News-Record.com

For pottery lovers, the weekend before Thanksgiving has long been a time to go to Seagrove for an annual festival, a time for what might be the country’s most famous pottery community to come together.

But this year, that community has fallen apart like a poorly fired pot.

Instead of one festival, there are two, the fruit of a bitter dispute among area potters that threatens to confuse customers and hurt potters who might see crowds split.

The dispute, which has lingered for months and has involved insults and legal action, has those not involved with the pottery community shaking their heads.

“It’s just such a shame, because they’re only hurting themselves,” said Jill Thomas, who owns the Seagrove Dairy Breeze, a downtown institution, adding that other nonpottery merchants feel the same.

“They wish they’d just stop it,” she said.

But with the festivals set to clash this weekend, that doesn’t seem likely.

The question is, with the economy crashing and with both festivals charging for attendance, is two a crowd?

Both sides are making optimistic predictions.

Michael Mahan, a potter involved with the new festival, which will be held at a former bean plant on the edge of town, is optimistic that the additional promotion will lead to a bigger crowd overall.

“Most everybody’s being focused on there being more people in town than ever,” he said. “There’s room for two festivals.”

That’s not quite how some potters involved with the existing festival see things.

They see the decision to hold the new festival on the same weekend as an attempt to put their festival out of business.

“Potters have been put to all sorts of inconvenience and fear,” said Don Hudson, a Sanford potter. “They should have created it at a different time. They should have done something that added to rather than took away from the opportunities of Seagrove potters to make money.”

Various parties say personality conflicts, power and money have fueled the fire.

Members of the breakaway group have said they didn’t feel like they had a say in key decisions for the pottery community, such as the Museum of N.C. Traditional Pottery’s decision to buy a former grocery store on Main Street.

Conversely, some of those allied with the existing festival have said the N.C. Pottery Center, which sits a few blocks away from the museum, has favored the breakaway group.

The dispute has included charges of inflammatory rhetoric and even wound up in court. Backers of the original festival filed a suit saying that the town should not have permitted the new festival.

An attempt to obtain an order to halt the new festival before this weekend foundered, but the suit is still pending.

Meanwhile, those without a direct stake in the fight are hoping it ends soon.

Ultimately, people going to Seagrove for pottery don’t want to hear about the details of some dispute, Thomas said. They just want to enjoy pottery.

But opaque as the spat is for many outsiders, that doesn’t mean it’s any less passionate for those who spend their lives with clay.

Given that, Thomas is succinct when expressing her thoughts about the idea of getting involved in the dispute.

“Stay way out,” she said.

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