At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the revelatory exhibition “Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina” centers on a towering stoneware storage jar by David Drake, an enslaved artisan whose work challenges perceptions of 19th-century American sculpture. This ongoing show illuminates overlooked Black contributions to ceramics, reframing everyday objects as profound artistic and historical statements.
The Jar as Monumental Sculpture
Elegantly proportioned at over two feet high, the jar from Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art features a rippling surface with layered glazes in deep umber to ocher tones. It swells from a sturdy foot, angles inward to a shoulder with four ear-like handles, evoking a collaborative lift. Unlike bronze equestrian statues glorifying conquerors, this vessel contains history rather than narrating it, positioning it as a sacred object.
David Drake’s Defiant Legacy
Known as Dave the Potter, Drake signed and dated this 1858 jar from Stony Bluff Manufactory amid Edgefield’s clay-rich grounds. Enslaved yet gifted, he crafted massive pieces starting on the wheel and finishing by coil method, showcasing superhuman skill and strength. Post-Emancipation, he moved to Texas potteries run by freed Edgefield men, dying in the 1870s.
- Drake inscribed jars with cursive poems, aphorisms, and personal pleas—acts of courage, as literacy was criminalized for the enslaved, often punished by finger amputation.
- Speculation points to owners like Harvey Drake or publisher Abner Landrum teaching him secretly.
- One inscription laments his wife and children, sold after Harvey’s death, blending artistry with raw humanity.
Broader Cultural Resonance
This exhibition underscores Edgefield’s Black potters as innovators in alkaline-glazed stoneware, a technique influencing Southern ceramics. By elevating Drake’s jar to sculpture status, it connects to trends reclaiming enslaved makers’ stories—from Philadelphia’s furniture craftsmen to Virginia’s ironworkers—fostering cultural reparations through art history. Amid national reckonings with slavery’s legacy, such displays affirm Black excellence, urging museums to center marginalized voices in American narratives.
