UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — During the spring 2024 semester, students in ARTH 307N: American Art and Society, taught by Penn State art history faculty member Anne Strachan Cross, had the opportunity to see firsthand how 19th-century potter David Drake — known as "Dave the Potter" — created his stoneware pots.
Cross, assistant teaching professor of art history, said she has always tried to incorporate making into her explanation of the subject. When she met Wesley Brown, assistant professor of art in ceramics, at new faculty orientation in August 2023, she asked if he would be interested in doing a 19th-century ceramics demonstration for her art history students.
“Upon speaking with Wes, however, he told me that Penn State only had electric pedal wheels, but we could build a kick-wheel to do the demonstration,” said Cross. “I am much indebted to Wes’ expertise and willingness to take on the project!”
With the support of a microgrant from the Office of General Education, Cross and Brown were able to purchase supplies to recreate a 19th-century kick-wheel. Brown then used it for a wheel-throwing demonstration as part of Cross’ lesson on Drake, an enslaved African American potter who historians estimate made approximately 40,000 pots during his lifetime, many with poetic inscriptions.
Cross, who joined the faculty in fall 2023, is a scholar of the histories of enslavement and has striven to include more diverse histories in ARTH 307N, a survey course on American art history.
“It was important for me to convey to my students that Black American cultural production and artistic innovation occurred even prior to Emancipation, even during the oppressive conditions of enslavement,” she said, adding that this lesson helped students to consider what is art, and how it is made when one’s creative labor is controlled by others. “For my students, Drake’s craftsmanship and his poetic inscriptions on his pots come across as a powerful protest and resistance to his enslavement.”
Recent scholarship has revealed that Drake, who lived in South Carolina, was disabled and required a second potter to turn the wheel for him. The period-appropriate wheel provided students with a material-based and haptic understanding of Drake’s complex ceramic production process.
“Through our demonstration, we illuminated not only the methods by which 19th-century earthenware vessels were produced, but also the ways in which Drake accommodated his disability,” said Cross.
The Department of Art History provided supplemental funding for the creation of the kick-wheel, which Brown will retain for future demonstrations in other courses in art history and ceramics.