How Catawba Valley Potters Are Keeping A Rare Craft Alive
A recently discovered clay deposit is breathing new life into Catawba Valley's vanishing pottery tradition, a cultural rarity rooted in North Carolina's foothills.
BURKE COUNTY, North Carolina—In the spring of 2024, Matt Hallyburton was looking for another clay source for his now well-established pottery studio in Rutherford College.
When he reached out to a friend within the brick industry with extensive knowledge of clay deposits all over the southeastern United States, Hallyburton didn’t realize he was about to be directed to one of Catawba Valley's largest known clay veins. Hollowed out by the river of the same name, the Catawba Valley begins near Old Fort in western McDowell County and runs east a couple of hundred miles as the Piedmont plateau opens up to flatlands northwest of Charlotte.
The uniqueness of this workable earth material is what makes Catawba Valley pottery so special. It can’t be found anywhere else in the world.
Catawba Valley pottery is one of the foothill region’s rarest cultural contributions.
Centered around alkaline glaze stoneware, it blends ash and glass with clay deposited in the lowland bottoms along the Catawba River, giving the pottery an idiosyncratic finish.
The tradition is characterized by its distinctive style, combining earthy and amber tones with a smooth feel and modest shine. Its durability also enables artists to produce pottery much taller and larger than ceramic pieces that rely on commercial clays, such as those common to other pottery studios throughout western North Carolina.
Hallyburton learned this clay deposit was hidden under land owned by the Foothills Conservancy of North Carolina (FCNC)—a nonprofit dedicated to protecting the region's ecosystems—within the boundaries of its beloved Oak Hill Community Park and Forest, a 652-acre area just a few miles west of Freedom High School.
While high-quality clay is often buried beneath other soil and sediments, this vein was practically “sitting on top of the ground,” Hallyburton recalls. He then contacted FCNC’s Stewardship Director Ryan Sparks about the prospect of harvesting it.
The identified vein happened to be a rather hefty deposit, likely more than enough to supply Hallyburton’s needs for decades. A full-time potter will go through four to six tons of clay a year. So, he knew this roughy one-tenth-an-acre slip had to be shared.
Hallyburton immediately called up his friend, Kim Ellington, a seasoned potter living in Vale, North Carolina. With a career in Catawba Valley pottery that spans more than 40 years, Ellington is arguably one of the most prominent living figures still working in the tradition.
The pottery world is small, and the Catawba Valley pottery community is even smaller.
Catawba Valley pottery has continued for roughly two centuries, beginning with its founding father, Daniel Seagle, in the early 1800s. Ellington, now in his 60s, studied under the tutelage of legendary Catawba Valley potter Burlon Craig before establishing his studio. Craig not only imparted traditional ceramic techniques but shared with Ellington his well-guarded maps of the area’s richest known clay deposits.
He believes Craig may have even dug from this same spot back in the 1960s. Each deposit bears unique mineral markers and elemental combinations that a trained potter can discern with mystifying precision.
“I can tell whether a pot came from the Catawba Valley area,” Ellington says. “I can tell what came from the Seagrove area. The characteristics of the clay speak to you. The clay that you get here is not going to be the same type you get in South Carolina or Virginia.”
This rich vein of Catawba Valley clay is buried beneath a few inches of topsoil and its presence isn’t ideal for farming purposes. Hallyburton and Ellington understood this and believed they had a solution that would appeal to all parties involved, including FCNC, which intends to use the land for its community agricultural program.
After harvesting a strip of clay adequate to supply both the potters’ needs for years to come, they plan to fill it back in with soil much more suitable for agriculture.
“Clay is poorly equipped to drain water,” Hallyburton explains. “Nothing grows in it either. It’s not good for agricultural land and it’s great for our needs. So I think it’s a win-win, if we can get it out with minimal impact on the land. Currently, the stuff we’re looking at is not being farmed. This is a one-and-done thing.”
In addition to supplying their studio needs, both potters are interested in leveraging the clay deposit to further educate locals about Catawba Valley pottery and to preserve the region’s tradition for future generations. They hope to do this in partnership with FCNC and other educational sites, such as Hart Square Village in Catawba County, which boasts the largest collection of restored nineteenth-century log cabins in the United States and focuses on preserving traditional arts and crafts.
FCNC is thrilled to collaborate.
“We are excited to be a part of this project to keep this culturally important tradition alive in our region,” Sparks says. “It is such a unique opportunity with the convergence of art, history, conservation, and natural resource management. It really opens up a whole new avenue of outreach and education that is not typically associated with trails and outdoor recreation.”
Fast forward to November 2024: Hallyburton, Ellington, and a cadre of local potters were able to successfully excavate “a supply of clay that will last me the rest of my making career,” the Rutherford College native confirms. It took them roughly one morning a week to sample the soil in a grid pattern, determining which spots contained the least amount of sand and where the deepest deposits lay.
These core samples revealed the ideal clay could be found 10 to 20 feet in any direction of the identified site.
“Kim taught me that a good clay must check several boxes,” Hallyburton explains. “Can it turn on its own? Will it take the alkaline glaze? Can it withstand the rigors of Catawba Valley wood firing? There were other practical concerns we had to sort out like shrinkage rate, water absorption, glaze fit, etc.”
While they dug out the clay over the span of several days, the testing that goes into the process took months.
“Once we had the key spots marked we dug a few test pits to do some larger-scale testing,” he continues. “It’s important the keep each layer of the deposit separate so that you can see if there are issues that will impact large-scale extraction. The test pits gave us enough clay to make a good amount of work. You need pots in all parts of a big wood kiln to really understand what it can do both in practical terms and aesthetically.”
Not only does Hallyburton now have a supply of clay that very well could outlast him, but he says he’ll “always remember” his conversations with Ellington and “the knowledge gained” from the entire experience.
The cavities created were quickly refilled with local soil, and the grass replanted overtop, leaving behind few traces of what Hallyburton describes as “a historic clay pit [that] will help the Catawba Valley pottery tradition continue.” That is their other great hope for the whole project.
Both potters want the public to understand what is at stake here, to appreciate the incredible significance of its regional ceramic culture.
“It’s in a very unique situation in the pottery world,” explains Ellington. “The pottery that’s been made in this area is recognized by ceramicists all over the world. It can be compared to some of the strongest pottery traditions across the globe.”
Some twenty years his junior, Hallyburton is quick to remind locals of the region’s cultural treasure: “Catawba Valley pottery is one of the only existing American stoneware traditions that’s still going on today. That’s why it’s worth talking about.”
This partnership with FCNC is helping to keep the art alive. When asked how many are continuing this tradition today, a smile steals across both of their faces. “The bulk of them are sitting at this table,” Hallyburton laughs.
Ellington expects to retire in the next decade, while Hallyburton currently instructs several young potters he believes will carry Catawba Valley pottery far into the future.
This “monumental” clay deposit makes that possible.
Local pottery! I had no idea we had a tradition original to our area.
That's a wonderful surprise, and it's nice to see the many ways FC is involved in making our region a better place