Painted in bold black letters across a sprawling white, brick building on Whittington Avenue in downtown Hot Springs are the words, History’s Oldest Art.   This proclamation refers to pottery and pottery shards found in China that date to the last Ice Age, some 20,000 years old. Fired earthenware is found in nearly every society around the globe from prehistory to present. Both as functional pieces to carry water, or store food, to art pieces with elaborate design and delicate detail for pure decoration.   The elemental quality inherent in a handcrafted piece of pottery, the alchemy between earth, water, and fire, "all forged by human imagination and physical effort",  this makes it resistant to being discarded as an art form.   Ancient tradition, and vanguard artistry, combined, permeate the work of the Dryden family pottery.  The only national pottery born of the Massive, Post WWII studio pottery movement that is still owned and operated by the original family.
  What makes Dryden Pottery so attractive to collectors, like local Joe Hawk, is “that you can walk into the showroom knowing the legacy of the pottery, see those beautiful pieces and meet the artist that has made it”.  In fact, you can watch the artist seamlessly coax an elegant vase from a small disk of clay right before your eyes.  Since 2013, that artist has been Cheyenne Dryden, and now Zack Dryden, carrying on the mastery of their grandfather, Jim Dryden, and father JK Dryden  (aka Kimbo), combining whimsical imagination with a perfected skill.  Watching a master potter on the wheel is deceiving.  As the wheel spins and the potter’s hands drip water over the clay and smooth, pinch, pull and shape the piece, it appears effortless. Kimbo Dryden has had people say, “that didn’t take you any time at all to make that…but it took me 45 years to be able to make it in that time”.  On busy days Kimbo has finessed 50 pots from his wheel with such talent that, lined up on the drying board, look as if a machine has calibrated their uniform, precise dimensions.
​
Much has been written about the illustrious Dryden Pottery.  Jim Dryden was a charismatic individual who came out of WWII ready to begin a business that spoke to his lifetime love of creating art.  A series of chance meetings led Dryden to take a crash course in ceramics at University of Kansas and in chemistry at University of Illinois-Champaign with intention to utilize the natural resources around his hometown of Ellsworth, Kansas.  Jim took advantage of the GI Bill and opened Dryden Pottery with a kiln and a Quonset Hut on a little state highway in 1946.
Business thrived in Kansas due to a knack for creative, marketing ideas such as guided tours complete with rattlesnake exhibit, commissioned custom pieces  and distinctive labels on each piece of Dryden Pottery bearing the catchy slogan “A Melody In Glaze”.  His pieces were sold all over the country. He also spent 1954-1956 creating pieces for the world renowned Van Briggle Pottery which in turn helped finance his coming move to Hot Springs.  Realizing a new Interstate 70 bypassing Ellsworth would surely divert most of his tourist and customer base, he moved his wife, two kids and kiln to 341 Whittington Avenue, in the middle of a bustling Hot Springs National Park in 1956, steps off the main thoroughfare into town, where the local raw materials were abundant and the tourist trade was booming.
An inclination toward experimentation led to Dryden’s innovative techniques in ceramics.  He was the first, with his professor Sheldon Carey, to use Kansas volcanic ash in glazes, the first to successfully achieve both a matte and a glossy glaze in a single firing, the first and still only pottery to use Arkansas novaculite in both the clay of the pots and glazes as well, which makes for an extremely durable, scratch resistant piece.  The process requires not only physical strength to manipulate the materials and artistic vision but tremendous dedication of labor, skill and energy.  Today, when you pick up a signature Dryden vase with exquisite design and glazes there are 3 generations of Dryden ingenuity in its shape.
Sheer dedication has sustained the Dryden Pottery through the boom and bust cycles that affect any industry.  James “Kimbo” Dryden was 3 years old when his father moved the Dryden operation to Hot Springs.  By the time he was 12, his father put him to work.  Squirreled away in an incredibly hot workspace near the industrial kiln, his dad thought working on the wheel would keep the adventurous Kimbo busy and out of trouble.  The elder Dryden proved very resourceful in discovering potential potters and mold makers.  In seeking “a strong man” capable of handling the massive volume of clay and possessing the muscle required to form each pot, a young Kimbo was enlisted to instruct a handful of Hot Springs firemen, including future fire chief Arval Sanders, on the basics of the wheel.  Sanders so enjoyed the art form that he even attempted his own operation years later. Dryden drove to Ft. Chaffee in 1975 where refugees fleeing retaliation from North Vietnam were housed awaiting safe placement within the US, doled out clay to several men gathered there and hired the one he considered to have the most potential as a potter.  Loi won the challenge, relocated his family to Hot Springs and worked for Dryden Pottery for more than a decade.
​
After being sent to Big Creek Pottery School in California to refine the art of throwing on the wheel, an 18 year old Kimbo returned to manage the growing production of the pottery. He incorporated time saving spray glazing rather than dipped and hand painted glaze which proved helpful in the boom years of the 70s and 80s.  Over 500 people found employment at the pottery over the years, but it is the family that moves it forward.  Kimbo and his young wife moved in to the small studio apartment above the factory in 1977 and it was in that room where their first of three sons was born.  All three of Kimbo’s sons grew up in the pottery, watching their Dad throw pots on the wheel and their Grandad personalize pieces with his signature dental drill.  Although all three worked summers at the pottery and all three have tremendous artistic talent, it was Cheyenne who took up the family trade as potter when he was 20. For 6 years, customers could visit with all three generations of Dryden artists, all equally compelling and warm, Jim personalizing mugs, Kimbo throwing on the wheel and Cheyenne expertly glazing pots.
When Jim Dryden passed away in 2004, he left the pottery in excellent hands.  In the decade since his passing, Kimbo and Cheyenne have produced thousands of pieces ranging from gorgeous dinner plates, to etched vases, from lidded cookie jars to giant serving bowls decorated with dragons, from coffee mugs to cartoonish figurative work, all the while maintaining his traditions of studio tours, commissioned pottery and mastery of the wheel.  After 42 years of being a world renowned potter and the inherent wear and tear on the body, Kimbo Dryden retired in 2013.  Zack Dryden keeps the legacy moving forward occasionally enlisting his dad for heavy production days. “They are better artists than me”, says Kimbo and “I am enjoying drinking ginger tea and eating breakfast without rushing to the pottery.”
Time will tell if Zack's or Cheyenne's sons will pick up the family trade.  Until then, treat yourself to an American treasure, a piece of history, a hidden gem, visit Dryden Pottery where you can feel tradition, imagination, devotion, labor, transformation, and resilience in its walls.