The Milwaukee Art Museum Just Returned Two Ceramics Made by Enslaved Potter David Drake to His Descendants
The two vessels, one of them a signed 1855 jar, are the latest to be reinstituted to Drake’s family, who are on a mission to acquire the works of their ancestor
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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.
“We believe it is important that people continue to be inspired by his unwavering perseverance in life and the brilliance that it took to create these amazing pieces of art,” Yaba Baker, Drake’s great-great-great-great-grandson, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Anya Sesay. “By keeping both works on view in Milwaukee, we know that his legacy and lineage will remain accessible to the public for years to come.”
The two pots represent only a small selection of Drake’s work. 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.
Did you know? Industrial pottery
In 2011, archaeologists discovered a partially buried kiln in a South Carolina site known as Pottersville. The kiln, which they had expected to be about 25 feet long, stretched out for 105 feet—highlighting the industrial scale of the region’s pottery and the enslaved labor that produced it.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. “Our goal is to make sure that the public gets a chance to get to know Dave. We think he is an unsung hero in Black history.”
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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.
“We were overwhelmed with joy because we felt like it was a full circle moment for Dave,” Baker told PBS News’ Geoff Bennett last month. 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.
The Dave the Potter Legacy Trust contacted the Chipstone Foundation about restitution last year, the Times reports. The foundation ultimately donated the jars to the Milwaukee Art Museum, which then returned them to the trust. Having since purchased one pot from Drake’s family and received the other on loan, the museum plans to put both pieces back on public display at the end of this month.
The trust is “so invested in the idea of what it means to be a person who’s descended from enslaved people, who is able to see these objects as a way of really, truly gathering your family—family you didn’t know,” Kantara Souffrant, curator of community dialogue at the Milwaukee Art Museum, tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “That is the impetus for this work and the impetus for the family.”
In August, Baker told PBS News that Drake’s descendants had recovered six of the potter’s pieces and that they hope to acquire all of them by 2027. Though Drake must have made thousands of works, only 270 known pots survive today.
“I think he is getting the recognition that he always desired,” Pauline Baker, Drake’s great-great-great-granddaughter, told PBS News: “being well-known ... because he put a lot into it.”
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