Two stoneware jars made by David Drake, the enslaved 19th-century potter who signed his work “Dave” and inscribed some of it with verse, have been handed back to his family by the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
Drake worked in Edgefield, South Carolina, and made large glazed storage jars that are now prized by collectors and museums. He taught himself to read and write at a time when that was forbidden to enslaved people, and scratched poems into the clay. Around 270 of his pieces are known to survive. The museum transferred an 1855 signed jar and a larger unsigned pot to the Dave the Potter Legacy Trust, which represents his descendants.
The family now holds six of Drake’s works and hopes to gather more. The return follows a similar transfer by Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts last year, and gives the people descended from a remarkable artist a share in the legacy of his craft.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine