of the Horse Creek Valley. The other depicts an African-American family managing an oxcart loaded with cotton. The latter is the kind of image sold to tourists as a slice of local color.
Besides these photographs, Aiken County is represented in this exhibition by a number of items related to the life and career of William Gregg.
Long before he founded the Graniteville Company in 1845 and became the "Father of Southern Cotton Manufacturing," Gregg was a jeweler and watchmaker in Columbia. On display at the State Museum are a silver cup or "cann" that Gregg fashioned and a tall case clock bearing his name and the words "Columbia, SC."
Gregg is also represented by a striking portrait of his two daughters painted around 1850 by an unnamed itinerant artist. In this painting, the older daughter holds a bouquet of flowers, which attracts the attention of the younger sibling. The pair are framed by a dramatic backdrop; a red curtain is pulled back to reveal a verdant scene illuminated by a colorful sunset.
The show also abounds in fine examples of local ceramics. Besides many pieces of utilitarian Edgefield pottery, including some of the large-scale stoneware vessels made by the enslaved potter David Drake, there is one item of fine china produced by the Southern Porcelain Company, located near present-day Bath because of the ready availability of rich kaolin deposits nearby. The teapot, made by that company in 1887, features a brown glaze reminiscent of the type developed by the Rockingham Pottery in England and an image in relief of Rebecca at the well from the book of Genesis. A popular device for domestic articles of the period, the image in question recalls the story of how Abraham's elderly steward chose Rebecca as Isaac's future bride because of her kindness in offering him water after a long journey.
"From the Pee Dee to the Savannah: Art and Material Culture of South Carolina's Fall Line Region" runs until March 22. The State Museum is open Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday from 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.southcarolinastatemuseum.org.
A Carolina Trustee Professor, Dr. Mack holds the G.L. Toole Chair at USC Aiken.
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