Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA)

Founded in 1965 and housed in the Frank L. Horton Museum Center at 924 South Main Street in Old Salem, MESDA holds what its own literature calls the finest collection of its kind in the nation — furniture, ceramics, metalwork, needlework, paintings, and prints made and used by early settlers of the American South. The research center carries documented records on more than 60,000 Southern artisans across 125 trades, and a photographic catalog of roughly 15,000 objects. Scholars use it. So can you.