The Work of Joe Webb

Issue: April 2023

Paging through Reuben Cox’s rich, atmospheric photographs in The Work of Joe Webb, transports readers to a less hectic time when both vacations and attention spans were longer.

Webb (1881-1950) designed and built a handful of singular log cabins and two frame houses in Highlands in the 1920s and ‘30s.

Some of those structures are handsomely recorded in Mr. Cox’s 2009 monograph. Set amid lush rhododendron and mountain laurel, these rustic dwellings seem to capture the essence of summertime in the Mountain South. Their simple-yet-dignified interiors center on large stone fireplaces; the only decorative flourishes are the whimsical tree-branch tangles used for staircase balustrades and gallery railings.

Webb and his work crew built the homes entirely by hand, without power tools. Instead, the workers used crosscut saws, adzes for corner notching and drawknives to debark the logs, which were local chestnut and pine found near the work sites. Cabin-building was not a lucrative business; these same men also made – and sold – moonshine. One freelance distiller, Webb’s stepson Furman Vinson, had a special reduced price for the police.

Mr. Cox is more interested in capturing the “artistic whole” of Webb’s work than in providing a record of each building and says almost nothing about where they can be found or the people who lived in them. But Ran Shaffner’s Heart of the Blue Ridge reveals that inhabitants of Joe Webb houses have included professors from Vanderbilt and Clemson; a husband and wife who farmed silver foxes; and actress Collin Wilcox, who played Mayella Violet Ewell in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve been in a few of Webb’s houses and they are literally awesome.

Though Mr. Cox’s images in The Work of Joe Webb were made in the 21st century, they resemble the book’s historic photos of Webb and of his projects under construction. Their timeless quality stems partly from the older, large-format camera used by Mr. Cox, who grew up in Highlands and spent 20 years in NYC before moving to Los Angeles with his wife and daughter. There he is a sought-after luthier and his guitars are played by the likes of Jackson Browne, Jeff Tweedy and The National. “Really Good Rejects,” Alice Gu’s documentary about Reuben’s guitars, was premiered at last year’s SXSW festival.

If you don’t know someone who owns a Joe Webb cabin, you can visit the Highland Hiker and On the Verandah restaurant, which were built by Webb (indeed the latter was originally a windowless speakeasy called the Dugout, too conveniently located near the bibulous builder’s home and neighborhood of Webbmont).

Reuben Cox’s The Work of Joe Webb is one supremely talented craftsman’s tribute to another.