The Words And Wares Of David Drake

A celebration of the remarkable poem vessels of Dave the Potter David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was born enslaved in Edgefield in the backcountry of South Carolina near the Savannah River. Despite laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read or write, David was literate and signed some of his pots. His practice was not only to add his name and a date but also to embellish his work with verse—a powerful statement of resistance. The Words and Wares of David Drake collects multifaceted scholarship about David and his craft. Building on the 1998 national traveling exhibit catalog, I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave, and featuring more than one hundred beautiful images and six new essays, this authoritative volume presents the diverse perspectives of scholars, artists, and collectors. The Words and Wares of David Drake adds important depth and context to our understanding of both Edgefield pottery and the life of Dave. David's work is now so highly prized it is the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth-century ceramic art from Edgefield. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 8, 2022–February 5, 2023) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6, 2023–July 9, 2023) University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023–January 7, 2024) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16, 2024–May 12, 2024)

David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was born enslaved in Edgefield, South Carolina, at the turn of the nineteenth century. Despite laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read or write, Drake was literate and signed some of his pots, not only with his name and a date, but with verse--making a powerful statement of resistance. The Words and Wares of David Drake collects multifaceted scholarship about Drake and his craft. Building on the 1998 national traveling exhibit catalog, I Made This Jar...: The Life and Works of Enslaved African American Potter, Dave, and featuring more than eighty beautiful images and seven new essays, it presents the diverse perspectives of African American and American Studies' scholars, archaeologists, artists, collectors, and historians. Drake's work is now so highly prized it will be the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth century ceramic art from Edgefield that opens in September 2022.

The work of black writers, editors, publishers, and librarians is deeply embedded in the history of American print culture, from slave narratives to digital databases. While the printed word can seem democratizing, it remains that the infrastructures of print and digital culture can be as limiting as they are enabling. Contributors to this volume explore the relationship between expression and such frameworks, analyzing how different mediums, library catalogs, and search engines shape the production and reception of written and visual culture. Topics include antebellum literature, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movement; “post-Black” art, the role of black librarians, and how present-day technologies aid or hinder the discoverability of work by African Americans. Against a Sharp White Background covers elements of production, circulation, and reception of African American writing across a range of genres and contexts. This collection challenges mainstream book history and print culture to understand that race and racialization are inseparable from the study of texts and their technologies.

Where Is All My Relation? presents the first sustained academic discussion of the poetry, pottery, and culture of David Drake, an antebellum slave who distinguished himself by composing verse on the ceramics he produced in the years leading up to the Civil War. During the 1830s, 40s, and 50s, he incised couplets and signatures (a singular "Dave") onto the incredibly large storage vessels that he made. In fact, his stoneware pots and jars are among the largest made in North America during the antebellum era, and craft enthusiasts and appraisers are still proclaiming their precision and ambitious volume. Rich with biblical allusions, historical facts, and personal opinions, his art provides unique insights into the lives of slaves, craftsmen, and the culture of the American South in the first half of the nineteenth century. The essays here engage with the historical context and major issues that Drake's work provokes, among them: prohibitions against slave literacy; Drake's privileged status compared to other slaves at the time; the interpretive status of his material craft objects; the influence of contemporary African American poet George Moses Horton; and Drake's ability to sell his pottery despite the fact that slaves were not officially permitted to participate in a cash economy. Featuring essays by literary critics, art-historians, archaeologists, and curators, Where Is All My Relation? provides a window into the world of nineteenth century material culture and expands our traditional understanding of the slave-narrative genre.

Return to the the epic tale of the Lord of the Isles, David Drake's saga of magic and might. For the first time in a thousand years, the Kingdom of the Isles has a government and a real ruler: Prince Garric of Haft. The enemies joining against him intend to destroy not only the kingdom but humankind as well. The rebels gathering in the West outnumber the royal army and the magic they wield can strike into the heart of the palace itself, but far greater dangers lie behind those. On the far fringes of the Isles, ancient powers ready themselves for a titanic struggle in which human beings are mere pawns--or fodder! Reptilian and insect monsters from out of the ages march on the kingdom, commanded by wizards no longer human or never human at all. If unchecked, their ravening slaughter will sweep over the Isles as destructively as a flood of lava. Garric, ripped from his time and body, must make new allies if he and his kingdom are to survive. Watching them all from the blackness of a tomb walled off in time and space, the Mistress waits... And her fangs drip poison! At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Illustrated with 200 stunning photographs and encompassing objects from furniture and ceramics to jewelry and metal, this definitive work from Jo Lauria and Steve Fenton showcases some of the greatest pieces of American crafts of the last two centuries. Potter Craft

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "Drake's Road Book of the Grand Junction Railway from Birmingham to Liverpool and Manchester" by James active 1825 Drake. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

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 Dave 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.