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In the beginning, there was just the clay, some of the best clay in America as far as potters are concerned.

For more than two centuries, this tiny settlement in southern Randolph County has been known for its pottery and the potters who produce it.

Each year, thousands of tourists from North Carolina and beyond arrive to buy pottery, browse the shops that line the main street or view artisans at work during the town's fall Pottery Festival.

It all puts money in the potters' pockets, and more than a few dollars fall to local government.

But times are lean for Randolph County government, and the commissioners this year excised funds to help foster pottery events.

That has locals concerned about whether the loss of financial support could lead to a downward spiral.

And it leaves both groups worried that the funding cuts will cause irrevocable harm.

"It's going to hurt," said Richard Gillson, a longtime

local potter who serves as director of the Museum of Traditional North Carolina Pottery.

"We're going to back up on some of the things we do."

Here in this town of fewer than 300 residents, there are at least 100 area potters and two different organizations that concern themselves with promoting Seagrove pottery.

One is the N.C. Pottery Center, which lost its $23,700 in county funding recently when Randolph commissioners deleted it from the budget.

The other is the Museum of North Carolina Traditional Pottery, a group that plans to someday open its own museum but concerns itself mainly with putting on the annual Pottery Festival. County commissioners this year opted not to renew the $10,000 they had given this group the year before.

"There are different pottery groups down there," said Assistant City Manager Will Massey. "The commissioners didn't want to favor one over the other."

Denny Meacham, who leads the N.C. Pottery Center, which does include a state pottery museum, said losing the local funding the facility had gotten since opening in 1996 creates a fiscal problem for the year's final quarter.

But with a $310,000 annual budget, the Pottery Center is better equipped to weather the storm.

Both leaders say its a misconception that their groups are rivals, even if they may be competing for the same shrinking piece of the local money pie.

"We have two different missions," Gillson said.

"We're interested in the immediate Seagrove area. We market the area, as well as today's potters, so that the historical aspect isn't lost."

The Pottery Center, meanwhile, operates as a state museum, though its artifacts rely heavily on Seagrove-produced pottery.

Gillson and Meacham both said that some local potters are active in one group, some in the other, and some in both.

Gillson and his group, in fact, were instrumental in starting the Pottery Center when they purchased the land a decade ago for what they dreamed would be a local pottery museum.

"We gave them the land we had," Gillson said.

But when founders of the Pottery Center decided to make its facility a statewide museum instead of focusing solely on local potters, a second organization was needed, Gillson said.

"We have two different missions," he said. "I don't see how that hurts. Some people may call them rivals, but I do not."

Local potters say some rivalry may exist, but the nuances surely escape the customers who come to town each year intent solely on buying pottery.

And that's important in a town in which pottery is virtually the only enterprise, said Ben Owens III, a third-generation Seagrove potter.

"All ships rise with the tide," Owens said.

Contact Tom Steadman at 373-7351 or tsteadman@news-record.com