David Drake, Potter
Behind the panel David Drake, Potter · series G, Makers.
David Drake (c. 1801–after 1870), often called "Dave the Potter", worked in the pottery district of Edgefield, South Carolina, one of the most important centres of stoneware production in the antebellum South.
The work
Edgefield potters made stoneware jars, jugs and churns used to store food on farms and plantations. They used local clays and alkaline glazes made from wood ash or lime. Drake was known for exceptionally large vessels, some holding around 40 gallons, which required great skill: large jars were thrown in sections, joined, and fired in long wood-burning "groundhog" kilns.
The inscriptions
Many surviving jars attributed to Drake bear his name, dates, and short rhymed couplets incised in the clay. South Carolina law in the 1830s prohibited teaching enslaved people to read and write, which makes his inscriptions remarkable acts of literacy and self-assertion. Some verses comment on work, faith, family separation and daily life.
Legacy
Drake's jars are now held by major museums and are studied as works of art and historical documents. He was enslaved by several owners over his life and appears in records after emancipation under the surname Drake.
Why he is in the Hall of Makers
Drake represents the many skilled enslaved craftspeople whose labour built Southern economies and whose names were seldom recorded. His signed work insists that the maker be known. No photograph or portrait of Drake is known; the museum shows his jars and his words, not an imagined face.
Further reading
Leonard Todd, Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter Dave (2008); collections of the McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina.
