Jar turns out to be work of heralded slave potter

The old clay jar sat unnoticed for decades, covered in layers of thick paint.

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The five-gallon jar made in 1855 in South Carolina's Edgefield District was bought for $41,250 at auction.

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The five-gallon jar made in 1855 in South Carolina's Edgefield District was bought for $41,250 at auction.

"It was completely yellow," said Greg Hawkins, a Burke County auctioneer. "At first, I didn't see any value in it whatsoever."

On a whim, he bought the jar and slowly removed the paint, which concealed a wonderful secret.

The jar, it turned out, was a piece of rare Edgefield pottery, made in South Carolina.

It was inscribed with a date: Dec. 11, 1855. It also bore the unmistakable mark of its maker: a man known simply as "Dave."

Hawkins soon learned Dave was a slave artisan who worked among the dozens of potteries that operated during the 1800s throughout South Carolina's plantation-strewn "Edgefield District" near Augusta.

The region's distinct, alkaline-glazed pottery is widely sought by art collectors. But the works of the mysterious slave potter Dave are among the most prized examples.

It wasn't just vessels of clay that made Dave special. Dave was also a poet who somehow taught himself to read and write -- and sometimes inscribed his insightful verses on his jars.

The vessels with poems -- of which at least 28 are known -- show he read the Bible, possessed a keen wit and comprehended the hopeless predicament of slavery.

The five-gallon jar Hawkins found in Burke County didn't have a poem, but the name "Dave" was enough to generate huge interest when it was auctioned Saturday night at Hawkins' auction house in Waynesboro.

With a buyer's premium, it fetched $41,250 -- a stunning price, even for a signed piece.

"We kind of expected somewhere in the $20,000 to $25,000 range," said Hawkins' wife, Cathy. "But this piece had never been in an auction before and was in really nice condition."

The buyer, whom she would not name, was from South Carolina and made the trip to Hawkins Auction Co.'s auction barn just to buy the jar.

"The funny part is, when I saw the thing, I told (Greg) not to buy it," she said. "It was ugly -- and filled with so much dirt I thought it would break if we picked it up."

Dave's pottery is in many private collections, in addition to museums including the Smithsonian, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts in North Carolina, Atlanta's High Museum, Boston's Museum of Fine Arts and Detroit's renowned Museum of African-American History.