An Easter Prayer, 1859

Carla L. Peterson describes her own experience of seeing one of Dave’s pots on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and interprets the Easter imagery in the incised poem, “Good for lard—or holding fresh meats.” Peterson conducts a thorough biblical exegesis of the inscription in connection with the Gospel of John’s account of the graveclothes left behind by the resurrected Jesus and with the figure Peterson names as the other prophet implied within it. Peterson ends by proposing Passover as another religious touchstone for Dave the Potter and thus ascribing a radical ecumenicalism to him and his jar, which is ultimately argued to be Dave the Potter’s Easter service.