The jar is one of two returned to Drake’s family as part of a historic agreement this month between Drake’s descendants and the MFA Boston, one of the institutions that holds pieces of his work.
The vessels are among hundreds of surviving works by “Dave the Potter,” an enslaved man who labored in the alkaline-glazed stoneware potteries of Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before and during the Civil War.
Dave signed many of his jars — and inscribed some with rhyming couplets — an extraordinary and unparalleled assertion of identity and authorship during a time when literacy for enslaved people was criminalized.
Courtesy News4JAX
Children’s book author Yaba Baker, Dave’s 54-year-old fourth-generation grandson, called the return “a spiritual restoration.” Baker, whose first two children’s books explore Black history, said the family felt a dual sense of pride and grief.
Many Black families, he noted, struggle to trace their ancestry past a few generations; recovering Dave’s work gave them back a piece of themselves.
After the museum returned the pots to the family, they sold one back so people can continue to learn from Dave’s legacy. The other is on lease to the museum, at least temporarily. The MFA Boston said it wouldn’t disclose how much it paid.
