Smitty (25)

Woodworking craftsman from the Ozarks region of SW Missouri. Although he made and sold a variety of cedar items from his store, Smitty's Pick and Paw Shop (near Branson, Missouri), he was best-known for his loose-jointed wooden dolls that would "dance" atop an attached wooden paddle (a traditional Ozark toy). The dolls came in two sizes, and he also made a dancing hound dog and a dancing Missouri mule. Smitty and his dolls appeared at numerous craft fairs across southern Missouri and northern Arkansas in the sixties and seventies.