Museum Highlights: Dave - Artist, Poet, Slave

The Madison-Morgan Cultural Center’s Museum collection is full of wonderful objects and artifacts historically significant to our region. During this time of physical distancing we have been inspired to share with you, over the next 10 months, a video series titled, "Museum Highlights”, featuring a historical object/s from our permanent collection each month. 

This video in the Museum Highlights series provides an informative and historical overview of a large stoneware pot by David Drake.

Dave (c. 1801–1870s), later recorded as “David Drake,” was an enslaved African American potter who lived and worked most of his life in the Edgefield district of South Carolina. Active between the 1820s and his emancipation in 1865, Dave was one of the many enslaved African Americans who produced alkaline-glazed stoneware containers in the region, which became an important center of ceramic production in the South. In addition to his extraordinary talents at working clay, he is recognized for signing his works boldly with the name “Dave” and especially for inscribing many of them with poetry, often using rhyming couplets. 

Please enjoy this Museum Highlights!

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