Containing African American History: Coil Baskets, Face Jugs, and Dave the Potter – Part Two

Part one of this Black History Month blog focused on sweetgrass baskets, an African-based art form still practiced by people in the South Carolina (and northern Georgia) low country.  This installment concerns earthenware containers of history:  specifically, the distinctive pottery tradition of face jugs and the remarkable productions of one of the few slave artists/craftspeople–Dave Drake—whose name, works, and life experience have survived to claim their rightful place in United States history.

Face Jugs

Baskets are fine containers for dry, perishable ingredients; in the pre-Civil-War American South, pottery was the most common material from which to make containers for liquids and long-term storage.  The Edgefield area south of Charleston, near the Savannah River, had ample supplies of clay suitable for stoneware; it also had a large supply of second- or third-generation ‘in-country’ slave craftsmen.  In the early 19^th century, white entrepreneurs founded commercial potteries in the area, ‘employing’ skilled slaves and developing craft techniques, like attractive glazes and slip decorations, that enhanced product appeal to customers who, earlier, had relied on more ad hoc plantation-made pottery. 

Just about all African cultures have made and still make pottery.  Most is crafted by women, with the exception of ritual or sacred vessels that must be fashioned by men.  Antebellum South Carolina potteries used male slaves as workers: is there any trace of African male-crafted pottery traditions in pre-civil-war Edgefield pottery?

 A Civil-War-era face jug from the Edgefield region; the banner heading this section shows an array of African American-made face jugs produced in the late 1850s.

I think so, at least obliquely.  Face jugs began to be produced in the decades before the Civil War, and their iconographical import and possible religious use remain mysterious, although some have been found at gravesites.  Basically, face jugs are smallish containers that feature rather grotesque faces; the main color is usually dark, the mouth and teeth are highlighted, and the eyes are emphasized with kaolin (white clay) and, sometimes, white shell, glass, or porcelain inlay.  Their small size suggests that they were not utilitarian containers; their visually prominent mouths and, particularly, eyes suggest that they have ties to Kongo minkisi  (singular, nkisi) figures, sacra made by male sculptors and male traditional healers.

In general, minkisi are sculptural repositories for medicinal or retributive forces.  The best-known type today is the ‘nail fetish,’ a standing warlike figure into which sharp metal objects are driven to activate the forces contained in the object.  Throughout the greater Kongo cultural realm, however, most minkisi are not metal-studded; they have medicinal/spiritual substances attached to or contained within them, and they can be quite small.  What they do have in common with their nail-fetish brethren is white eyes—kaolin or shells or mirrored glass signifying after-death spiritual power—and at least partially opened mouths signifying forceful truth-telling and, at times, a justice that can devour evil.

A Kongo nkisi nkondi (often referred to as a nail fetish) -- its function was to pursue and/or punish evildoers; an older nkisi nkondi, denuded of its additive materials.

A Kongo nkisi with healing/protective materials added to or inserted in the head, stomach, and back.

It makes sense to me, therefore, that the original impetus for South Carolina face jugs is the Kongo nkisi tradition.  A jug can be a repository for ‘magic’ substances as easily as a back cavity, an inserted horn or feathers, and additive surface materials.  The increasingly whimsical appearance of South Carolina face jugs may be attributable to the simple fact that they became  popular, money-making commodities and that white potters began to produce them.  

A Fon (‘Slave Coast,’ present-day Benin) bocio figure; note the chains signifying the enslavement these deliberately ‘rough’ sculptures tried to prevent.

Another historical message ante-bellum face jugs may send is the change in South Carolina slave-importation patterns. 1807 marked a semi-halt to the slave trade proper; slave ships still plied the waves, of course, but their embarkation points, routes, and trans-shipment hubs became more complicated.  As opposed to earlier patterns, late 18^th-century and early 19^th-century slave importation to South Carolina included many more shipments from the Slave Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Bight of Biafra.  

An Akan/Ashanti memorial head, used in funerary rituals and placed on gravesites.

These diverse populations could have contributed to the face jug tradition as well.  Fon people (Slave Coast) were known for bocio, often frightening anthropomorphic figures that warded off evil (including being enslaved).  Akan (Gold Coast) people made terracotta heads to put on graves.  Eastern Nigerian peoples had masking and sacred sculptural traditions that featured fearsome faces; Northern Nigerian peoples produced anthropomorphic clay vessels.

An Ekoi/Ejagham head crest from the Cross River area of Southeastern Nigeria (Bight of Benin); older exemplars are covered with (animal?) skin and perhaps substituted for actual enemy heads.

A Chamba figurative vessel from Northeast Nigeria (captured peoples from this area were transported to the Bight of Benin, then sold).

Given the many origins of South Carolina slaves by the mid-nineteenth century, it’s probable that face jugs were a hybrid pottery form with initially a vaguely apotropaic function.  As their popularity grew, a clever potter could ward off evil in a distinctly New World way – by producing containers that sold well and thus prevented the potter himself from being sold away from his community.

Dave the Potter

The slave craftspeople who made sweetgrass and pottery containers were almost always anonymous.  A notable exception is Dave Drake, known as ‘Dave the Potter,’ an Edgefield slave craftsman who not only signed and dated most of his works but also incised short poems into his pots.  The large jar pictured in part above includes this couplet:  "I made this jar, all of cross, if you don't repent, you will be lost." 

Although some other Edgefield area slave potters signed their works with distinctive marks, even initials, on the bottom of the pot, Dave wrote his name and the fabrication date in large, bold letters on the shoulder of the container.  When he added a verse, it appeared underneath the signature or elsewhere under the vessel's top lip.  Thus Dave claimed double authorship as potter and as poet.

A diorama of  ‘Pottersville,’ where Dave worked for decades.

As a potter, Dave was remarkable: he produced some of the largest stoneware vessels ever made in the United States.  They are notable for their symmetrical elegance, for the subtle variations of glazes, and for their durability—over 100 signed containers remain in collections throughout the south and elsewhere, including the Smithsonian.  Further, Dave had only one leg, making it difficult to turn the potters wheel while throwing the pot.  One legend has it that Dave threw himself across railroad tracks in order to lose a limb, thereby reducing his value as a slave when his master threatened to sell him.  Another oral tradition states that Dave was paired with a slave who had lost both arms and who worked the wheel with his strong legs while Dave created the vessel with his strong arms.

The best historical information about Dave the Potter is embodied in his artworks themselves.  They testify to his strength – many are so large that they required four handles to carry them when they were filled.  They testify to his aesthetic sensibility and his technical prowess.  And through his poetic inscriptions, they also testify to his emotional and intellectual life, plus providing a partial record of life events. 

A pot inscribed “Lm may 3^rd 1862/Dave”; ‘Lm’ refers to Lewis Miles, who owned the potteryworks and may have owned Dave for a time.

The inscriptions tell us that Dave was literate and was instructed in Christianity.  As they often refer to his owners, and are dated, they provide a rough timeline of his life in South Carolina (he stayed in the Edgefield area until his death, in the 1870s).  They suggest pride in his craft and knowledge of how his wares were to be used:  “A very large Jar = which has 4 handles =pack it full of fresh meats — then light = candles,” the candles referring to the melted wax that would seal the vessels. They indicate that he had a love life and that family and friends had been sold away from the community:  "I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all—and every nation."

The “sun, moon, and, and stars” vessel that Dave made during the Civil War.

Evidently, Dave was not content to wonder about the itineraries of fellow slaves.  At least one inscription appears to give directions to freedom, using the constellation Ursa Major (‘the Big Bear,’  ‘the Big Dipper,’ ‘the Drinking Gourd’) as a guide to the way North:  "The sun, moon and stars / in the west are plenty of bear.”  Another makes a perhaps ironic reference to Independence Day:  “the fourth of July – is Surely come – / to blow the fife = and beat the drum.”  Since the 30-gallon jar featuring this poem is dated July 4, 1859, Dave obviously was working rather than enjoying the holiday. 

Because he inscribed himself proudly in his own craft, Dave Drake produced objects that contained and exhibited his own history, and via synecdoche, the history of talented slaves who remain anonymous. Dave speaks for himself and his compatriots.  But it does not diminish his self-made legacy, I think, by suggesting as a parallel commemoration the words of Walt Whitman, a near-contemporary American poet:  “I am large.  I contain multitudes.”

References

[Note: In 2010, Laban Carrick Hill published a Caldecott-Medal-winning children’s book about Dave the Potter, with lovely illustrations by Bryan Collier.  Dave’s story, although especially inspiring to African American children, fascinates children of all backgrounds.]

Baldwin, Cinda K. "Edgefield Face Vessels: African-American Contributions to American Folk Art." American Visions: The Magazine of Afro-American Culture 5:4 (1990), pp.16-20.

Burrison, John A.  “South Carolina’s Edgefield District: An Early International Crossroads of Clay.”  American Studies Journal 56 (2012). http://www.asjournal.org/56-2012/south-carolinas-edgefield-district-an-early-international-crossroads-of-clay/

Carney, Judith A.  Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas.  Cambridge MA:  Harvard UP, 2002.

Cooksey, Susan et al., editors.  Kongo across the Waters.  Gainesville FL:  U of Florida P, 2013.

“Dave the Potter—Pottersville, Edgefield County, South Carolina.”  SCIWAY (South Carolina’s Information Highway) 2016. http://www.sciway.net/afam/dave-slave-potter.html

Fields-Black, Edda L.  Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 2008.

“Grass Roots:  African Origins of an American Art.”  National Museum of African Art.  Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2010.  http://africa.si.edu/exhibits/grassroots/index.html

Hall, Michael D. "Brother’s Keeper: Some Research on American Face Vessels and Some Conjecture on the Cultural Witness of Folk Potters in the New World."  In Stereoscopic Perspective: Reflections on American Fine Art and Folk Art.  Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988.

Hill, Laban Carrick.  Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave.  New York: Little, Brown, 2010.

“A History of African American Face Jugs.” Chattanooga State, n.d.

http://river.chattanoogastate.edu/orientations/ex-learn-obj/Face_Jugs/Face_Jugs_print.html

Isensee, Laura.  “Calling Slaves ‘Workers’ is More Than an Editing Error.”  nprEd.  23 October  2015.  http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/10/23/450826208/why-calling-slaves-workers-is-more-than-an-editing-error

Koverman, Jill Beute.  I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave.  Columbia SC:  U of South Carolina--McKissick Museum, 1998.

Mack, Tom.  “Dave the Potter.”  U of South Carolina--Aiken. November 5, 1999.

http://polisci.usca.edu/aasc/davepotter.htm

Roberts, Diana Lyn.  The Centrality of Ceramics in African Cultures.  Birmingham AL:  Birmingham Museum of Art. (2013?)

Sumpter,  Althea. “Geechee and Gullah Culture.”  New Georgia Encyclopedia, 2006.  http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/geechee-and-gullah-culture

Todd, Leonard. Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter, Dave.  W.W. Norton, Fall 2008.  (See also Todd’s website: http://leonardtodd.com/)

Trull, Armando.  “Smithsonian Unveils New ‘American Stories’ Exhibit.’  WAMU 88.5 (American University Radio).  12 April 2012.  http://wamu.org/news/morning_edition/12/04/12/smithsonian_unveils_new_american_stories_exhibit

Turner, Lorenzo Dow.  Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (new edition).  Columbia SC:  U of South Carolina P, 2002.

Wood, Peter.  Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670s through the Stono Rebellion.  London: W.W. Norton and Co, 1974.