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SEAGROVE -- This small town has come to be synonymous with pottery across North Carolina and beyond.

But a series of recent events has created a deep divide in the normally placid pottery town, complete with dueling festivals and talk of lies, outsiders, mudslinging and divorce.

Fueled by a complicated mix of personality, geography, history and money, it's a story so unusual that it's attracted national attention - the unlikely tale of a civil war fought with clay.

The dispute has the potential to cast a shadow on a tradition that stretches back hundreds of years and has survived such challenges as lead poisoning and Tupperware.
The fight reached a peak recently when dozens of potters said they planned to create a new pottery festival in Seagrove, saying they felt excluded from key decisions and turned off by opponents' rhetoric.

"The potters didn't really feel like they had a voice," said Ben Owen III, the youngest of a pottery-making family stretching back generations.

But supporters of the original festival say the new festival will force many potters to take sides, and could hurt their pocketbook in an already tough time.
"They're making mountains out of a gnat's turd," said Regina VonCannon, a potter with a shop in downtown Seagrove.

There's one thing both sides agree on. Despite all the hot rhetoric, they're uncomfortable with the mudslinging, and the attention it's getting.

But this is one story that can't be told without mud.

A new pottery festival

Each November for the past 26 years, Seagrove has been home to a pottery festival at an elementary school near the small downtown.

Many credit the festival, which helps support the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery, for helping popularize the area's potters, who have soared in numbers.

In recent years, however, some potters have grown disenchanted with the museum, which occupies a former grocery store on Main Street. The museum's purchase of the building upset some potters, who say they don't feel they've had a voice in the group's decisions.

Tensions escalated, and some potters say museum supporters used "inflammatory rhetoric" aimed at them.
Ultimately, a dissident band of potters decided to create a new festival at a former bean factory a few miles away from the school. The date? The same November weekend as the original festival.

Owen, the chairman of the new group, said the idea is not to kill the original festival. That's just the time when people are used to heading down to Seagrove.

But to supporters of the existing festival, setting the date for the same weekend was no small provocation. That meant war.

Seagrove and Sanford

Inside a cavernous former auto dealership in Sanford, Don Hudson fires off e-mail blasts against the dissident potters.

Hudson, a partner in D.K. Clay Pottery, doesn't mince words when it comes to the dispute.

"The other side is putting things out there that are, in my mind, patently false," he said. "There's just a series of lies being put out there."

Hudson blames the N.C. Pottery Center, a museum that sits a few blocks away from the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery. He argues that the center hasn't fulfilled its mission of promoting pottery and that it, and its allies, give short shrift to Sanford pottery.

A recent article he wrote called the center "Frankenstein's Monster," and included an image of the monster rising menacingly over a burning museum. "I regard the center as a cancer in downtown Seagrove," he said.

Part of the dispute deals with geography. The new group focuses more on the area stretching from downtown Seagrove south to Moore County along N.C. 705, or what's called "Pottery Highway."

Owen said it makes sense to focus on the immediate area, which might have the highest concentration of potters in the country. Backers of the new festival say they want a more local feel and a focus on pottery, not on other crafts.
But Hudson said festivals in both Sanford and Seagrove attract potters from one town to the other. "Seagrove and Sanford have always worked well together. That's just the historical truth," he said.

A tradition in the balance

The wheel in the small workshop at the end of a one-lane gravel road in Moore County has been quiet lately. That's where Michael Mahan crafts his pots, many of which he decorates with distinctive images of trees pressed into the clay.

The dispute has eaten into the time he has for his work. "I've fired one kiln and made two pots in the last three weeks," said Mahan, a spokesman for the group planning the new festival.

The dispute has potters worried about what the economic fallout might be in already difficult times. Supporters of the original festival say the event is critical to their survival.

"This money actually helps us get through the first four months of the year," said VonCannon. "None of us can afford not to do well."

She and others said a new festival would be fine if it were held in the spring. But forcing potters to choose which to attend on the same weekend, and creating the possibility of lower attendance, would put potters in a bad situation, they say.

"They are messing around with people's livelihoods, with their lives," Hudson said.

The fight is forcing even those not directly involved to choose sides. Town officials found themselves squarely in the center ring recently when organizers of the new festival asked for a permit, which they granted by a 3-2 vote.

"We'd prefer not to be in this kind of situation, but we got drug into it," said Mayor Mike Walker, who didn't vote on the permit.

Walker said he's uncomfortable with the attention generated by the dispute, but is optimistic it will work out in the end. Still, he concedes, "it goes deep."

Both sides say they are confident their festival will attract plenty of vendors and crowds. Assuming both festivals take place this year - with litigation a possibility, that's no sure thing - November will reveal who is right.

Regardless of which group emerges victorious, potters say they're concerned about the future of pottery in the area.
Potter Keith Martindale said the image of the community is at stake. "It's going to be bad, if people think we can't get along."

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or at jason.hardin @news-record.com