SEPT. 3, 2010 – This is the story of a guy who made pots in South Carolina. Throughout his lifetime, he made about 10,000 durable stoneware pots, large and small, for storing food and just about anything else you needed on a plantation.

Yes, plantation.

You see, the potter was named Dave. He was a slave in Edgefield County.

During his life and well into present day, he’s become pretty famous for pots, particularly those with short verses of his poetry etched in the side.

Dave’s story, made famous a dozen years back at a major show of his work at the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina, is back in the limelight thanks to a delightful new children’s book by award-winning Tennessee-born writer Laban Carrick Hill. “Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave,” published this week by Little, Brown and Company ($16.99), is in stores and available online.

“Every time I look at Dave’s poems, the deeper they become and the more affected I am by them emotionally, psychologically and intellectually,” Hill said in a telephone interview from his Vermont home. “I think he’s an important poet and I don’t think people realize it yet.”

Two of the greatest poets of the 19^th century, he pointed out, weren’t traditionally published. Walt Whitman’s first book of poetry, Hill said, was self-published in a phrenologist’s office. Emily Dickinson didn’t publish at all during her lifetime.

Dave used the outside of his pots to publish small verses, such as this couplet from 1857: “I wonder where is all my relation | friendship to all – and, every nation.”

Hill observed, “This could have been a reference to the loss of his family” during slave migrations from places like Edgefield County to the Mississippi Delta.

In Dave’s lifetime of making storage pots, only about two dozen remain with verses on the side. Today, some of his pots are quite valuable with one recently selling for more than $40,000.

Jill Koverman, curator of collections at the McKissick Museum, said she was able to connect dots when working on the Dave exhibition years back to confirm that Dave the potter was named “David Drake,” according to the 1870 census. He was believed to have died during that decade as there was no mention of him in the 1880 count.

“To be a master potter within the framework of slavery is an achievement,” Koverman said, noting that Dave the potter was recognized routinely during his lifetime as an outstanding craftsman by peers and those “above him socially.  He was written about in the newspaper quite often.”

She said most people don’t think of slaves as anything more than field hands or house workers. But there were many craftsmen, brick masons and builders. What’s amazing about Dave the potter is “he had the audacity to sign his name on his pots. He left a clear record of his work.”

Koverman said Hill’s book, beautifully illustrated by highly-successful artist Bryan Collier, encourages youngsters to learn about history, art and culture. “What is nice is you have this visual connection – this smaller book – that looks at Dave’s story in different ways. “

Hill said the story of Dave still inspires him.

“He reminds me to continue to do what I care about and just hope and assume other people will find it of interest,” Hill reflected. “The books that have done the best are the books I’ve written because a deep need,” much like Dave needed to carve verses on the side of pots.

In the end, though, Hill’s book is a story for children about making pots.

“There are all sorts of exciting things that can come from the story,” he said. “Also, the poem in the book is a poem about how to make a pot.  They can learn something there.

“In a picture book, it’s the pictures, the emotion experience – the visceral experience of the book and story. That’s what’s primary. And it’s about making a pot. It’s as simple as that. That’s what Dave did.”