Come tour our gourd museum, retail shops, and beautiful grounds. Located five miles from Helen in the mountains of beautiful northeast Georgia, we're the oldest retail gourdcrafting business in the United States! It was 1976 when Priscilla Wilson first began experimenting with gourds and we began selling her wares at craft fairs. At that time we weren’t aware that any other gourd artists existed! Since then Priscilla has made decorative containers carved with wildflower designs, planters, rolling toys, calligraphy gourds, pyrography, ornaments, dolls, natural utensils, puzzles, drums, gourdhead masks, and just about anything else one can imagine. Our corporation name is Gourdcraft Originals, Inc. We call it the gourd life. To us this phrase has come to mean more than just working with gourds; it means being open to the unpredictable movement of the Creative Force in our lives. Thus our dream of developing the definitive gourd shop has expanded over the years to include more of Priscilla’s efforts in collaboration with nature: Gourd Impressions© (patented stoneware pottery molded in gourds); Sticks and Stone-wear© (natural material jewelry); Gword-play© (notecards and more featuring gourdhead characters); and textiles printed with her original wildflower designs. Both Priscilla and Janice, who manages the business and decorates our spaces, were teachers in the past; so we like to incorporate an educational component into everything we do! Learn more in our memoir, Gourd Girls!
