Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina

Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina
Author: Adrienne Spinozzi
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2022-09-09
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588397262

A reckoning of the central role of enslaved and free Black potters in the long-standing stoneware traditions of Edgefield, South Carolina Recentering the development of industrially scaled Southern pottery traditions around enslaved and free Black potters working in the mid-nineteenth century, this catalogue presents groundbreaking scholarship and new perspectives on stoneware made in Edgefield, South Carolina. Among the remarkable works included are a selection of regional face vessels as well as masterpieces by enslaved potter and poet David Drake, who signed, dated, and incised verses on many of his jars, even though literacy among enslaved people was criminalized at the time. Essays on the production, collection, dispersal, and reception of stoneware from Edgefield offer a critical look at what it means to collect, exhibit, and interpret objects made by enslaved artisans. Several featured contemporary works inspired by or related to Edgefield stoneware attest to the cultural and historical significance of this body of work, and an interview with acclaimed contemporary artist Simone Leigh illuminates its continued relevance.

Carolina Clay

Carolina Clay
Author: Leonard Todd
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2008
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780393058567

"He is known today, as he was then, only as Dave. His jugs and storage jars were everyday items, but because of their beauty and sometimes massive size they are now highly sought after by collectors. Born about 1801, Dave was taught to turn pots in Edgefield, South Carolina, the center of alkaline-glazed pottery production. He also learned to read and write, in spite of South Carolina's long-standing fear of slave literacy. Even when the state made it a crime to teach a slave to write, Dave signed his pots and inscribed many of them with poems. Though his verses spoke simply of his daily experience, they were nevertheless powerful statements. He countered the slavery system not by writing words of protest but by daring to write at all. We know of no other slave artist who put his name on his work." "When Leonard Todd discovered that his family had owned Dave, he moved from Manhattan to Edgefield, where his ancestors had established the first potteries in the area. Todd studied each of Dave's poems for biographical clues, which he pieced together with local records and family letters to create this moving and dramatic chronicle of Dave's life - a story of creative triumph in the midst of oppression. Many of Dave's astounding jars are found now in America's finest museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Charleston Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston."--BOOK JACKET.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Publications 2023

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Publications 2023
Author:
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2023-05-05
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This catalogue, published annually by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announces the Museum's publications for that year. It also features notable backlist titles and provide a complete list of books available in print at the time of publication.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Publications 2022

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Publications 2022
Author: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 36
Release: 2021-12-31
Genre: Art
ISBN:

This catalogue, published annually by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, announces the Museum's publications for that year. It also features notable backlist titles and provide a complete list of books available in print at the time of publication.

Wrong Is Not My Name

Wrong Is Not My Name
Author: Erica N. Cardwell
Publisher: Feminist Press at CUNY
Total Pages: 143
Release: 2024-03-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1558613021

A dazzling hybrid of personal memoir and criticism, considering the work of Black visual artists as a means to explore loss, legacy, and the reclamation of life through art. At the age of twenty-one, Erica Cardwell finds herself in New York City, reeling from the loss of her mother and numb to the world around her. She turns inward instead, reading books and composing poetry, eventually falling into the work of artists such as Blondell Cummings, Lorna Simpson, Lorraine O’Grady, and Kara Walker. Through them, she communes with her mother’s spirit and legacy, and finds new ways to interrogate her writing and identity. Wrong Is Not My Name weaves together autobiography, criticism, and theory, and considers how Black women create alternative, queer, and “hysterical” lives through visual culture and performance. In poetic, interdisciplinary essays—combining analytical and lyrical stream-of-consciousness—Cardwell examines archetypes such as the lascivious Jezebel, the caretaking Mammy, and the elusive Sapphire to formulate new and inventive ways to write about art. Pioneering and inquisitive, Wrong Is Not My Name celebrates Black womanhood, and illuminates the ways in which art and storytelling reside at the core of being human.

In Slavery's Wake

In Slavery's Wake
Author: Nat'l Mus Afr Am Hist Culture
Publisher: Smithsonian Institution
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1588347796

Explore the modern-day impact of slavery and colonialism in this panoramic Black history for anti-racist readers of 1619 Project and Caste. The companion book to a groundbreaking exhibition on African American history and culture—with 150 powerful illustrations of people and objects. This powerful collection of essays brought to life with more than 150 illustrations investigates the intertwined legacies of slavery, freedom, and capitalism. In Slavery’s Wake frames the history of slavery in a global context to show how it created systems of oppression that continue to shape the world today. Compelling essays from key historians and scholars trace the contemporary resonances of slavery but also the history of freedom-making, from abolitionism to enslaved and colonized people asserting their humanity to the Black Lives Matter movement. The history is humanized by: Art reflecting on liberation, including the gorgeous artwork of Daniel Minter Historic and contemporary artifacts that represent enslavement and resistance Poignant interviews of descendants of formerly colonized and enslaved people sharing their lived experiences This book posits that current matters of freedom and equality are only made possible by understanding how past injustices have defined the present, making it an essential read for anyone engaged in social justice. Poignant and insightful, In Slavery's Wake examines the long shadow of slavery and looks toward building a freer future beyond it.

Great & Noble Jar

Great & Noble Jar
Author: Cinda K. Baldwin
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2014
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0820346160

First published in 1993, this was the first authoritative study of South Carolina stoneware and its history, including he methods used to throw, glaze, decorate, and fire the vessels. Illustrated with nearly two hundred photographs (including fifteen color plates), maps, and drawings, plus an index of potters.

The Words and Wares of David Drake

The Words and Wares of David Drake
Author: Jill Beute Koverman
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2024-02-06
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1643363220

A celebration of the remarkable poem vessels of Dave the Potter David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was born enslaved in Edgefield in the backcountry of South Carolina near the Savannah River. Despite laws prohibiting enslaved people from learning to read or write, David was literate and signed some of his pots. His practice was not only to add his name and a date but also to embellish his work with verse—a powerful statement of resistance. The Words and Wares of David Drake collects multifaceted scholarship about David and his craft. Building on the 1998 national traveling exhibit catalog, I Made This Jar: The Life and Works of Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave, and featuring more than one hundred beautiful images and six new essays, this authoritative volume presents the diverse perspectives of scholars, artists, and collectors. The Words and Wares of David Drake adds important depth and context to our understanding of both Edgefield pottery and the life of Dave. David's work is now so highly prized it is the cornerstone of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's traveling exhibit of nineteenth-century ceramic art from Edgefield. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (September 8, 2022–February 5, 2023) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (March 6, 2023–July 9, 2023) University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor (August 26, 2023–January 7, 2024) High Museum of Art, Atlanta (February 16, 2024–May 12, 2024)

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism

The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism
Author: Denise Murrell
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2024-02-25
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1588397734

Beginning in the 1920s, Upper Manhattan became the center of an explosion of art, writing, and ideas that has since become legendary. But what we now know as the Harlem Renaissance, the first movement of international modern art led by African Americans, extended far beyond New York City. This volume reexamines the Harlem Renaissance as part of a global flowering of Black creativity, with roots in the New Negro theories and aesthetics of Alain Locke, its founding philosopher, as well as the writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Zora Neale Hurston. Featuring artists such as Aaron Douglas, Charles Henry Alston, Augusta Savage, and William H. Johnson, who synthesized the expressive figuration of the European avant-garde with the aesthetics of African sculpture and folk art to render all aspects of African American city life, this publication also includes works by lesser known contributors, including Laura Wheeler Waring and Samuel Joseph Brown, Jr., who took a more classical approach to depicting Black subjects with dignity, interiority, and gravitas. The works of New Negro artists active abroad are also examined in juxtaposition with those of their European and international African diasporan peers, from Germaine Casse and Ronald Moody to Henri Matisse, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. This reframing of a celebrated cultural phenomenon shows how the flow of ideas through Black artistic communities on both sides of the Atlantic contributed to international conversations around art, race, and identity while helping to define our notion of modernism.