Storage jar,

1850s

Utilitarian jars like this were widely produced in Old Edgefield District, South Carolina, in the decades before the Civil War. Its stoneware potteries were operated by a skilled enslaved labor force responsible for all aspects of manufacture, including mining the clay, throwing the pots, firing the kilns, and bringing the vessels to market. This storage jar was made by the enslaved and literate potter who remarkably inscribed and signed many of his wares “Dave,” an extraordinary act of agency. Although this example is unsigned, it is undoubtedly Dave’s work and is among the roughly four dozen known vessels by him with an incised inscription. Bearing the name of Princeton College, the jar documents the interconnectedness between the elite planter class of the South and institutions in the North. The enigmatic inscription stands apart in Dave’s oeuvre as the only one specifying a location outside South Carolina.

Adrienne Spinozzi, Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York