Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of Enslaved Potter David Drake

The compelling story of a talented potter, enslaved by the author's ancestors, who became one of the singular artists of the nineteenth century.

He signed many of his works simply as “Dave” and is known today as Potter David Drake. He made pots and storage jars—everyday items, but because of their beauty and massive size, and because he signed and inscribed many with poems, they are valuable works of art, now commanding six figures at auction. Many of Dave's astounding jars are found now in America's finest museums.

There is no other enslaved artist on record who dared to put his name on his work, a dangerous advertisement of literacy. Fascinated by this man and by his own troubling family history, Leonard Todd moved from Manhattan to Edgefield, South Carolina, the place where his ancestors had established a thriving pottery industry in the early 1800s. Todd studied each of Dave's poems for biographical clues, which he pieced together with local records and family letters to create this moving and dramatic chronicle of Dave's life―a story of creative triumph in the midst of slavery.