The gallery, by comparison to others I’ve seen, was small but utilized as much of the space they could find to suspend things, put them on glass shelving, or showcase them with other objets d’art. Naturally, I learned from a quick perusal on the walls, from several ceramic pieces, that the pear is almost as important as the pineapple to South Carolina. One of the artists must have had fun with another ceramic pear by fashioning the naked body of a woman, as the pear is one of the 4 common shapes. There was also a great, recycled metal, guitar playing frog, egrets galore, some postcards with original prints on them, bins of black and white photographs, and the very first jewelry I had seen made of sweet grass. There were also the famous sweet grass baskets and we had already learned about their history and place.

The center seemed to be swimming in an immense blob of blue; blue pottery, blue platters, blue fish, blue vases, even a blue pineapple; talk about artistic license. There were also some sea creatures as star fish, shells and the like.

Two people were behind the counter, and I ventured to ask one of them if urns were of any particular significance to Charleston. They both looked a bit perplexed and said they were not aware of such import and, naturally, they wanted to know why, etc.. In the first three hotels we had been at, a great number of wall art showed medieval urns, with inscriptions in Italian which I read, but nevertheless, did not give me any insight as to what the urn was doing there, in multiples.

The Charleston Crafts Gallery is the producer of the Spoleto Art Festival which happens here every year on the last week in May and first week in June. For more information on this fabulous event, go to their website .