Pottery pros and casual crafters alike have a new community to get fired up about. Located off of Highway 105, The Pottery Lot is a community pottery studio and retail gallery that offers a welcoming environment to get creative with clay.
“There’s not a ton of community studios to go do pottery, which is one of the reasons we wanted to open this one,” said owner and co-founder Emily Roberts as she walked around the rows of pottery wheels in the open, bright studio.
The studio’s building is over 100 years old and used to be a general store in Sherwood. In the 1990s, the building was cut into three pieces and moved down the mountain to its current location in Boone.
“You can actually see where they cut the building into sections to move it,” said co-owner Michael Roberts as he pointed to a seam on the original hardwood floor. Before Emily and Michael Roberts purchased the building, it had been a music shop.
The Pottery Lot’s retail gallery opened Labor Day weekend. The shelves are stocked with the High Country’s finest potters, including well-known local potters and student artists. The studio spaces will be opening mid-september.
The building is surrounded by green space and a clear mountain creek runs through the lawn, fish darting through the glistening water. A porch wraps around the building, providing plenty of outdoor space to make pottery or to relax in a rocking chair overlooking the creek.
After being empty since 2020, the property has a new life as The Pottery Lot, ready to carry on North Carolina’s rich pottery tradition as one of Boone’s only community pottery studios.
“I love the community around the studio,” Emily Roberts said. “Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve always found somewhere to go do pottery.”
One of the few places to take pottery classes in the Boone area is the community craft classes through App State called Craft Enrichment, but getting a spot in the class is difficult and parking can be an issue, Emily Roberts said.
So Emily Roberts and her husband Michael set off to create a studio of their own and build their own pottery community.
Emily Roberts fell in love with pottery at the community studio in Montreat. She was inspired by the accessible classes and the strong community.
“We want to take a lot from what Montreat does, because it’s special,” Emily Roberts said. “You don’t see that anywhere else.”
Starting in mid-September, The Pottery Lot will offer classes in handbuilding and the wheel, as well as one-on-one lessons with instructors and classes for kids. Classes will be taught by local potters, who can also sell and display their art in the studio’s retail gallery at the entrance.
Like the Montreat studio, classes at The Pottery Lot will be project-based, focusing on making specific creations like mugs, colanders or hand-built pumpkins. The project-based classes will range from two to three hours, but as the studio grows they hope to add eight-week classes where community members can come on a regular, weekly basis.
For Emily and Michael Roberts, opening a community studio includes having a space for children to create pottery. The couple introduced their daughter to pottery in Montreat last summer.
“We came back home and there was nowhere for her to go or anything family friendly,” Emily Roberts said. “So really, we’re opening the space for the community and introducing the next generation to pottery.”
Bringing people into the clay community and fostering creativity is central to The Pottery Lot’s mission.
“It seems like when you’re in a studio, no matter if people are young, old, what kind of walks of life they live or background, that all kind of just falls out of place, and everybody just focuses on pottery and helping each other,” Emily Roberts said. “And I really like that community, so that’s what we want to do here.”
