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

A Room with a View

“Why should we use our creative power? Because there is nothing that makes people so generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate, so indifferent to fighting and the accumulation of objects and money.” - Brenda Ueland

Rooftop View (Library of Congress)

This rooftop view of Charleston, the view that I also love in Paris, is a photograph from the grand collection of the Library of Congress, a treasure trove of visual history, available to us online. It was taken in Charleston, from the roof of No. 20 East Battery, looking Southwest, by a photographer named C.O. Greene in 1940. During the depression of the 1930’s, swarms of photographers, writers and muralists were employed, by the Works Progress Administration, to document buildings and cemeteries and communities. The WPA was the largest New Deal Agency and it employed millions of people. Many of our cemetery records were recorded then, and the records are genealogical jewels for those of us who love studying family history. One of my favorite little books produced by the WPA is called The Ocean Highway, New Brunswick, New Jersey to Jacksonville, Florida; American Guide Series, produced by Modern Age Books, 1938. It is the 1,000 mile journey of US 1 and the details about mostly the rural areas South Carolina are detailed and mapped carefully with mile markers. The unknown authors travel to Pocotaligo, where the Reverend William Hutson first preached at the Stony Creek Independent, later, Presbyterian, Church, and they write about Edisto Island, and Peter’s Point Plantation and a dynamic small Gullah church off Steamboat Landing Road, called “The Sanctify”.

I like to think we could do some of this again, that we, as Americans could reprioritise. Daniel Pink in his book, A Whole New Mind, seems to think that the Master of Fine Arts degree is the new MBA. Tough times demand creative solutions. The challenging economic situation we are living through now, may, l like to think, lead us back to the arts. Arts exist to help us heal, to make us dance, to nurture our spirits. If there ever was a time when we all needed generous, joyful, lively, bold and compassionate people, it is now.

Fresh History

Welcome to my blog about Charleston, South Carolina. A place proud with history, beauty, and art. Sometimes we feel a call, to be, to go, to do. I felt that about Charleston many years ago upon the discovery of a large trunk of letters and photographs about the Carolina Lowcountry, written by my grandmothers, cousins and aunts. I also felt the call to be an artist, even when I was in my teens, when my favorite haunt was a tiny bookstore on an old street in Asheville, where I was living and attending an all girls boarding school. I can remember being deeply moved by poems, by art, even then. Our ancestors are a part of who we are today. The African American culture has understood that I believe more than my own, and have recognized the presence of the ancestors in the everyday, perhaps a practice brought from the traditions from Ghana and Angola. I have been called to this task, to tell some of the stories of this place, not only so I can remember, but so that we will continue to make and tell our own stories. Today I will begin with some that surround these weathered cobbled streets in the French Quarter of this glittering holy city.