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A sandy-hued 83-pound pot with a wide lip, fired by enslaved potter David Drake in the mid-19th century, anchors a gallery in the Philadelphia Museum of Art<\/a>\u2019s \u201cA Nation of Artists,\u201d<\/a> its Semiquincentennial<\/a> salute to illustrious American makers. <\/p>\n The stoneware stands proudly among chestnut \u00e9tag\u00e8res, plush upholstery, and vibrant oil paintings in a section called \u201cProsper, Abundance, and Inequity\u201d staged by Art Museum curators to look like an ornate antebellum living room.<\/p>\n An inscription in the craftsman\u2019s jagged script reads: Good for lard or holding fresh meat,\/blest we were when peter saw the folded sheet, suggesting the potter was literate at a time when it was illegal for Black people to learn to read and write, making the earthenware even more valuable. <\/p>\n The Art Museum\u2019s inclusion of the bounded ceramicist\u2019s work is an equitable nod to the artists \u2014 potters, basket weavers, tailors, and dressmakers \u2014 who made enslavers so rich that their progeny continues to benefit from that wealth today. <\/p>\n That is noteworthy, say Drake\u2019s descendants, who prefer to call their ancestor \u201cDave the Potter\u201d rather than use his enslaver\u2019s surname. <\/p>\n They say they are grateful institutions like the Art Museum are acknowledging Dave\u2019s work within the canon of great American artists. <\/p>\n But a nod, they say, is not sufficient. <\/p>\n Dave\u2019s descendants want museums to give the pottery back, including the giant, alkaline-glazed jar on display at the Art Museum.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to own the pieces free and clear,\u201d Yaba Baker, Dave\u2019s fourth great-grandson and executive director of the Dave the Potter Legacy Trust<\/a>, told The Inquirer. \u201cOur goal is to then loan them back into public spaces so they can be viewed and Dave\u2019s story can be told to the next generation.\u201d <\/p>\n Restitution and repurchase<\/p>\n The seven lines of Dave\u2019s descendants who are alive and living in and around Washington, D.C., and South Carolina have never benefited from their forefather\u2019s labor. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, Dave\u2019s pottery fetches tens of thousands of dollars per piece \u2014 and sometimes much more \u2014 at estate sales, at auctions, and on eBay. <\/p>\n With the help of Los Angeles-based real estate attorney and social justice advocate George Fatheree III \u2014 who helped transfer Bruce\u2019s Beach, a beachfront property in Manhattan Beach, Calif<\/a>., back to its original Black owners in 2022 \u2014 Baker has spent the last two years fighting to have Drake\u2019s work returned to his family. <\/p>\n So far, five museums and three private collectors, including Chicago-based installation artist Theaster Gates<\/a>, have returned 10 pieces. <\/p>\n On Wednesday, several of Dave\u2019s descendants attended a ceremony<\/a> at Richmond\u2019s Virginia Museum of Fine Arts for the return of a double-handled jug, inscribed with one of Dave\u2019s poems, to the family. VMFA will repurchase the jug for an undisclosed price for its permanent collection.<\/p>\n The Milwaukee Art Museum announced last month<\/a> it planned to return two of Dave\u2019s jars to his descendants and purchase one of the restituted jars for an undisclosed price. <\/p>\n Both agreements are inspired by a similar deal struck last October between Dave\u2019s descendants and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the first institution to return one of Dave\u2019s jars. <\/p>\n Of the more than two dozen museums Fatheree is talking to, about half a dozen are \u201cengaged in conversation and moving toward a return.\u201d <\/p>\n The Art Museum, Fatheree, said, is not. <\/p>\n Fatheree reached out to Art Museum director and CEO Daniel H. Weiss in February and was directed to museum attorney Rebecca Wui. <\/p>\n \u201cSince the initial contact, we\u2019ve had a few conversations that I would characterize as cordial in tone, but noncommittal,\u201d Fatheree said, \u201c\u2026 and to date, the museum has not indicated whether or not they intend to return the work to the family, and they have not provided any concrete sense of a timeline on the decision.\u201d <\/p>\n The Art Museum acknowledged through a spokesperson the importance of Dave\u2019s legacy and said it is engaged with various stakeholders to determine next steps, adding that at \u201cthis time, we are not able to discuss any further details.\u201d <\/p>\n That, Fatheree said, is \u201cdisappointing.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they need to understand is the act of delay and failure of urgency is a further act of injury to the family,\u201d Fatheree said. <\/p>\n Art Museum\u2019s history of restitution<\/p>\n During the last several decades, prominent museums across the world have been examining how they have acquired significant pieces of art and scientific specimens. <\/p>\n In 2022, the Smithsonian Institution and the Metropolitan Museum of Art were among dozens of museums that returned bronzes stolen from Benin,<\/a> the capital of Nigeria, during the 1897 British raid on the city. <\/p>\n Many institutions, including the Penn Museum, have returned tribal artifacts to Native Americans under the 2024 expansion of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fatheree is applying the principles of ethical restitution to Dave\u2019s case. It\u2019s a concept, he says, to which the Art Museum is not a stranger.<\/p>\n In 2021, the Art Museum returned to Czechia an elaborately decorated 16th-century ceremonial shield<\/a> that was once owned by Archduke Franz Ferdinand and was stolen from what was then Czechoslovakia by Nazi looters. <\/p>\n As an enslaved man, Fatheree argues, Dave made his pottery under duress. He did not have agency over his body, nor did he have the opportunity to profit from his labors. His work was stolen from him. <\/p>\n The chain of provenance, used to establish that art has moved fairly and ethically from artists to buyers to new owners throughout a piece\u2019s history, was not just broken. It never started.<\/p>\n \u201cNo museum would acquire a piece today where there has been a real break in provenance from an act of violence,\u201d Fatheree said. \u201cThat\u2019s what every museum that acquired Dave the Potter\u2019s work did. \u2026 That\u2019s a very uncomfortable conversation to have.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018An amazing individual\u2019<\/p>\n Dave the Potter was born around 1800 on a plantation in Edgefield, S.C., where he was enslaved by a man named Harvey Drake. Drake and his uncle Abner Landrum owned Pottersville, 12 sprawling pottery factories that enslaved more than 75 Black people. <\/p>\n Landrum was also the publisher of the local newspaper, the Edgefield Hive. Scholars suggest he taught Dave to read. One of Dave\u2019s many jobs was to assemble the newspaper type. <\/p>\n \u201cDave was such an amazing individual,\u201d Baker said. \u201cHis skill set included writing and poetry at a time when our people couldn\u2019t even read. His skills and craftsmanship were just so remarkable.\u201d <\/p>\n Harvey Drake died in 1832, and Dave began making pottery for Harvey\u2019s brother, Reuben. Dave\u2019s oldest known piece with writing on it is a jug with earlike handles that dates to 1834, currently housed at the South Carolina State Museum. The piece features a rhyming couplet: Put every bit all between. Surely this jar will hold 14. <\/p>\n In 1740, South Carolina passed a law that made illegal teaching enslaved people how to read. In 1834, the law was updated so that any Black person, free or enslaved, caught reading would be punished by 50 lashes.<\/p>\n That did not stop Dave from signing his work, marking others, or adding signed couplets just under the lip and along the body of his massive storage jars, jugs, pots, and syrup and whiskey jugs. <\/p>\n When they were made, the pieces \u2014 which stored fruit, vegetables, and meats to feed the family of enslavers \u2014 sold for pennies on the gallon. In the meantime, Dave \u2014 who had two wives, both of whom were sold away from him \u2014 had no idea where his family was.<\/p>\n Today, Dave\u2019s pieces are generally estimated to be worth between $45,000 and $50,000. In 2021, a 25-gallon jar by Dave sold for $1.56 million at Maryland\u2019s Crocker Farm<\/a>. <\/p>\n Historians believe Dave made from 40,000 to 60,000 pieces. It is unclear how many remain. Dave\u2019s descendants are trying to get about 60 of them returned through their appeals to museums, Fatheree said. <\/p>\n \u201cThis man worked every single day doing the same thing, sometimes in 110-degree heat,\u201d said Baker, who pointed out that Dave had just one leg. Although it is contested by historians, Dave\u2019s descendants believe his leg was cut off as punishment, perhaps for knowing how to read. <\/p>\n \u201cHe was a valuable potter, and his enslavers wanted him to stay put,\u201d Baker said. \u201cHis family was sold from underneath him. He didn\u2019t have any agency over his body. Every day of my life, I\u2019m inspired by him.\u201d <\/p>\n Rightful owners <\/p>\n In 1849, Lewis Miles purchased Dave and brought him to his South Carolina pottery farm, Stony Bluff. Here is where it appears Dave made the bulk of his inscribed pieces. He marked many with LM, after Miles. Dave was signed on some. <\/p>\n Miles\u2019 pottery plantation is where most of Dave\u2019s poem pieces were seemingly made: three in 1857, eight in 1858, and seven in 1859. <\/p>\n The Art Museum\u2019s piece is dated May 3, 1859. <\/p>\n Throughout the late 19th and most of the 20th century, Dave the Potter\u2019s work was not considered high art, but it was recognizable in South Carolina, where it was commonly seen at yard sales and antique shows. And as historians discovered the pots, especially the ones with Dave\u2019s etchings, the glazed ceramics increased in value. <\/p>\n The Art Museum has a history of collecting stoneware crafted by enslaved potters starting in 1904, when it acquired three alkaline-glazed stoneware face vessels made in the Edgefield district of South Carolina. That, the Art Museum said in a recent statement, set \u201cthe precedent for art museums to collect the art of this potting tradition.\u201d <\/p>\n The face vessels are also on view in \u201cA Nation of Artists.\u201d <\/p>\n In 1997, the Art Museum purchased Dave\u2019s pot for an undisclosed price when it was offered for sale by collectors. <\/p>\n A year later, the late historian Jill Beute Koverman curated the exhibition \u201cI Made This Jar \u2026 The Life and Works of the Enslaved African American Potter, Dave\u201d at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, the first solo exhibition of Dave\u2019s work. <\/p>\n That show traveled to the Winterthur Museum in 2000 and featured 30 of Dave\u2019s pots. <\/p>\n \u201cThese pieces weren\u2019t made to be placed in the parlor of a home,\u201d Koverman told The Inquirer in 2000. \u201cAccording to the standards of the day, they wouldn\u2019t be considered art at all.\u201d <\/p>\n In 2016, the late historian April Hynes contacted Daisy Whitner, Baker\u2019s aunt, informing her that she and her siblings \u2014 John Williams, Pauline Baker (Yaba\u2019s mother), and the late Priscilla Williams Carolina \u2014 were descendants of Dave. <\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have any idea we were connected,\u201d Baker said. \u201cBefore then, slavery felt distant to us. Now we have a personal connection.\u201d <\/p>\n