Ceramics Books and Magazines

Author: Leonard Todd
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$25.95~~
Buy New: $12.97
You Save: $12.98 (50%)

Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

5 reviews
Sales Rank: 45790

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.4 x 1.1

ISBN: 0393058565
Dewey Decimal Number: 738.092
EAN: 9780393058567

Publication Date: October 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
The compelling story of a slave, owned by the author's ancestors, who became one of the singular artists of the nineteenth century.

He is known today, as he was then, only as Dave. His pots and storage jars were everyday items, but because of their beauty and massive size, and because Dave signed and inscribed many with poems, they now fetch six figures at auction. We know of no other slave artist who dared to put his name on his work, a dangerous advertisement of literacy.

Fascinated by the man and by this troubling family history, Leonard Todd moved from Manhattan to Edgefield, South Carolina, where his ancestors had established a thriving pottery industry in the early 1800s. 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 slavery. Many of Dave's astounding jars are found now in America's finest museums.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

Rich in character and history January 1, 2009
Carolina Clay is a wonderful book. Leonard Todd has done an amazing job of researching the world in which Dave lived. That world is upstate South Carolina in the 1800s. The biography of Dave is embedded in a rich background of cultural details and regional history. When information on Dave becomes thin, we still come to understand what both his physical and emotional worlds must have been like. This book is a terrific read and a remarkable achievement.

5 out of 5 stars

New insight on Dave, the potter November 29, 2008
Carolina Clay by Leonard Todd is a must for anyone wishing to learn of the great enslaved potter, Dave Drake. The material is presented in chronological order starting with Dave's first master Reuben Drake and his early years at Pottersville after Dr. Abner Landrum became his owner. Todd uses family records as well as public archives to present a well-rounded sketch of Dave, period politics and the antebellum Old Edgefield District of South Carolina. Several exciting, previously unknown facts are presented about Dave which, before now, were not found in the record of entries about Dave. Todd's research sheds new light on several exciting propositions in which scholars, historians and collectors have long debated concerning Dave's life and family relationships.

The amazing stoneware manufacturers from the Old Edgefield District started a tradition of pottery making in the southern USA unlike any other known in this country. As more and more people discover alkaline glazed stoneware, the prices of the old pottery sky rockets! Dave's pots are at the pinnacle of both rarity and price. This book will become the necessary bible on Dave and a "must have" companion book to the several other publications on southern alkaline glazed pottery.

5 out of 5 stars

Carolina Clay November 25, 2008
Carolina Clay: The Life and Legend of the Slave Potter DaveThis is a great read for anyone who is studying the history of our country and how things got started, in this case pottery. The person who is the subject of this book "Dave The Slave" found a way to communicate from beyond the grave by putting inscriptions on the pots that he made and thus has become a celebrity because of his wonderful pottery creations.
Bill Barker

5 out of 5 stars

Carolina Clay November 12, 2008
A very well written and researched book. An amazing story of a literate slave potter and the author's personal connection with that man.

5 out of 5 stars

That Very Rare Great Story October 26, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

A story stunning in the facts of a life lived in such beauty and courage amongst such ugliness.

I learned of it here:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96140163&ft=1&f=2

Should be required reading for everyone born in our South.

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