Dave, the African American Slave Potter

“Give me silver or give me gold/though they are dangerous to our soul /27 July 1840″ – Dave (slave potter) Edgefield, SC

photo by Gavin Ashworth /for Ceramics in America

Living in South Carolina, with an ear open to authentic local craft and art, one hears often of the Edgefield District, known for its distinctive traditional stoneware. South Carolina is rightfully proud of her two native crafts, the carefully woven Sea Grass baskets, made in the traditional style by the Gullah people, African Americans, who were formerly enslaved on the coastal Sea Islands, and also for its stoneware pottery, which is most significantly, tied to a slave named Dave who inscribed his massive pots with poetry. Dave’s legacy has grown not only because of his superlative technical skill but also because he dared to write poetic couplets on his pots, and to sign his name, which was bold, brave, and daring. His pots now fetch six figures in the antiques market.

The Charleston Museum, was, in 1919, given the first inscribed jar by Dave, by a contributor named Stoney. The massive forty gallon jar so inspired the director at the time, Paul Rea, that he wrote, a few months after it arrived, that “the jars should be collected…to prepare a history of the old potteries.” That did not happen until Laura Bragg, subsequent director of the Charleston Museum, visited the Edgefield area in 1930, learning about the one legged potter who worked in the area all his life, from 1834 to about 1870. The Edgefield pottery collection at the Charleston Museum is a testament to Bragg as a preservationist. Bragg offered an article about the history of the South Carolina jug and pottery for International Studio, which had previously printed her work, but the pottery piece was never published.

Dave they say, lay on the railroad tracks when he learned he was to be sold and relocated to a plantation to the west. The train severed his leg, making him less valuable to the buyer who then refused him. Dave, now one legged, continued his work as a potter, working with am able bodied companion, named ‘Baddler”: the latter works, which can be seen at the Charleston Museum, were signed “Dave and Bladdler”. The great potter stayed and worked in South Carolina all the days of his life. He continued to produce pots – large, great pots, inscribed with short phrases of poetic wisdom, and bravely inscribed in his hand and signed with his name, a testament to an undaunted spirit.

The following couplets are some of the poetic inscriptions, on the pots of Dave, the slave potter, of Edgefield, South Carolina.

I made this jar for cash
Though it is called lucre trash
22 August 1857

I made this for our Sott
it will never – never – rott
31 March 1858

This noble jar will hold 20
fill it with silver then you’ll have plenty
8 April, 1858

When you fill this jar with pork or beef
Scot will be there to get a peace
(on the other side)

This jar is to Mr. Seglir
who keeps the bar in orangeburg
for Mr Edwards a gentle man
who formerly kept Mr Thos bacons horses
21 April 1858

Tabby! She’s no Alley Cat

Tabby Smokehouse (Bleak Hall, Edisto Island) Built in 1840

Pigs and barbeque and the new rock star butchers in Charleston have been on my mind for the last few days, so this well preserved smokehouse outbuilding, on Botany Bay Plantation, conjured images of charcuterie close to home. Built in 1840, this smokehouse would have originally hung with the well butchered pigs of the Botany Bay Plantation, on Edisto Island, a place owned by John Ferrars Townsend, one of the island’s largest sea island cotton planters.

Charcuterie

The smokehouse is made of tabby, which was a type of concrete made from oyster shells, lime, sand, and water. Lime was created from burning the shells to make oyster shell ash. Tabby was the first concrete building material made and utilized in the United States, and was used as a building material along the sea islands and coast for over a century, until the development of portland cement in 1843. Tabby ruins are found along the coasts in from South Carolina to Florida and are reminders of the vernacular, of the irreplaceable cultural history of the sea islands. So unique is the tabby that one is able to see the varied tactile texture that is obviously a mark of the handmade, the artisan. Historians disagree on whether its use originated along the northwest African coast and was taken to Spain and Portugal, or vice versa. The origin of the word tabby itself is unclear: the Spanish word tapia means a mud wall, and the Arabic word tabbi means a mixture of mortar and lime. Similar words also appear in both Portuguese and Gullah.

A symposium took place a few years ago to study the conservation and preservation of tabby and is an excellent resource was published by the Georgia Dept. of Public Resources, including much about South Carolina building traditions. I was delighted to see so much written about the existing structures on Edisto Island, where I live. In Beaufort, on Sapelo Island in Georgia, and on Edisto, there are examples of the tabby construction that connect cultural histories, that of the sea island cotton planter, whose slaves’ labor surely mastered the art of building with tabby, and the Native American population whose large shell middens, high domes of discarded oyster shell, provided raw material. One shell mound, one they call Spanish Mount, indicates a Native American settlement they say existed 4,000 years ago on Edisto Island. It is now protected by the State Park near the South Edisto river.

Examples of tabby on Edisto Island exist at Point of Pines Plantation on the North Edisto river, where thick wall ruins still stand at the place where the original residence of Paul Grimball was built in 1696, known as the earliest tabby in South Carolina. Botany Bay Plantation boasts several tabby foundations, one for the ice house, which was also uniquely filled with charcoal between the interior and exterior walls, said to have been included to act as insulation.

tabby detail, grain house wall, Botany Bay

Tabby Ruins, Sunnyside Plantation, Edisto Island, SC

Additionally, tabby was used in the early 1700’s to fortify forts, in industrial use to build the Indigo vats at Burlington Plantation in Beaufort County, then again on Edisto, in the church foundation and baptismal pool at the First Baptist Church on highway 174. Sunnyside Plantation, on Edisto, is owned by the same family since 1860, and boasts the tabby ruins of an old cotton gin, built after the civil war in the 1870’s.

The story of Hepzipah Jenkins Townsend (1780-1847) wife of Daniel Townsend, is a fascinating one that still resonates on Edisto Island. She helped endow the First Baptist Church, than gave it to the African American congregation, who pack the church every week to this day, traveling from miles to attend (all morning) services on Sundays, and who serve up some of the delectable celebratory feasts on special occasions, Gullah style.

Gullah, and the Circle Dance

The Old Plantation. Anonymous folk painting, South Carolina, c.1777-1794. (The Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, VA)

I am really into circles lately, the spiral of the conch on the beach, the perfect geometry of the nautilus shell, the water in the tub, circling, before it descends below.

This fabulous rare painting, according to the painting’s original owner, Mary E. Lyles of Columbia, South Carolina, was painted by one of her forebears, probably on a plantation in South Carolina somewhere between Charleston and Orangeburg between 1777 and 1794. It shows a rare glimpse into the original culture of the slaves, the clothes, the musical instruments that we can trace to Africa. The women are playing what Sierra Leoneans easily recognize as the shegureh, a women’s instrument (rattle). Scholars think what’s portrayed here is actually a communal social dance gathering, participants forming a circle with the dancers taking turns in the center to express themselves through the medium of dance as well as to perform a solo exhibition of their dancing skills.

On the sea islands nearby, the Gullah tradition of the Ring Shout continued as a blend of traditions and was a form of praise and thanksgiving to God. By 1710 South Carolina became the first mainland colony to have a black majority and by 1740 the black population outnumbered the whites by two to one. The African influence was obviously a big one on the English, French, and Barbadians who settled Charleston. Slaves adapted to Christianity and the planters began to eat rice and okra and watermelon. We all (even the French, in France!) say “ok”, a word derived from the Gullah word, “okeh”. Old Charleston was always a proud city, proud certainly of her old beauty, but proud I think, too, of her individuality, her blend of cultures, of her religious tolerance. She has soul. I would like to think that we are ready, now, as Southerners, as Americans, to hold hands in a circle. We have a smart and accomplished American President who is African American. Michelle Robinson Obama’s family were slaves, from Georgetown, just north of Charleston. Don’t you think we need a little more dancing in lives, in our everydays? Yes, the circle dance will work for me.