and western Africa. Many of the 400
who survived the voyage were taken
to Edgeeld County, South Carolina,
where a pottery industry thrived on a
foundation of slave labor.”
ough Drake was born earlier, in
the utilitarian pottery that dominated
life in Edgeeld, it seems the enslaved
passengers of theWandererfound
a new medium in which to preserve
some of those customs and beliefs.
Contemporary historians, including
John Michael Vlach, who seeks
to trace and substantiate African
inuences in the traditional arts and
crafts of black Americans, see direct
connections between Bakongo culture
and the Edgeeld face jugs and
memory jars.
Drake’s legacy as an artist is gathering
momentum in museums. e
Metropolitan Museum of Art in
New York with the Museum of Fine
Arts Boston, are organizing a traveling show on the
legacy of African American potters from Edgeeld
that will feature about a dozen jars by Drake and will
open at the Met in September 2022, according to
Finkel.
Closer to home, the Madison-Morgan Cultural
Center is currently exhibiting EARTH BOUND,
featuring ve of Drake’s pots. One of them is in the
MMCC collection, the others are owned by Madison
citizens.
Partnered with the exhibit is work by Zipporah Camille
ompson of Atlanta. Curating the show from
Madison are Dr. Teresa Bramlette Reeves and Clare
Wolfe. According to Reeves, the artist was chosen
to pair with Drake’s pots because ompson takes
mundane objects, something simple, and turns them
into something special.
is is what Drake did. e curators want to show
how Drake’s work inspires others. Wolf suggests that
everything that goes into making something counts
– hands, water, kiln – whereas, they have meaning
unto themselves, they get infused into the nal
object of art: Drake’s pots and ompson’s fabrics
and ceramics.
Whereas Drake may not have wanted to be a potter,
he succeeded at being one of the best potters during
his life and then remembered 140 years after his
death. His legacy is producing the best pots and accepting
his ability to be an artist by adding his marks
to prove the pot was his.
arret owers create
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Cotton tates oston n
tlanta n
he ult s now slaye
n the thsonan n
ashngton C ut a
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house n the ertage oo
at the thens Clarke County
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Photos courtesy of the
National Museum of
American History, Smithsonian
Institution