Potter Jeff Diehl was born in 1957 in New Jersey, the grandson of a German immigrant potter. When his father, Ralph Diehl, changed jobs in 1966, Diehl moved to Parkersburg and then enrolled at the former Beckley College in 1970. He also worked in Berea College’s Ceramic Apprenticeship Program for five years and tutored at Germany’s Kuch Pottery for a year.

In 1980, he married fellow Berea student Donna Jenkins and began looking for an ideal place to set up their pottery. They bought and then entirely renovated an abandoned 1926 two-room school in Lockbridge, located between Beckley and Lewisburg near Meadow Bridge, Summers County. Helpful neighbors assisted in building his kiln room. They first fired it in fall 1980. The same kiln remains in use today.

For the next 16 years, the Diehls were regular vendors at the Appalachian Arts & Craft Fair in Beckley and the Mountain State Art & Craft Fair at Cedar Lakes. They primarily sold functional tableware, but also crafted architectural tiles, bathroom sinks, and fireplace surrounds. As their family and number of products grew, they decided to sell full time from the Lockbridge Pottery.

In 1996, Diehl added a salt kiln. Salt firing dates to at least the 16^th century, when German potters used driftwood to stoke their kilns; salt in the driftwood left behind a sodium glaze on the pots. To replicate this glaze, Diehl adds rock salt to the mix when his salt kiln reaches 2,350 degrees.

In 2008, West Virginia University professor Bob Anderson asked Diehl to share his techniques with WVU and Chinese students in Jingdezhen, China, where pottery has been made without many changes for 1,000 years. Returning to the states and inspired by Far East pottery, he built his own wood kiln, which he first fired in 2011.

Diehl also specializes in crystalline firing by adding zinc and silica to the glazes, which melt together and create crystals on the pottery. He cannot explain it scientifically but declares that the glazes crystallize differently depending on what kind of music he plays in the background—from classical to rock ‘n’ roll.

The Diehls open the Lockbridge Pottery to the public for shows and special sales several times a year, particularly in the months leading up to the winter holidays.