As the retail industry gears up for another busy holiday season of sales, some local potters have joined together to spotlight the business of their craft and help the public understand what goes into shaping clay into a work of art.

Dillsboro will host the first annual Western North Carolina Pottery Festival from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 5 (rain or shine) as a celebration of pottery from some of the leading potters in the Southeast. The event is free and open to the public. Food concessions along with free and paid parking will be available. Booths will be set up along Front Street and pottery demonstrations will take place along Church Street, which runs perpendicular to Front Street.

Among the more than 25 featured potters will be Dillsboro’s own Brant Barnes of Riverwood Pottery and Travis Berning and Joe Frank McKee of Tree House Pottery. One of the highlights of the event will be Dallas, Texas, potter Chris Gray, who will demonstrate his fast-fire kiln. Gray can heat his kiln up to 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit and back down in two and a half hours — a process that normally takes about eight hours.

“We’ll have a wide range of pottery from folk to contemporary, and it will be a quality representation,” McKee explained. “Everybody that’s coming is rock solid. Most have their own studios and galleries. We also have several Southern Highland Craft Guild members as well.”

Some may look at local potters as competitors vying for the same retail customers, but Barnes, a potter in Dillsboro since 1980, doesn’t see it that way.

“We advertise together,” he said, explaining that his studio joins up with several other local pottery studios to promote retail sales.

Since there are no other major pottery festivals west of Marion in Western North Carolina, Barnes said, the Dillsboro festival fills a niche.

“We just saw this as a way to promote pottery,” said Barnes.

Barnes’ pottery studio has been filmed by local TV stations over the years and recently earned national fame with a four-minute piece on the Home & Garden Television channel.

Some potters create functional pieces — pots, bowls, plates, goblets, and dinnerware items — while others produce pieces for ornamentation and home decoration. The challenge, Barnes says, is to do both.

In addition to showcasing local and regional potters, the festival will work to educate the public about the process of making pottery — from forming a shape out of clay to spinning it on a wheel to trimming and finishing to firing and glazing.

That’s a process that can take an average of two months, Barnes explains, and there’s also a great deal of chemistry to consider as well as selecting just the right glaze and kiln temperature to get a certain color, texture and finish to the piece.

With the leaves changing color a few weeks late this season, the pottery festival date should coincide with the peak of color — an additional lure for tourists coming to the area. Dillsboro’s newest festival is part of a series of arts events that cater to shoppers and tourists eager to sample the region’s local treasures. This year, Dillsboro held its summer concert series on Friday evenings, an arts and music festival in June and an antiques fair in October. The annual Festival of Lights and Luminaries is set for Dec. 2, 3, 9, and 10.

For more information about the Western North Carolina Pottery Festival, call Joe Frank McKee at 828.631.5100 or visit the Town of Dillsboro web site at www.visitdillsboro.org for a town map, shop and restaurant listings, a menu of hotels and inns, and other upcoming events in Dillsboro.