Alkaline-Glazed Jugs Made by Master Potter, David Drake
David was a chattel enslaved Black potter from Edgefield, South Carolina. He was owned as the property of Harvey Drake, a large pottery business owner who partnered with Abner Landrum, an editor of a local newspaper called The Edgefield Hive. (He would also be owned as the property of Lewis Miles and the Landrum family. Not simultaneously.)
David was forced to labor in Pottersville, one of the twelve pottery factories in Edgefield at that time. He’s recognized as the first enslaved potter to inscribe his work (with a couplet poem, the date, and his signature—Dave) during the time when literacy was forbidden for the enslaved with enacted laws and deadly consequences.
Some of his inscriptions are practical instructions or reflections on love, spirituality, or afterlife; while others are commentaries on the institution of US chattel slavery. His earliest recorded work is a pot dated July 12, 1834. The poetry on this one reads:
Put every bit all between
Surely this jar will hold 14
One of Drake’s better known pieces, a 19-inch greenware pot, is dated back to August 16, 1857. The inscription reads:
I wonder where is all my relations
Friendship to all and every nation
David made more than 40,000 large stoneware jugs and jars between the 1820s and the 1870s. They were worth about 50 cents during his lifetime. You can only imagine how much they are worth today… There are pieces housed in museums from Greenville County Museum of Art to the Smithsonian.
Per the US census in 1870, it’s labeled that David couldn’t read or write. Ha.
So how was he able to read and write (in cursive) to the point of demonstrating such charming and emotive, couplet poetry? Wouldn’t they all like to know.
