Description
David Drake is recognized as one of the United States’ most accomplished nineteenth-century potters. Yet, though his pots―many inscribed with original verse―sit in museums across the nation, he is too often passed over when considering the early foundations of African American poetry. Born in South Carolina at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Drake produced hundreds of pieces while under the surveillance of the enslavers who claimed him and his work as their property. Still, asserts P. Gabrielle Foreman, he is perhaps the only Black person in all of the free or slave states whose literary work was preserved in neither books nor pamphlets nor newspapers. His pots and jars served as pages as well as ceramic vessels.
This book examines how Drake’s pottery and poetry have inspired visual artists and poets who claim him as an artistic ancestor. It features the Sir Dave (1998) series by artist Jonathan Green, including thirteen paintings that have never been exhibited or published together before. Accompanying and in dialogue with Green’s paintings is a twenty-poem cycle called All My Relation (2015) by Glenis Redmond.
