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Under Richard’s leadership, the Museum of North Carolina Traditional

Pottery devoted years of its existence to helping the Pottery Center be-

come a reality. The Museum purchased nine acres of valuable real es-

tate in downtown Seagrove and gifted it to the center, along with a large

house, pottery, staffing and money to help with operating expenses for

many years.

Completed in 1998, the Pottery Center opened to high hopes and great

expectations. Throughout the last decade, it monopolized financial sup-

port for promoting pottery in the heart of North Carolina, the pottery state. Year after year, the Center wins generous grants from federal, state

and local governments by focusing on an evolving and ever changing

concept of what it wants to achieve.

Talking about what it has actually done would not be especially flat-

tering to the Center. Doing so before an audience with a healthy degree

of skepticism would not be particularly smart.

Between six and seven million dollars have been poured into the Cen-

ter with precious little to show for it.

The record establishes clearly that the majority of the growth in the

Seagrove Area Potteries occurred well before the Center opened. This

growth is directly related to the activities of the Museum that created theSeagrove Pottery Festival 26 years ago and printed and distributed mil-

lions of maps of the Seagrove Area.

When the Pottery Center ended up with the land, the buildings, the pot-

tery collection and access to lobbyists, fundraisers and staff, it quickly

forgot its roots and did nothing better than feed a voracious appetite for

fundraising.

The number of visitors to the Center remains anemic, even by the Cen-

ter’s own reckoning and cynics abound who question its claims. Worse, no studies have ever been conducted to show that the Center

pulls any significant number of new visitors into Seagrove that were not

already coming for other reasons.

It is a fact that the Center has managed to spend less than two per-

cent of its revenues on advertising.

Anybody who seriously wanted to help the Seagrove Area Potteries

might do well to consider the merits of relocating the Center to Hickory

or Charlotte where it could send new visitors to Seagrove instead of tak-

ing the customers that Seagrove earned on its own and sending them to

buy pottery elsewhere.

The Center’s collection of North Carolina pottery is far eclipsed by

other collections open to the public.

The Center shows little interest in supporting anything that

promotes pottery without having at least the potential to produce rev-

enues for the Center.

On the Sunday of the last Seagrove Pottery Festival, the Center was

not even open and made no effort to appeal to the thousands of visitorsthat the festival undeniably pulls every year to the school directly across

the street from the Center.

The Center was missing in action when the Sanford Pottery Festival

and the State Fair Pottery Display were created with Richard’s help in

Frankenstein’s MonsterT H E N O R T H C A R O L I N A P O T T E R Y C E N T E R

A contrarian point of view meant to provokedebate on issues important to the survival of the

Seagrove Area Potteries as we know them.

WRITTEN BY DON HUDSON

“Creating the North Carolina Pottery Center,”I often told Richard Gillson during the ten years that

we worked together, “was very much like theachievement of Dr. Frankenstein in his lab.

It’s impressive to be able to do it, but in the finalanalysis one still ends up with a monster running amok.”

48



order to attract more customers from beyond

Seagrove and pull them into the area year

round.

The Center benefits financially from the

Catawba Valley Pottery Festival and

produces an auction every year that raises up

to forty thousand dollars for the Center.

Few things prove more that “where yourtreasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Between its auction and its gift shop, the Cen-

ter takes almost a hundred thousand dollars a

year that might have been spent otherwise at a

local pottery shop. When it was being sold to

the local potters, the Center promised that it

would never sell pottery in its gift shop and few

potteries that pay taxes can afford to compete with the Center.

Recently added to the Center’s wish list is its

perceived need to add on and to buy expensive

landscaping and sidewalks whose effect

could only be to keep more people in down-

town Seagrove.

The real vitality of the Seagrove Area Pot-

teries is found in the scores of pottery shops

surrounding Seagrove and spread out over

five counties.

For almost three full decades, the Museumgave every potter in the Seagrove Area plenty of

opportunities to connect with pottery collectors.

In contrast, the Center selectively chooses

to promote certain potters at the expense of

others. Potters who support the Center tend

to get supported by the Center. Those who

don’t, don’t.

Under a succession of directors, one last-ing but a single day, the relationship between

the Center and the Museum that brought it into

existence atrophied.

The Center usually claims to be a victim of

circumstances beyond its control and repre-

sents that it alone can provide leadership in a

fractious community. By playing to its favorites,

rewarding those who support the Center and

punishing those who do not, it plants seeds of dis-

cord and strife in a community already under the

stress of intense competition from within and

even more so from without.

The Center behaves like a dog that keeps

biting the hand that feeds it and then whines

that it isn’t getting petted often enough.

The Museum, it should be remembered,

made the Center possible; not the other way around. Other than taking from the Museum,

I’m not aware of any way that the Center found

to give back or to work in a spirit of cooperation

with Richard or the Museum.

Instead, the Center’s approach consistently

betrays an arrogance for making up its own

rules as it goes along.

An early shot to the heart of the Seagrovecommunity occurred when the Center caused

all the highway directional signs that brought

travelers into Seagrove to be taken up, leaving

only the signs that directed visitors specifically

to the Pottery Center.

It is not mere paranoia that some potters

have long suspected that the Center wished to

dominate the Seagrove Area by hook or crook.

Its present exhibit purports to be “The

Potters of Seagrove Today.” Unfortunately, two

counties that the North Carolina legislature rec-

ognized as being parts of the “Seagrove Area,”

Lee and Chatham, were completely excluded.

That events produced in and by potters fromSanford help to direct hundreds of thousands

of dollars of sales into the Seagrove Area every

year and the fact that Seagrove and Sanford

have been tied together by over eighty years of

pottery making history, rates no consideration

by the Center.

The success of the Seagrove Area occurred

over a period of time during which there werefew potters left in North Carolina and most of

those who were famous were located in Sea-

grove, Sanford, Moore County and Mont-

gomery County.

Today, there are over a thousand potters in

North Carolina. Six colleges and universities in

the state churn out more each year. People who

like pottery can find dozens of potters at scores

of craft fairs all over North Carolina. Galleries

have been created across the state represent-

ing the work of hundreds of potters throughout

the year.

Ultimately, Seagrove and the area that it an-

chors will lose if it is regarded as just another

place where pottery is made.

Insofar as the interests of the Seagrove pot-

tery community are considered, what is neededis an organization that dedicates itself to the pri-

macy of pottery making traditions in the area.

That and that alone is what pulls economic

tourism into Seagrove and sends it out all over

the area to nurture the independent and re-

sourceful artisans who, for love of clay, hold on

and try to keep going.

The North Carolina Pottery Center is tryingnow to gift itself to the State of North Carolina

in order to make certain that it is never booted

off of a gravy train that has been lucrative for it

thus far.

An early meeting held in an undisclosed basementin Seagrove to discuss possible strategies for

animating the North Carolina Pottery Center.

SANFORD POTTERY FESTIVAL 2008 | 49

A brief exchange that could beof interest to those who believe in the

public’s right to know.“With the possibility that the state and/or the

County of Randolph will be taking over responsibilities for running the

N.C. Pottery Center, it seems likelythat many more people ought to want toknow more about the operations of the

Center heretofore.”

--E-mail of March 8, 2008 from Don Hudson toDenny Mecham, Executive Director of the

N.C. Pottery Center, transmitting a request

for information

“The North Carolina Pottery Center ExecutiveCommittee has reviewed your March 8 request for

information and has determined that thePottery Center, as a private nonprofit, will not be

releasing any information at this time”

--E-mail sent by Denny Mecham to Hudson on

March 18, 2008



One looks in vain to find a plan that asks how it is that

the Center could have so little to show for the $350,000 in

operating expenses that it burns through each year, let

alone a budget that confronts how the State of North

Carolina could achieve more for less and free up re-

sources to support a broader variety of initiatives to pro-

mote pottery.

This is a plan that needs careful and complete inves-

tigation and that does not need to be pushed through

with vague professions of good intentions.

One should not dance casually on the edge of a

precipice beside a very steep and slippery slope. A

state takeover of the Center would send the wrong mes-

sage to a long line of similar programs whose value liesmore in true grassroots support and private initiative

rather than government bailouts.

Before it gets into the Governor’s budget, before the

Council of State ever sees it and well before the General

Assembly is asked to commit untold millions of taxpayer

dollars to the Center over the next ten years, it’s time to

do two simple things that should have been done long

before the last six million dollars was spent:1. Conduct a thorough survey on what does and does

not bring economic tourism into Seagrove and the pot-

tery area surrounding Seagrove.

2. Tell the Center that it’s on its own until it proves that it

is capable of working effectively with others whose ac-

tivities well predate the Center and actually made it pos-

sible.

Those who love North Carolina pottery should want to hand the Pottery Center a book on

manners because putting a blank check in itscontrol would be like handing a bazooka to

Frankenstein’s monster.

Frankenstein’s Monster

50

HATEFUL IS AS HATEFUL DOES

How Randolph County Manager Richard Wells tried to take theSeagrove Pottery Festival awayfrom the Museumnd give itto the N.C. Pottery Center

Randolph County Commissioners would do well to ask some tough questions

about why County Manager Richard Wells recently tried to take from the Museum

of N.C. Traditional Pottery its main fundraising activity and, adding insult to injury,

his apparently brutal determination to force the Museum to give effective control of

this event to the N.C. Pottery Center.

Precedent for such an abuse of power is long-standing and can be found in the

Old Testament account of how King David, not content with his many wives and themeasure of wealth he had been given, took Uriah’s only wife, Bath Sheba, for his

own and found it expedient to see that Uriah’s life was taken to cover his tracks.

More recently, Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, honed the fine art of extorting private

property to give to state sanctioned enterprises.

Wells’ recent move against the Museum promised to be similarly lethal and

could only have killed the Museum that has served the Seagrove Area so well.

The Museum created the Seagrove Pottery Festival in 1982 at Seagrove Ele-

mentary School, where it has been held every year since. The festival is the largest

event in Seagrove and each year nourishes the local pottery economy by bringingthousands of collectors to town.

Proceeds from the Seagrove Festival have allowed the Museum, over the years,

to promote the traditions of pottery making in the Seagrove Area. For many years,

just like Uriah served King David well, the Museum focused its efforts on support-

ing the creation of the N.C. Pottery Center and donated to the Center the nine acres

of valuable real estate upon which it now sits.

After the Center was established, it received millions of dollars in support, in-

cluding almost $250,000 from Randolph County and $1.5 million from the State of

North Carolina over the ten years of its existence.Having done more than its fair share to help the Center and in light of the Cen-

ter’s generous income, the Museum turned its attention over the last few years to

promoting the pottery of the Seagrove Area exclusively.

Despite the huge resources put at its disposal, the Center failed to live up to ear-

lier promises to bring more economic tourism into Seagrove. In fact, it appears

mostly to serve the purpose of taking the visitors who would otherwise have come

into the Area and telling them that there are many other places to purchase pottery

in North Carolina.

Notwithstanding annual budgets of $350,000 a year, the Center for the lastdecade has been showing signs of fiscal distress and, by its own admission, has

gotten by only by existing unacceptably “hand to mouth.”

The proposed solution for the Center’s ills does not seem to involve living within

its means and finding a way to work in partnership with other organizations that

promote pottery. Essentially handed a blank check by state and local governments,

Opposite Photo:

Don Hudson created the Sanford Pottery Festival and the

State Fair Pottery Display. Both were inspired andsupported by Richard Gillson, the founder of the Seagrove

Pottery Festival. For ten years, Hudson worked with

Gillson to help make the Seagrove Pottery Festival grow.

The views expressed herein are personal views held by

Don Hudson and are not presented as reflecting official

policy of either the Sanford Pottery Festival or the

Seagrove Pottery Festival.

Don Hudson can be contacted at

[email protected]

continued...


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the Center has never especially felt the need to

engage in team sports while it could believe

that it owns the entire ballpark.

The State and Randolph County have been

exploring a “partnership” in which the State

would take possession of the Center and would

pay to operate it while the County of Randolph

would take responsibility for upkeep on the

building that was constructed brand spanking

new, but that now needs about $100,000 worth

of work and upgrades to put back in good re-

pair.

The Museum purchased an old grocery store

in downtown Seagrove where it intends to op-

erate a Welcome and Information Center high-

lighting the potters of the Seagrove Area.

To do so required the Museum board to go

out on a limb; which it was comfortable doing

under the leadership of Richard Gillson, who

created the Seagrove Pottery Festival and

worked tirelessly to promote the Seagrove Area

for 27 years.

Gillson died unexpectedly in January of this

year as the result of a tragic accident that oc-

curred while he was working at the Museum of-

fice.

Board members resolved to keep Gillson’s

dream of providing a permanent home for the

Museum alive while some are still trying to work

through their own grief at losing a friend and in-

spirational figure with whom they had worked

for decades.

Wells, obviously without considering how cal-

lous his actions were, moved with ruthless effi-

ciency to deny the Museum any opportunity to

carry on.

Wells contacted the Superintendent of Pub-

lic Schools for Randolph County and directed

him that he was to issue an order to the princi-

pal of Seagrove Elementary not to allow any

pottery related group to use its grounds.

Quickly following up on this coup, Wells met

with the Executive Committee of the Museum

board, one of whom described the county man-

ager’s attitude as “abusive, insulting and mak-

ing clear how important he felt he was to justify

what he was doing.”

Wells informed those present that, seeing as

the Museum had just lost its biggest fundrais-

ing activity, it should face up to reality, accede to

the Center taking over the Seagrove Festival,

sell its buildings and become a mere ap-

pendage housed at the Center.

In doing so, Wells certainly did not considerhow inappropriate the Center’s grounds are for

hosting such an event or the expenses that

would have to be borne to make it workable.

What is good for the goose is not always ac-

cepted as being good for the gander.

One shortcoming of the Center as a location

for the Seagrove Festival is an absence of park-

ing, available only in sufficient quantity across

the street at Seagrove Elementary school. The

logic of the County Manager’s position was to

deprive the Museum of the right to hold its fes-

tival where it has been held for the last 26 years,

but make this same venue available to the Cen-

ter to provide it with the parking necessary to

hold the event at the Center.

The job description for the Manager of Ran-

dolph County does not include kicking private,

non-profit groups into submission or taking

away the fundraising events they created in

order to gift its revenues to a favored group that

would see only an incremental increase in its

bottom line at the expense of completely de-

stroying the first.

The Seagrove Pottery Festival has been the

largest cash cow for the pottery community and

the Town of Seagrove for over 26 years. It is the

largest of several events held by the Museum

each year to bring visitors into Seagrove.

Wells seems not to have considered that the

trademark, “Seagrove Pottery Festival,” be-

longs to the Museum that created it or that it

could travel very nicely to a location beyond

Seagrove and even outside of Randolph

County.

Some members of the Museum board have

proposed taking the event to Greensboro to re-

duce the logistical expenses of producing the

show and to reach a larger audience, with the

goal of funneling more business into the Sea-

grove Area throughout the year and increasing

profits to help the Museum pay for the building

it wants to operate in Seagrove as a Welcome

and Information Center.

Gillson wanted to keep the Seagrove Pottery

Festival in Seagrove, but the actions under-

taken by Wells certainly call into question the

advisability of doing so.

The Museum has many options to improve its

economic situation and the strength of almost

two decades more service to the local pottery

community than the Center, which was made

possible by the Museum to begin with, boasts.

If Wells really believes that his job is to make

decisions as to which non-profits are “eco-

nomically viable” and to kill off some in favor

of those that he likes, he needs to be asked

why he thinks it is the Pottery Center that is

viable and the Museum that is not.Back out all the government money that

has been given to the Center and it be-

comes clear that, but for the heavy and gener-

ous hand of government, the Pottery Center

could not have continued to spend so much

while achieving so little.

Let Randolph County and the State of North

Carolina spread its resources for organizations

that promote pottery with a modicum of impar-

tiality and fairness and the smart money would

bet on the Museum as being more likely to out-

last the Center than not.

In point of fact, the Museum has never put it-

self in a position of being so needy that it had

to ask the state to take it over or beg the county

to provide routine maintenance on its buildings.

Governments ought to consider funding the

Museum in the same manner as the Center and

revisit the issue in a year or two of taking over

the Pottery Center completely when the Center,

playing on a level field, has proven that it can

make it on its own, as the Museum has for al-

most three decades.

Commissioners and all non-profits in Ran-

dolph County should want to know what went

wrong here and how to make amends.

An important question is whether Mr. Wells

acted entirely on his own or in concert with oth-

ers who might have had a financial stake in the

outcome.

For months, partisans of the Pottery Center

have been spreading rumors that there was a

plan to force the Museum to give its festival to

the Center.

The leadership of the Center was aware of

Mr. Wells’ decision before most members of the

board of the Museum heard about it and ex-

pressed that plans were already underway for

the Center to take over the Seagrove Festival.

The question comes down to, “Who knew

what and when did they know it?”

If these questions are not answered, then the

possibility that a corruption of power will result

in a cover up must be faced.

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