As the involvement of men like these suggests, the tendency at Williamsburg was to rely on people with modern know-how, and encourage them to act a historical part. This was not wholly unlike the situation in the Highlands, where the industrially trained Edward Worst was considered the authority on weaving. But the narrative was very different from that at Penland. Rather than trying to preserve historic craft as a living tradition, Rockefeller was interested only in its outward appearance. For his patriotic purposes, all that was needed was a compelling evocation of America’s supposedly
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