Treasured Chests Opening Events

Opening day programming includes a lecture and two demonstration sessions from Jerome Bias, a North Carolina furniture maker and cultural heritage practitioner specializing in reproducing 18th- and 19th-century southern furniture using period techniques. Demonstrations will be held at 10 AM and 11 AM, with a lecture at 1 PM. 

In his lecture “The Persistence of Hope: Seeing ourselves in the Decorative Arts”, Bias will discuss how his experience as a cabinetmaker, living historian, and hearth cook led him to explore the connection between his family’s history of enslavement, southern decorative arts, and the question of "what did hope look like for the enslaved?" 

Bias will offer two demonstrations: “Woodworking Basics” and “Dovetails and Saws: Woodworkers Tool Talk.” 

Woodworking Basics Demonstration - 10 AM
This demonstration offers kids of all ages a chance to see what tools enslaved and later freed African American craftsmen used. Attendees will get the chance to handle the tools and use them. In the process, participants will learn sawing, drilling, and planning skills.

Dovetails & Saws Woodworkers Tool Talk - 11 AM
This tool talk will be geared toward adults with questions about techniques and processes that the craftsmen used in creating the furniture that is in the exhibition. Participants will learn about different types of joinery such as mortise and tenons, dovetail joinery, and edge jointed boards.

The lecture and the demonstrations will be open to the public at no charge, but reservations are requested.  

Jerome Bias’s programs are funded in part by a grant from Black History Commission of Arkansas through the Curtis H. Sykes Memorial Grant program.