Haystack: The Starting of a New Generation

Interview Contact: Mrs. Priscilla Merritt

I asked Mrs. Priscilla Merritt to do an interview with me about Haystack Mountain School of Crafts because I've always wanted to know how it started out. Francis Merritt, her husband, the first Director of Haystack, was attending a conference for Haystack in Washington D.C., when I conducted this interview. Mrs. Merritt's home seemed like a Haystack Art Gallery.

"[Haystack] started out with a group of craftsmen [who] arrived around the Belfast-Camden area after World War II.

Mrs. Mary Beasom Bishop who sponsered the school came to Liberty, Maine, with friends in early fall of 1950. With her sister Margaret Beasom Swatt from Nashua, New Hampshire, who knew these craftsmen, [she] had a meeting to see about starting a crafts school. They were interested in getting a sponser and [they were] unable to finance it themselves. Mrs. Bishop became interested and put up the money to build the school in Liberty, Maine, at the foot of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. They built new buildings. One [person] was in charge of administering the finances to get the buildings going. One of the things they needed was a director. None of the crafts people involved felt that he/she was capable of directing.

Francis Merritt was the director of the Flint Institute of Art [where Mrs. Bishop was on the board of trustees in Flint, Michigan]. She approached him and asked, since it was only a summer program, could [he] direct it in the summer? The Institute released him for the months of July and August of 1951, and that's when Haystack School fist started.

There were three studios that they had work lined up for. One was pottery, one was what they called block-printing and silk-screening and [the last was] a little bit of graphic arts much to start a weaving studio, but they didn't have a stuido built. They [also] didn't have any of the weaving equipment. They had spent a good deal of their money getting the pottery [studio ready]. The potter's wheels and the kilns and all of those things [had been bought]. The wood shop was already there because there was a wood worker in the area. We just had to walk down the road to that studio.

[When] we came [to Liberty] in 1951, I started a weaving studio for them. We managed to borrow a couple of looms. We had the first weaving studio in the end of the main building; [it later became] the lounge. The quarters were much smaller than [the present ones in Sunshine]. So that got it off. We were there ten years.

The Sunshine site was chosen because Route 3 was being re-routed. In ten years [we] had gotten knid of crowded; we couldn't afford to lost any of the acreage [to Route 3].

So we stared to look around. By that time the sculptor William Muir of Stonington was on the Board of Trustees. He suggested Deer Isle: one [site] was out at Sunshine; the other was down Crocket's Cove. We had [our] choice. We chose [the Sunshine site].

The students come from just everywhere. The crafts movement started growing [and] we were really in on the beginning of it. Some of our first students came from Michigan and New York and Cleveland because we had friends [in those places]. [The communication was] person-to-person [telling] how exciting and interesting it was.

Actually, when we moved up here I had another full-time job. I was the head of dietitian at the Waldo County Hospitial. I enjoyed that very much. We lost a cook in Liberty about ten days before the [old] school opened. Our Assistant Director Bill Brown said to me, "Well, you can get a new weaving teacher a lot easier than you can get another cook. Why don't you take over the kitchen at least for the time being." So I cooked for them and never went back into the weaving studio at the old school. When we came up here we engaged Kay Milan immediately to do the cooking at Haystack [in Sunshine]. I carried on some of the activities [that] I had helped them with when we were at the school in Liberty, [but] I was no longer teaching weaving.

[My husband] was the Executive Director of Haystack, [like Howard Evans is now] for twenty-seven years. He is now [the] "Director of Mediocrity".

I think [there's] definitely [a future] here [for Haystack] because its a very well incorporated institution that has a strong Board of Trustees from all over the country. It's nationally and internationally known. There's no reason for it not to continue. Its continued right along nicely even when my husband retired."

Cheryl Davis