Jill Beute Koverman, editor. “I made this jar . . .” The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave. Columbia, S.C.: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998. 101 pp.; 18 color and 36 bw illus., bibliography. $25.00.
The recent exhibition “I made this jar...” The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave at the Winterthur Museum and the accompanying catalog can serve to introduce the works of this talented nineteenth-century potter to students of decorative arts, ceramic historians, archaeologists, and anyone interested in the work of traditional craftsmen, specifically African-American craftsmen. David Drake was a master potter who made, in addition to the familiar range of jars, jugs, pitchers, and so on, very large storage jars whose construction took not only considerable skill but also considerable strength. However, it is the poems that he inscribed on his pots rather than his potting skills that have brought him out of the obscurity that is commonly the lot of traditional craftsmen.
Dave was born into slavery in Edgefield, South Carolina, about 1800. He apparently learned the art of throwing pots during his teens, possibly from Harvey Drake, whose surname Dave took after emancipation. During his enslavement, he was owned by various members of the interrelated (through both marriage and business) Drake, Landrum, and Miles families. The research of Jill Beute Koverman, also curator of the exhibit, has brought to light records of these families that indicate Dave was a valuable craftsman whose skills were recognized by his owners, all of whom were either potters themselves or involved in the mercantile aspects of the potter’s trade. Dave’s skill as a potter and poet was first recognized in the twentieth century by collectors and museum curators in the South who were intrigued by the inscriptions on some very large (over twenty-five gallons) jars. Dave signed and dated a number of his pots, as did other potters, but the verses on the jars are unique for his time and place. The exhibit and catalog present his pots to the public as works of art and as records of Dave’s commentaries on his world.
The exhibit at Winterthur was visually impressive but, in some ways, scholastically frustrating for a person interested in the history of pottery making in North America. The dramatic presentation of Dave’s large jars created, for at least some viewers, a feeling of awe. The jars are immense and, under museum lighting, exhibit particularly lustrous glazes. This inevitably led to questions. How did he make these vessels? What glaze techniques did he use? How did his work differ from that of his contemporaries? These technological questions were not addressed adequately in the text that accompanied the exhibit.
Other aspects of the pots and the life of their maker were probably more immediately intriguing to most visitors. As a result, two subjects in particular were emphasized in the exhibit: Dave’s poetry and his life as an enslaved craftsman. The short poems that Dave inscribed on many of his large jars have attracted popular and scholarly attention. Of the hundreds of surviving vessels that have been attributed to Dave, twenty-seven are known to have inscriptions, generally two short lines of rhyming verse. The verses discuss the functions of his pots (“A very large jar which has four handles / pack it full of fresh meat—then light candles”), religious issues (“I saw a leppard & a lion’s face / then I felt the need of grace”), daily events (“the fourth of july is surely come / to blow the fife—and beat the drum”), and his life (“Dave belongs to Mr. Miles / Wher the oven bakes & the pots bile” and “I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all—and every nation”).
The exhibit was sponsored by and first shown at the McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina, where a superlative collection of southern decorative arts is housed. The catalog is much more than a simple description of the works on display. Its six essays are intended to place Dave’s work in the context of his specific time and place. The first, by Koverman, is a synopsis of previous and current research about South Carolina pottery in general and Dave in particular. The goals of her research are those of an art historian: analyze the style of Dave’s work; map the development of his craft over the course of a lifetime; and reveal Dave’s own life history, or at least as much of it as can be revealed by documentary research. Koverman also asks the question of who Dave’s audience might have been. Were the verses possibly intended for his fellow enslaved workers and is their meaning overt, covert, or both?
The second essay, by historian Orville Vernon Burton, is concerned with the Edgefield district of South Carolina as it was in the nineteenth century. This gracefully written piece discusses the political and economic history of the area and includes information about the daily lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked there, especially the strictures and restrictions under which they existed. Dave as an individual is not emphasized but Burton does note that Dave’s versification fits into the story-telling tradition of the district. Folktales told by enslaved people usually contained moral messages, often cryptic, with religious allusions, as do Dave’s poems.
James A. Miller’s short essay places Dave’s verses in the context of African-American poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the “evolving tradition of African-American literary practices.” Dave, Miller states, was part of the second generation of African-American poets—people born into slavery at a time when they were generally forbidden to read and write. Miller analyzes Dave’s verses as literature and as clues to his thoughts and feelings as a creative and sensible man working under limitations that ranged from the social conventions of his time to the difficulties of revising verses incised into clay.
The subject of poetry on pots is continued in the next essay by John A. Burrison, a folklorist. Burrison begins by discussing the English and German traditions of writing on clay. Most of the potters in the eastern part of the United States worked in one or a combination of these traditions, but the only American potters who consistently wrote on their wares were the Pennsylvania German craftsmen. Burrison comes to the conclusion that Dave “was working independently of any tradition of pot-poetry, and that he chose this means of expression to declare his status as a literate slave.”
The following essay, by Joe L. and Fred E. Holcombe, was especially interesting to this reviewer. The Holcombes have been engaged in archaeological investigations of pottery sites in the Edgefield district since the 1970s. The sites they have excavated include four where Dave most probably worked. From these sites they have amassed a large collection of wasters with unique characteristics that most credibly identify them as Dave’s work. The Holcombes’ well-illustrated account of their excavations and analyses should be of value to students of material culture, particularly historical archaeologists, when trying to identify sherds or whole vessels as Dave’s workmanship.
The closing piece, also by Koverman, delves into the possible sources—from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the apocalypse—that inspired Dave’s poems. She ends by listing all of Dave’s known verses in chronological order. The catalog concludes with an inventory of the vessels that were on exhibit.
The subjects covered by the catalog’s essays are commendable pieces of research, coherently and interestingly presented. The faults of the catalog are few; the most notable, the omission (except for the Holcombes’ essay) of figure or photographic plate numbers. And it is sometimes unclear which illustration is referenced in the text. The catalog also would have benefited by the inclusion of more essays: one on the technology of producing alkaline-glazed stonewares and the skills necessary to produce these literary pots; another comparing Dave’s works to those of his contemporaries, both enslaved and free; and, perhaps, another on the role of these vessels, especially the very large jars, in the daily lives of the people who used them.
Meta F. Janowitz
URS Corp., and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art