Craftsmen

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Craftsmen

Though countless enslaved craftspeople labored in the Americas from the colonial period until Emancipation, most remain anonymous in the historical record. Yet from the early years of the slave trade, there is evidence of skilled craftspeople, noted on slave ship manifests as metalworkers, woodcarvers, and weavers, among other trades. Such skills were highly valued in the Americas, especially during the pre-industrial colonial period, when household goods such as soap, candles, fabric, and tools were made by hand; a shortage of both skilled labor and goods increased the need for enslaved craftspeople. Slave narratives as well as records of sale indicate that slaves who were skilled craftspeople were sold at higher prices.

Some of the handcraft work by African and African American slaves developed in a regional manner that was related to the plantation economy. In the coastal Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia, for example, crafts that were related to rice cultivation and processing were valued; planters paid higher prices for slaves from the Windward Coast of Africa, who were skilled not only in rice cultivation but also in making the crafted objects necessary for processing, including hand-coiled winnowing or fanning baskets and hand-carved wooden mortars and pestles. The Low Country craft production of fanning baskets and mortars continued throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and similar tools were still in use in the early twentieth century on the Sea Islands off the coast of Georgia and South Carolina.

The regional production of ceramics was related to the availability of natural clay. For example, a thriving pottery enterprise developed in the Edgefield district of South Carolina (present-day Edgefield, Greenwood, McCormick, Saluda, and Aiken counties) in the early 1800s using the rich clay deposits of the area to produce stoneware, adding an alkaline glaze made from wood ash or lime. The pottery mills and shops were operated by white planters, who relied on the labor of both white potters and skilled slaves.

There are rare but outstanding examples of signed or attributed works made by enslaved craftspeople. Among the most famous are the works of Dave, an enslaved Edgefield potter who worked for the Landrum Pottery and the Miles Mill Factory from around 1830 through 1864. Remarkably, many of his surviving pots are signed, and many were decorated with inscriptions, often rhymed couplets, by the artist. Scholars have speculated about the reasons that Dave was allowed such artistic freedom at a time when literacy was forbidden to slaves. It has been suggested that there was a significant demand for pots made by Dave, which were distinguished not only by their inscriptions but also by their large size, pleasing proportions, and rich glazes. More than 100 of Dave's surviving pots are preserved in various collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the American Folk Art Museum in New York City.

Many enslaved craftspeople worked as apprentices to white or free black craftsmen, and others were hired out by slaveholders as an additional source of income. Slave carpenters and cabinetmakers formed a large number of these skilled craftspeople; in New Orleans in the early 1800s, free blacks and slave apprentices dominated the production of fine furniture. A small storage cabinet (c. 1850), considered to be an outstanding example of work by a master cabinetmaker, is attributed to Peter Lee, a slave carpenter from John Collins's Rodney plantation in Alabama.

Henry Gudgell, who was born a slave in 1826 in Kentucky, is believed to be the maker of an ornately carved walking stick, now in the Yale University Art Gallery. The walking stick, made for sale in 1867, is decorated with a lizard, tortoise, and human figure, reflecting a distinctly African aesthetic, and is probably representative of the style of wood carvings made by Gudgell during his enslavement. Gudgell is also identified as a blacksmith, a wheelwright, and a silversmith.

Women slaves often were skilled textile workers. Most plantations had a weaving or spinning building where women slaves were required to spin thread, weave fabric, and sew, usually after a day's work in the fields or in the slaveholder's house. Many of these skilled workers made embroidered bed coverlets and appliquéd pieced quilts. Most of these fragile textiles have not survived, but examples remain. A silk quilt, made by two slaves identified only as Aunt Ellen and Aunt Margaret at the Knob plantation in Kentucky, is dated to the late 1830s. The Bible quilts of Harriet Powers (1837–1910), who was born a slave, are among the best-known African American textile works of the late nineteenth century and may be considered representative of similar works by countless undocumented quilters and seamstresses.