If not for a visit to Seagrove, North Carolina's famed pottery region, Linda Dalton might never have started to play with clay.
"It was in the '70s. We were living in Charlotte, and I had a friend who loved pottery and came to visit and wanted to go to Seagrove," Dalton recalls. "I had no idea how pottery was made. That was the most amazing day. It looked like so much fun."
Dalton, 63, is now entrenched in that world. She's a full-time potter, and she and her husband, Jim, moved to West End near Pinehurst, a little south of Seagrove, to set up a studio. The couple have a booth at this weekend's Sanford Pottery Festival and for the first time will be at Artsplosure in Raleigh, on May 15-16.
Nothing in Dalton's past prepared her for a life as an artist, she said. She grew up in Laurel Springs, and her childhood was spent helping run her family's business, Myers Motel, off the Blue Ridge Parkway.
As an adult, she dabbled in "little craftsy things," she said. "But as soon as something would go wrong, I'd get frustrated and not do it anymore."
After that trip to Seagrove she started to follow the craft, returning to the area regularly with friends, talking to potters and attending craft fairs.
In 1990, with her twin sons a little older, Dalton took her first pottery class.
"It was just enough to know I wanted to do more, although I was pretty terrible," she said. "I'd sit at the wheel and I'd lose the pot, but it didn't matter because it felt so good in my hands." Life got in the way until 1996, when Dalton resumed classes at a community center. Her work improved, and she set up shop at home with a wheel and kiln. She joined a local guild, Carolina ClayMatters, and took workshops on techniques, including wood kiln firing, which she and Jim did with another couple.
"With wood-firing, the effects of the fire on the pots is something you can't control," she said. "That's part of what drew me to that. It's always a surprise. It may not be a good surprise, but when it is, it's all the better."
She churned out functional clayware and gave the pieces away. A ClayMatters pottery sale a decade ago was her first time selling work. "Without that show, I'm not sure if I would ever have had the nerve to do more," she said. "We sold a good bit, enough to be very encouraged."
Going decorative
Dalton still enjoys making functional pottery, but she is known for her colorful horsehair and saggar-fired pieces.
Both techniques start with clay pots that are dried and then covered in a fine mixture of clay particles and water, called a slip, which allows polishing of the surface to a smooth finish.
With the horse hair work, a piece is fired twice more at high temperatures. After the second firing, while the clay is still hot, pieces of horse hair are draped onto it and burned, leaving black squiggly lines that make each piece unique. The pot is then treated with an iron solution to achieve its golden color. Dalton will make custom pots using the hair of a specific horse.
Saggar-fired pottery starts out like horse-hair work, but the decoration comes from a different source. A saggar is any closed container used inside the kiln to hold the pottery. Along with the pot, chemicals and organic materials are placed inside the saggar. Their reaction to the heat gives the pot its colors and shading.
"What draws me to saggar is the same as with the wood firing - not knowing what it's going to look like when it comes out of the kiln," Dalton said.
Moving to the country
The Daltons became more serious about pottery when they moved to Moore County in 2005, building a home and studio on 11 acres in West End. The studio has a small gallery space, which is open by appointment.
Jim, having retired as an investment counselor, went from supportive spouse to business partner. "He's in the studio right now, making frames for the wall pieces," Dalton said. "And as far as going to shows, I couldn't do that by myself."
The move to the country inspired one of Dalton's signature embellishments: She places fern fronds and wildflower leaves on the clay in the kiln, and when they burn away, they leave carbon images.
Another specialty is framed ceramic tiles, which came about serendipitously.
"Instead of making a perfectly good pot to test firing techniques and then potentially ruining it, we started testing on tiles," she said.
"Our little test tiles were coming out really nice, so we started putting a little backboard on them, and eventually we started framing them. They're long and skinny, and everyone likes them because they'll hang in so many small spaces."
Another twist was to add driftwood to the lids of pots. She recently added bamboo, too, as well as dividing tiles with pieces of bamboo for an Oriental look.
Dalton expects her work to keep evolving.
"Yesterday, I threw pots and threw pots and I was so tired and I loved it," she said. "It's like a total second life."
Dalton was in her 40s before she took her first pottery class; now her five grandchildren are reserving studio time.
"When they come to visit, one of the things we always do is make pottery," she said. "They love it."
