Potter Dave Drake's guest appearances

Potter Dave Drake

Curious Objects

Friedrich Hayek

Paul Becker

Kevin Brown

Sam Pollard

Ethan Lasser

David Webb

Jeffrey Wolf

Stuart Gordon

Noah Wunsch

Henry Highland Garnet

Stuart Feld

Katherine Purcell

Philip Hewat-Jaboor

Michael Pashby

Levi Higgs

OwlTail

Dave Drake

In 1834 a law was passed in South Carolina that prohibited slaves from reading or writing. The punishment for transgressors? Fifty lashes. That same year, Dave Drake, an enslaved potter at work in Edgefield County inscribed his first poem on a large stoneware jug he'd made. In this episode of the podcast, Ethan Lasser, chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, tells Dave’s story and that of an 1857 storage jar that bears the epigrammatic lines: "I made this Jar for Cash-/ though its called lucre trash/ Dave.”

The Life and Labor of Enslaved Potter Dave Drake, with Ethan Lasser