Resistance and Resilience in Clay: How Enslaved African American Potters Gave Shape to Their Lives

Most accounts of slavery in the American South during the 17th to the 19th century have focused on the harsh realities of plantation life for enslaved people, who toiled under horrific conditions to produce cash crops, such as cotton, sugar, rice, and indigo. More recently, a growing number of historians have highlighted enslaved labor in industrial environments of the period. This includes enslaved African American potters who were forced to work in stoneware factories in the Edgefield District of South Carolina and the surrounding village of pottery factories sometimes called Pottersville. It was there that a large community of stoneware-making businesses profited by using enslaved labor to meet the growing storage demands of local plantations.

Stoneware is a type of clay pottery fired at a high temperature, resulting in greater durability. It often has a glossy, salt-glazed surface, making it suitable for storing food, water, grain, oils, and everyday goods. Edgefield stoneware is known for its alkaline glazing (made of clay mixed with ash or lime), which gave it a distinctive appearance and made it safer for storing food and water than lead-glazed pottery.

I have my own connection to the region: Some of my enslaved ancestors emigrated from the area with a pottery-making family to Alabama and then Texas in the 1840s. Although the history of enslaved and freed African American potters in Edgefield extended across three generations, the names and stories of these makers remain largely unknown. Historian Corbett Toussaint’s research has accounted for at least 200 African American men, women, and children who worked for the Edgefield pottery industry.

Some of these potters’ works—on loan from collector Kenneth Fechtner—are now on display in the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Wing of the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art. These works reflect the complex histories of African American stoneware makers, who blended their West African clay traditions with the European and Native American techniques that influenced many 18th- and 19th-century pottery manufacturers. The objects serve not only as personal records of the brutal everyday realities of slavery but, in some cases, as creative acts of resistance.

Just as enslaved Africans working the fields brought their unique agricultural skills with them, so enslaved African American potters possessed significant West African clay traditions and art-making techniques, such as carved African figures called nkisi. These figures may have inspired the cosmological symbols sometimes found on early pottery and face vessels produced by enslaved potters. Face jugs are a powerful form of Southern ceramic art that flourished from 1862 to 1865 at the Palmetto Fire Brick Works in Bath, South Carolina, which was part of the Edgefield District. They were often used for carrying water, alcohol, and other kinds of liquids. But face vessels were also used for spiritual purposes: Enslaved and free African Americans decorated the graves of their ancestors with these intimidating wares to ward off evil spirits. Understanding this unique tradition enables a deeper reading of the seemingly utilitarian works of African American potters in Edgefield and beyond who were forced to make jars under subjugation.

Who were the people behind this work? While details are limited, we do know about a few.

David Drake (1800–1865)—formerly described by some historians as “Dave the Potter”—is one of the most widely known figures among the Edgefield District’s enslaved African American potters. Considered a master of his craft, Drake created thousands of pots over the course of 40 years, and many of them were among the largest produced in the region—a testament to his virtuosity. His stoneware helped meet increased demands for food and water storage from the district’s growing population.

Scholars have pieced together some details of Drake’s life by analyzing the dates, names, Christian sentiments, and poetic couplets inscribed on his wares. Despite South Carolina’s laws forbidding the literacy of African Americans, Drake learned to read and write, and the words and markings on his pottery are bold acts of resistance. His jars record the names of the many enslavers he was sold or traded to throughout the Edgefield District, including brothers Dr. Abner Landrum and Rev. John Landrum, Harvey Drake, and Lewis J. Miles. The David Drake jar on view in the Fielding Wing is inscribed with the date Sept. 19, 1862, and was made during his enslavement to Miles, whom he remained with until he was freed at the end of the Civil War. Other works by Drake include incised lines of poetry and Biblical references. His poetic reflections illustrate something of a quotidian world coupled with the harsh realities of slavery, including the fracturing of families.

Dave belongs to Mr. Miles
wher the oven bakes & the pot biles (31 July 1840)

I wonder where is all my relations
Friendship to all—and every nation (16 August 1857)

Soon after the war’s end, some pottery factories were forced to shut down, having lost access to enslaved labor. Likewise, for some of the emancipated potters, this new era marked the end of their stoneware making. Carey Dickson (1837–1934), an enslaved African American potter in Edgefield, was one such case. Once emancipated, he lived in nearby Aiken County, South Carolina, and remained there the rest of his life. He ceased making pots, registered to vote (in 1868), and later worked in an office and as a farm hand. In 1930, researchers from the Charleston Museum in South Carolina conducted an interview with the 93-year-old Dickson, just four years before he died. He shared recollections of the elder potter Drake, whose jar stands next to a jug by Dickson in the Fielding Wing, including claims that Drake lost one of his legs in a train accident around 1836.

Before the Civil War, other Edgefield pottery makers had been forcibly moved to Georgia, Alabama, and Texas, where their enslavers installed new factories. My enslaved ancestors migrated with the Prothro family to Rusk County, Texas. Brothers James and Emory Prothro were the owners of the Prothro Pottery Company’s factory, which operated from 1846 until the end of the Civil War, shutting down not long after emancipation occurred.

After the end of slavery, some new factories emerged in the Edgefield District where freed potters produced work alongside white pottery makers. Emancipated potters were key craftsmen at the Seigler factory and Rev. Jesse P. Bodie’s factory. On view in the Fielding Wing, a jug made at Bodie’s factory represents a period between the 1860s and 1870s when about a half-dozen Black potters worked there. Formerly enslaved people had such limited resources that they often had to work on the same land or in the same industries that they had before emancipation. Others migrated in search of their families and better livelihoods.

Some founded their own pottery-making businesses. Once freed, potter Rich Williams (1847–1920) operated a workshop by the Tyger River near Greenville, South Carolina, where he made alkaline-glazed wares. Scholars believe Williams may have descended from a freed Edgefield potter named Milledge Williams and worked for Edgefield pottery-factory owner B. F. Landrum. The preserve jar on view was made by Rich Williams after he was emancipated, and it shows that he most likely learned alkaline-glaze techniques in Edgefield. Pictured in his workshop around 1910, he was one of the few early African American potters documented photographically.

Lauren Cross is the Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts.