Who Owns the Works of Dave the Potter?

David Drake was an enslaved man who worked as a potter in Edgefield, South Carolina, during the 19th century. Known as Dave the Potter, he made impressively large ceramic jars, many inscribed with verses of poetry. Today his pieces are displayed in renowned art museums, and single works have sold for more than $1 million. But who really owns his art? His descendants say his work is rightfully theirs.

They believe most of these objects were essentially stolen from Drake—made under duress and sold or traded without his consent while he was enslaved. They see Drake’s ambitious ceramic storage jars as his artistic, spiritual, and financial legacy—and their own. Now they’re seeking to recover ownership of Drake’s ceramics from museum collections and private homes across the country.

The family first discovered their connection to the artist in 2016. One day, Daisy Whitner, a retiree living in Washington, D.C., received a call from a genealogist who specialized in African heritage. The woman asked for Whitner’s parents’ and grandparents’ birth dates and birthplaces. Then she started asking about Whitner’s great-grandparents. By the end of the call, Whitner had learned that she was David Drake’s great-great-great-granddaughter.

David Drake was an enslaved man who worked as a potter in Edgefield, South Carolina, during the 19th century. Known as Dave the Potter, he made impressively large ceramic jars. Many are inscribed with verses of poetry. Today his pieces are displayed in renowned art museums. Single works have sold for more than $1 million. But who really owns his art? His descendants say his work is rightfully theirs.

They believe most of these objects were essentially stolen from Drake. The pieces were made while Drake was enslaved. They were made under duress and sold or traded without his consent. His descendants see Drake’s ambitious ceramic storage jars as his artistic, spiritual, and financial legacy. Now they’re seeking to recover ownership of Drake’s ceramics from museum collections and private homes across the country.

In 2016, Daisy Whitner, a retiree living in Washington, D.C., received a call from a genealogist. She specialized in African heritage. The woman asked for Whitner’s parents’ and grandparents’ birth dates and birthplaces. Then she started asking about Whitner’s great-grandparents. By the end of the call, Whitner had learned that she was David Drake’s great-great-great-granddaughter.

Drake was especially remarkable, Whitner learned, because he signed his name on his vessels and sometimes wrote short poems on them too. That he had learned to write at all defied 19th-century South Carolina laws that prohibited enslaved people from seeking education.

The phone call “was just a blessing,” Whitner, 87, recalls. “Because of slavery, so many African Americans don’t even know where to start” researching their heritage, she adds. “We don’t know who our people are.”

The call began Whitner and her family’s journey to reconnect to their ancestor and his celebrated work, currently on view at museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In 2021, a 25-gallon, four-handled stoneware “poem jar” by Drake brought $1.56 million at auction, a record for American pottery.

A cursive inscription on one of Drake’s pots from 1857 reads, “I wonder where is all my relation.” Scholars tend to frame Drake’s poetic inscription as a raw expression of grief, made after his wife and children had been sold to other enslavers. His heirs say they now read it as a question posed across generations, to which they are the answer.

“We are the relations,” says Yaba Baker, Whitner’s 54-year-old nephew.

Drake was especially remarkable, Whitner learned, because he signed his name on his vessels and sometimes wrote short poems on them too. In 19th-century South Carolina, there were laws that prohibited enslaved people from seeking education.

The phone call “was just a blessing,” Whitner, 87, recalls. “Because of slavery, so many African Americans don’t even know where to start” researching their heritage, she adds. “We don’t know who our people are.”

The call began Whitner and her family’s journey to reconnect to their ancestor. His celebrated work is currently on view at museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the de Young Museum in San Francisco. In 2021, a 25-gallon, four-handled stoneware “poem jar” by Drake brought $1.56 million at auction, a record for American pottery.

A cursive inscription on one of Drake’s pots from 1857 reads, “I wonder where is all my relation.” Scholars tend to frame Drake’s poetic inscription as a raw expression of grief. The pot was made after his wife and children had been sold to other enslavers. His heirs say they now read it as a question posed across generations, to which they are the answer.

“We are the relations,” says Yaba Baker, Whitner’s 54-year-old nephew.

No other heirs of enslaved artists have received the kind of restitution Drake’s family is asking for, and there is no obvious legal framework for it. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 governs the return of sacred objects to Indigenous tribal members, and an international network of laws guides the return of culturally significant objects to countries of origin. But nothing comparable supports the heirs of enslaved people.

But Drake’s descendants have been guided by their own sense of justice. Baker says the worst part is knowing that the heirs of the people who enslaved Drake could still profit from his jars.

“These pots are assets, and families are going to use them to build generational wealth or pass them down,” he says. “Why should this work benefit other families and not ours?”

The family learned more about Drake’s life when he was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 2016. He was born around 1801 and gained his freedom in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. As a free man, he took the surname of his first enslaver, Harvey Drake. He died in the 1870s.

Drake’s family is asking for restitution, but there is no obvious legal framework for it. The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 governs the return of sacred objects to Indigenous tribal members. There is an international network of laws that guides the return of culturally significant objects to countries of origin. Yet nothing comparable supports the heirs of enslaved people.

But Drake’s descendants have been guided by their own sense of justice. Baker says the worst part is knowing that the heirs of the people who enslaved Drake could still profit from his jars.

“These pots are assets, and families are going to use them to build generational wealth or pass them down,” he says. “Why should this work benefit other families and not ours?”

The family learned more about Drake’s life when he was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 2016. He was born around 1801. He gained his freedom in 1863 when President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. As a free man, he took the surname of his first enslaver, Harvey Drake. He died in the 1870s.

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, 2021.29

The family was especially struck by his vast output in clay, largely produced while he was enslaved and working at a pottery factory in Edgefield.

“It made me sad to learn about the conditions he had to work under,” Whitner says. “He was disabled, he had one leg, and had to make these huge pots that hold 20 or 30 gallons. . . . But I also got caught up in the beauty of what he made.”

It’s not clear how Drake learned to write or who taught him to use the potter’s wheel, with which he made an estimated 40,000 pieces during his lifetime. There is fierce debate over how he lost a leg, whether in a drunken accident, as recounted in the Drake biography Carolina Clay, or, as scholars have recently suggested, as punishment for some perceived infraction.

But the inscribed pottery itself tells a clearer story, one of persistence and defiance. More than 200 of Drake’s signed jars survive today, with about 60 in institutions. For years these pieces were relatively affordable, traded mainly by small dealers in the South and collected by regional museums and ceramic buffs.

The family was especially struck by his vast output in clay, largely produced while he was enslaved and working at a pottery factory in Edgefield.

“It made me sad to learn about the conditions he had to work under,” Whitner says. “He was disabled, he had one leg, and had to make these huge pots that hold 20 or 30 gallons. . . . But I also got caught up in the beauty of what he made.”

It’s not clear how Drake learned to write or who taught him to use the potter’s wheel. He made an estimated 40,000 pieces during his lifetime. There is fierce debate over how he lost a leg. In the Drake biography Carolina Clay, it was recounted he lost it in a drunken accident. However, scholars have recently suggested it was a punishment for some perceived infraction.

But the inscribed pottery itself tells a story of persistence and defiance. More than 200 of Drake’s signed jars survive today, with about 60 in institutions. For years these pieces were relatively affordable, traded mainly by small dealers in the South and collected by regional museums and ceramic buffs.

Over the past decade, bigger art museums and collectors have recognized Drake’s work as a window into American slavery from the enslaved person’s point of view. Prices have soared.

One scholar driving this interest is Ethan Lasser, head of curatorial affairs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston). He helped curate the traveling exhibition Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, which prominently featured Drake’s work.

In 2022, more than a dozen of Drake’s descendants attended the show’s first stop at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Entering the gallery, Baker says, he was struck by the “magnitude of the exhibition.”

“That’s when we got the idea of how important Dave was,” Baker recalls.

Over the past decade, bigger art museums and collectors have recognized Drake’s work as a window into American slavery from the enslaved person’s point of view. Prices have soared.

One scholar driving this interest is Ethan Lasser, head of curatorial affairs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA Boston). He helped curate the traveling exhibition Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, which prominently featured Drake’s work.

In 2022, more than a dozen of Drake’s descendants attended the show’s first stop at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Entering the gallery, Baker says, he was struck by the “magnitude of the exhibition.”

“That’s when we got the idea of how important Dave was,” Baker recalls.

By the time the show reached the MFA Boston in 2023, Lasser’s team had made an emotional short film interviewing the family elders as part of the exhibition.

“I felt like it was an important moment to share their story and what it means that this artist had descendants,” Lasser says. “It also allowed us to open the question about chains of ownership.”

He was referring to the provenance, or origins, of artworks. Sometimes provenance is simple: A painting passes down from original artist to ultimate heirs through generations. Sometimes the chain of ownership is broken, as in the case of the art systematically looted by Nazi Germany during World War II (see “Returned At Last,” below).

In Drake’s case, as the Boston museum acknowledged in a wall label, the chain of ownership was “broken” from the start because the potter made the work while enslaved and had no control over when, how, or for how much the work was sold.

After the exhibit opened in Boston, Baker organized a family video call with six of his cousins. They had recently begun meeting to discuss how they might reclaim Drake’s work. They agreed to hire a lawyer.

The idea was to “start a process, thinking if we don’t get anything out of it, at least our kids will. Or our grandkids will,” Baker says.

Art museums are often loath to part with prized possessions for which they have often paid large sums, and the family was prepared for a difficult
undertaking. George Fatheree, the family’s lawyer, couldn’t recall “an instance when a museum has applied principles of ethical restitution to artwork created by enslaved Americans,” he says. “So my mind started racing.”

By the time the show reached the MFA Boston in 2023, Lasser’s team had made an emotional short film interviewing the family elders as part of the exhibition.

“I felt like it was an important moment to share their story and what it means that this artist had descendants,” Lasser says. “It also allowed us to open the question about chains of ownership.”

He was referring to the provenance, or origins, of artworks. Sometimes provenance is simple. An original artist passes a painting down to heirs through generations. Sometimes the chain of ownership is broken, as in the case of the art systematically looted by Nazi Germany during World War II (see “Returned At Last,” below).

In Drake’s case, as the Boston museum acknowledged in a wall label, the chain of ownership was “broken” from the start. The potter made the work while enslaved and had no control over when, how, or for how much the work was sold.

After the exhibit opened in Boston, Baker organized a family video call with six of his cousins. They had recently begun meeting to discuss how they might reclaim Drake’s work. They agreed to hire a lawyer.

The idea was to “start a process, thinking if we don’t get anything out of it, at least our kids will. Or our grandkids will,” Baker says.

Art museums rarely like to part with prized possessions for which they have often paid large sums. The family was prepared for a difficult undertaking. George Fatheree, the family’s lawyer, couldn’t recall “an instance when a museum has applied principles of ethical restitution to artwork created by enslaved Americans,” he says. “So my mind started racing.”

He decided to start with the MFA Boston, which has a curator focused on the ethical acquisition and display of artwork. Last October, after months of conversation, the MFA Boston agreed to return two of Drake’s jars in its collection, recognizing the family’s newly established Dave the Potter Legacy Trust as the legal owner. The contract was modeled on the return of Nazi-looted artistic works.

Benefits from the trust extend to anyone who can establish that they too are descendants of Drake. Fatheree says he’s currently in conversation with half a dozen other institutions about returning Drake’s works to the family.

Last November, 15 family members traveled to Boston to receive the pots in a small signing ceremony. As part of the agreement, the museum bought back one of the vessels for a price that both parties have described as fair market value. Experts put that around $1 million.

This jar features a pointed comment on the fruits of Drake’s labor: “I made this jar for cash/though it’s called lucre* trash,” Drake wrote.

The family lent the second jar back to the MFA Boston for two years, keeping it in the public sphere.

“It was exhilarating, validating,” Pauline Baker, mother of Yaba, says of the ceremony. “I didn’t think this would happen in my lifetime.”

^{*Lucre is money earned in a dishonorable way.}