David Drake is the most widely recognized antebellum African American artisan. This is an early example of a poem jug, for which the enslaved potter became known. The attenuated pear shape of the jug is characteristic of Edgefield, South Carolina, wares, as are the loop-top handles on either side of the characteristic double-collared neck and spout. The jug’s beautiful alkaline glaze and shape as well as its monumentality and charming poem give it great historical and aesthetic value. The rhyming couplets on this jar read, “Better thing I never saw / when I shot off the Lion’s jaw.”