Comment | Dave the Potter finally becomes a complete artist
David Drake, also known as Dave the Potter, was an enslaved African American ceramicist and poet in 19th-century South Carolina who inscribed his stoneware jars with defiant poetry at a time when teaching enslaved people to read or write was a crime. The article argues that despite his recognized genius, Drake was not fully an artist during his lifetime because he was denied the fundamental right to own, control, and benefit from his creations—a right the Berne Convention calls 'inalienable.' Only recently, after the Museum of Fine Arts Boston returned two of his jars to his heirs, has Drake begun to receive the full recognition and economic justice that define true artistic status.
