The Words and Wares of David Drake: Revisiting "I Made This Jar" and the Legacy of Edgefield Pottery

The Words and Wares of David Drake is a collection of scholarship about Drake and his craft, featuring over eighty beautiful images and seven new essays. It presents the diverse perspectives of African American and American Studies scholars, archaeologists, artists, collectors, and historians, and Drake's work is now so highly prized it will be the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth-century ceramic art from Edgefield in 2022.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 228 pages
Publication date: 02 March 2024
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press

David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was born enslaved in Edgefield, South Carolina, at the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read or write, Drake was literate and signed some of his pots, not only with his name and a date, but with verse, making a powerful statement of resistance.

The Words and Wares of David Drake collects multifaceted scholarship about Drake and his craft. Building on the 1998 national traveling exhibit catalog, I Made This Jar...: The Life and Works of Enslaved African American Potter, Dave, and featuring more than eighty beautiful images and seven new essays, it presents the diverse perspectives of African American and American Studies scholars, archaeologists, artists, collectors, and historians. Drake's work is now so highly prized that it will be the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth-century ceramic art from Edgefield, which opens in September 2022.

Weight: 1100g
Dimension: 217 x 281 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781643363219