For Pat Broyles of Grottoes, it wouldn't be Christmas without cornhusks -- her old fashioned Santa Clauses, Amish doll families, friendly angels and inhabited Noah's arks fashioned from cornhusks. "It is a very old traditional craft," Pat says. "The Indians taught this to the early American settlers and they used it for everything. No old examples are left, though. I guess they really never thought of it as an art and because it was so plentiful they didn't save anything made of cornhusks and pass them down."
Pat's cornhusk figures, however, are already collectors' items. "I try to make mine with a lot of care so that they can be passed down," she continues, explaining that each figure is formed by wrapping cornhusks around single wires. Once the figure is fleshed out, dyed cornhusks are used for the costumes, and each creation is finished off with a hand-painted face and brushed with a sealer/preservative.
That quality of workmanship has helped her folk art pieces, such as the Santas and Noah's arks, gain national recognition. Pat's work has been featured on the cover of Early American Life and in a full window display in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's gift shop in New York -- accomplishments that most crafters only dream about achieving.
But Pat worked hard for her success. Her first creation, back in 1982, was a cornhusk wreath from Family Circle magazine. "A friend called me up one day and she asked me if I wanted to come over and try to make those cornhusk flowers so we got out all of the pans and the dye and we started making flowers and it was a total flop," she recalls with a laugh. "But even though they didn't turn out at all, they were so pretty and I just fell in love with them."
Her fascination took root, and after a few lessons from another cornhusk dollmaker, Pat began making colonial dolls. Her first original venture was an Amish family -- father, mother, son, daughter and a horse and buggy to take them to town. From there she moved into designing and making her own folk art creations. "By folk art, I mean early 19th century pieces of folk art that you see in museums," she explains. "I do a lot of research in museums when I am in and out of state, and I also read and read and read. Most of that folk art is made out of wood, so I try to make the same thing -- only with cornhusks."
Eventually, Pat turned her cornhusk creations into a full time business from a cluttered studio attached to her antique-filled log farmhouse. Making the cornhusk figures involves hours spent preparing the cornhusks and still more time to shape the dolls themselves. "I am working with cornhusks, I am not working with fiber or wood, and they are very hard to work with," she elaborates. Despite the difficulty involved, however, Pat finds a great deal of both artistic and personal satisfaction in re-creating her folk art pieces from the same material early Americans used so extensively on their farms.
"It makes my heart happy. I have just really fallen in love with folk art," Pat says with a laugh. "The people that tried to peddle and sell their folk art back in the 19th centuries, it was as if they couldn't give it away -- and they died poor. And here today they are in museums. And it is so sad because those people never got recognized for what they did," she concludes, pausing for a moment to sort out her thoughts. "I guess the reason that I am really into this is because I like antiques so much."