Ceramics Saturdays: The Poem Jars of David Drake

Boy, I would kill to be in NYC right now: there’s an exhibit on at the Met of the poem jars of David Drake, an enslaved ceramicist from South Carolina. Unusually, he signed his large-format storage jars, pitchers, and other vessels. Even more unusually, he etched short poems into many: (the one above reads “I made this jar for cash, though it is called lucre trash”). The pieces are gorgeous, made from the red South Carolina clay, richly glazed, many requiring extraordinary strength to throw due to their size. It’s really rare to have a collection of this size from one of the many talented ceramicists enslaved during our Civil War period.