Great Smoky Holiday Arts & Crafts Festival

Unique handcrafted gifts made by members of Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community are offered as they host their annual holiday show at the Gatlinburg Convention Center. This year the event will combine its formerly separate Thanksgiving and Christmas shows. The Gatlinburg Arts and Crafts Community is the nation’s largest organization of independent artisans makes its home in Gatlinburg and the 8-mile Arts and Crafts Loop along Route 321, Buckhorn Road and Glades Road.

The Tennessee artists and craftspeople here create beautiful and useful things with techniques handed down for centuries. Find gorgeous quilts, old-fashioned straw brooms with hand-carved handles, exquisitely woven baskets, hand-dipped scented candles, Victorian ceramic pitchers, pottery, dulcimers, stuffed bears and leather vests. There is handmade jewelry, unlike anything you’ll find in the malls back home. Painters capture scenes of landscapes and mountain life, while potters and weavers work magic with clay and cloth.