The Milwaukee Art Museum Just Returned Two Ceramics Made by Enslaved Potter David Drake to His Descendants

Two more stoneware jars made by David Drake, the 19th-century enslaved ceramicist, have been restituted to his descendants. The Milwaukee Art Museum gave the artifacts to the Dave the Potter Legacy Trust, then bought back one of the pieces to display in its galleries. The other will remain at the museum on a long-term loan.

The Black potter, born into slavery around 1800, lived in Edgefield, South Carolina, a clay-rich region known for its alkaline-glazed stoneware. Drake was forced to work in potteries, where he skillfully created exceptionally large jars with capacities of up to 40 gallons. Though it was then illegal for slaves to read or write, Drake learned.

He carved short poems and his first name into many pots. The inscription on one 1840 jar reads, “Dave belongs to Mr. Miles / wher the oven bakes & the pot biles.” “All the jars that have come back to us that have signatures or poems on them are on display in a museum so the public can see them,” Baker tells the New York Times’ Jori Finkel.

We think he is an unsung hero in Black history.” The Dave the Potter Legacy Trust was formed a few years ago, after one of Drake’s “poem jars” was auctioned for $1.56 million in 2021. The 25-gallon jug, made in 1858, was signed and inscribed with the verse “A very large jar which has 4 handles / Pack it full of fresh meats then light candles.” According to the trust, although Drake’s works now have “substantial commercial value,” “he was denied the full benefits of his brilliance, talent and labor, and the economic benefits of Mr. Drake’s work have historically excluded his descendants.” Last year, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts transferred ownership of two Drake vessels in its collection, Poem Jar and Signed Jar, to his family.

Per the trust, the transfer was a “landmark restitution—a first in U.S. history.” The family sold one of the jars back to the museum and loaned the other long-term, as Smithsonian magazine’s Ella Feldman reported in 2025. He invoked one of Drake’s inscribed couplets: “I wonder where is all my relation / Friendship to all—and every nation.” Since 2025, private owners and two Georgia museums have restituted a few more Drake pieces to the family, reports the Times. The Milwaukee Art Museum is the latest institution to join these efforts.

It has transferred ownership of an 1855 jar signed “Dave,” as well as a second, larger and unsigned pot. These two artifacts had been at the Milwaukee Art Museum since 2010, when a Chicago artist curated an exhibition of Drake’s stoneware and poetic couplets. Later, the museum installed the “Dave Project gallery” in its American art wing, which displayed two Drake jars on loan from the Wisconsin-based Chipstone Foundation.