David Drake was one of the few enslaved African American potters we know by name. He signed this jar's neck, as was his custom, including the date he made the piece and the initials of his owner, Lewis Miles, for whose pottery workshop he worked at the time. Fifteen dots impressed into the jar denote its capacity in gallons, but Drake made some of the largest hand-thrown utilitarian jars ever created in the United States—some holding as much as forty gallons. On this pot he inscribed: "I made this for our sott / it will never-never, rott."