Robert Hunter
Southern Hoodoo and the Dr. Peter Davis Ring Bottle

Ceramics in America 2023

Full Article
Contents
  • Figure 1
    Figure 1

    Ring bottle, attributed to Edward and Robert Stork Pottery, Columbia, South Carolina, 1888. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. H. 10". (Chipstone Foundation; all photos by Robert Hunter unless otherwise noted.) The hollow ring that forms the body was thrown on the wheel from a single ball of clay. The neck/mouth was thrown in a separate operation. The solid rectangular base was molded by hand. These components were assembled at the leather-hard state of the clay. The handle was pulled separately and attached to the body. 

  • Figure 2
    Figure 2

    Inscription on the base of the ring bottle illustrated in fig. 1: “Dr. Peter / Davis / 1888”

  • Figure 3
    Figure 3

    Jean-Baptiste Madou (1796–1877) and Pierre Jacques Benoit (1782–1854), La Mama-snekie, ou water-mama, faisant ses conjurations (1839), p. 36. Voyage a Surinam: Description des possessions Néerlandaises dans la Guyane (Brussels: Société des Beaux-Arts, 1839). Colored lithograph on paper. 8 1/4"x 11 3/8". (John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.) 

  • Figure 4
    Figure 4

    Unknown artist, Obeah Man, probably Jamaica or Barbados, ca. 1830. Oil on mahogany panel. 7 1/4"x 5 1/4". (Private collection.) 

  • Figure 5
    Figure 5

    “A Voudoo Dance,” drawn by John Durkin, Harper’s Weekly, June 25, 1887, pp. 456–57. Uncolored engraving. 16 x 22". (Private collection.) 

  • Figure 6
    Figure 6

    Book cover, Old Rabbit, the Voodoo, and Other Sorcerers by Mary Alicia Owen, illustrated by Juliette A. Owen and Louis Wain (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1893). 

  • Figure 7
    Figure 7

    “Map of Folklore Field Work,” from Harry Middleton Hyatt, Hoodoo—Conjuration—Witchcraft—Rootwork: Beliefs Accepted by Many Negroes and White Persons, These Being Orally Recorded among Blacks and Whites, Memoirs of the Alma Egan Hyatt Foundation 5: frontispiece ([Hannibal, Mo.]: Printed by Western Pub., 1978).

  • Figure 8
    Figure 8

    Ring flask, Cypro-Geometric III–Cypro-Archaic I, 850–600 b.c. Terracotta. H. 6 3/4". (Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cesnola Collection, Purchased by subscription, 1874–76, 74.51.651.) 

  • Figure 9
    Figure 9

    Ring bottle, New York, New York, ca. 1800–1830. Salt-glazed stoneware. H. 6 1/2". (New-York Historical Society, Purchased from Elie Nadelman, 1937.579.)It is decorated with incised hearts, fish, birds, and the initials “M.S.” 

  • Figure 10
    Figure 10

    Ring bottle, attributed to the Landrum Pottery, Richland County, South Carolina, ca. 1870. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. H. 10 1/8". (Chipstone Foundation.) 

  • Figure 11
    Figure 11

    Archaeological fragment of ring bottle, John Stork Pottery, Columbia, South Carolina, ca. 1880. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. Inscribed on ring, “John J. Stork” (Courtesy, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology.) 

  • Figure 12
    Figure 12

    Detail showing the base of the ring bottle fragment illustrated in fig. 11. Inscribed “made by / Jno J. Stork / Col. Pottery” 

  • Figure 13
    Figure 13

    Detail showing the dark, iron-rich glaze of the ring bottle illustrated in fig. 1. 

  • Figure 14
    Figure 14

    Ring bottle, Edward L. Stork, Orange, Georgia, ca. 1909. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. H. 10 1/2". Impressed: “E.L. STORK / ORANGE, GA.” (Courtesy, William C. and Susan S. Mariner Private Foundation.) 

  • Figure 15
    Figure 15

    1880 Federal Census, “Inhabitants in Columbia Lower Sub Division in the County of Richland, State of South Carolina, June 14, 1880.”

  • Figure 16
    Figure 16

    1880 Federal Census entry for Peter Davis as a Black male, age 68, occupation farmer, and listing his birthplace and that of his parents as South Carolina. 

  • Figure 17
    Figure 17

    C. N. Drie, Bird’s Eye View of the City of Columbia, South Carolina (Baltimore, Md., 1872). Colored lithograph on paper. 21 1/4x 27 1/2". (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division, Washington, D.C., 2008675451.) 

  • Figure 18
    Figure 18

    “Peter Davis, M.D., Colored. He Sustains His Right to the Title in Open Court,” New York Times, August 3, 1884, p. 7. 

  • Figure 19
    Figure 19

    Peter Davis vs. Nathan Gradick, Taxation of Costs, State of South Carolina, Richland County, in the Court of Common Pleas, July 21, 1884. 

  • Figure 20
    Figure 20

    “List of Licensed Physicians and Surgeons of the State” (Richland County, South Carolina), Reports and Resolutions of the General Assembly of South Carolina, at the Regular Session Commencing November 23, 1886, Vol. 2 (Columbia, S.C.: Charles A. Calvo Jr., State Printer, 1887), p. 262. Available online at https://www.carolana.com/SC/Legislators/Documents/. 

  • Figure 21
    Figure 21

    “What Fools These Mortals Be,” The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, S.C.), July 19, 1893, p. 8. 

  • Figure 22
    Figure 22

    “Cheating Foreigners,” The Laurens (S.C.) Advertiser, October 10, 1893, p. 4. 

  • Figure 23
    Figure 23

    “Peter Davis Re-arrested,” The State (Columbia, S.C.), October 25, 1893, p. 8. 

  • Figure 24
    Figure 24

    “A Dutchman Hoodooed: A Wily Negro ‘Doctor’  Pulled Up in a South Carolina Court,” Charlotte (N.C.) News, November 15, 1893, p. 3: “Peter had given him ‘graveyard’ dirt to distribute around.” 

  • Figure 25
    Figure 25

    Bartmann or Bellarmine bottle, Frechen, Germany, ca. 1650–1680. Salt-glazed stoneware. H. 8 5/8". (Courtesy, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1910.18.1.) This vessel was recovered in 1904 during excavations in Westminster, London, and donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum by Edward Warren. Once sealed with a cork, its contents suggest it was used as a “witch bottle.” For more information, see http://objects.prm.ox.ac.uk/pages/prmuid25735.html. 

  • Figure 26
    Figure 26

    Contents of the bottle illustrated in fig. 25, which include a coarse-fabric cloth heart stuck with straight pins, human hair and fingernail clippings, and a cork stopper. (Courtesy, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1910.18.2–4.) For more information, see https://www.museumof london.org.uk/discover/sorcery-display-witch-bottles. 

  • Figure 27
    Figure 27

    Fragmentary glass wine bottle and associated contents. (Courtesy, Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab, Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum.) An example of an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century witch bottle burial was found at the White Oak site in Dorchester County, Maryland. A wine bottle neck, horseshoe, bottle glass sherds, and bone fragments were beside a brick hearth. Several straight and bent pins had been inserted into a solid stopper in the bottle neck, both on the inside and outside of the bottle. 

  • Figure 28
    Figure 28

    Face vessels, Edgefield, South Carolina, ca. 1850–1860. Alkaline-glazed stoneware. H. of the tallest 5 1/2". (Private collections.) 

  • Figure 29
    Figure 29

    Detail of the face vessel illustrated on the left in fig. 28 showing traces of red pigment for the eyes and pupils.

  • Figure 30
    Figure 30

    Detail of the face vessel illustrated on the right in fig. 28 showing the hole in the bottom. 

  • Figure 31
    Figure 31

    Ointment or salve jar, possibly Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania, ca. mid-nineteenth century. Salt-glazed stoneware. H. 3 3/8". (Courtesy, William C. and Susan S. Mariner Private Foundation.)  

  • Figure 32
    Figure 32

    Illustration of Angelica archangelica (Archangelica officinalis), commonly known as garden angelica or wild celery. Chromolithograph on paper. 8 x 10". From Köhler’s Medicinal Plants, by Hermann Adolph Köhler, edited by Gustav Pabst (Germany: Köhler, 1887). (Author’s collection.) 

  • Figure 33
    Figure 33

    Detail of the jar illustrated in fig. 31. 

  • Figure 34
    Figure 34

    Flask, American or possibly Asian, nineteenth century. Stoneware with cobalt decoration. H. 5 3/4". (Courtesy, Rick Meech Burchfield.) 

  • Figure 35
    Figure 35

    Fragment of a page from a King James Bible, probably nineteenth century. It contains partial verses from Romans 3:25–31. 

  • Figure 36
    Figure 36

    Reverse of the page fragment illustrated in figure 35. It contains partial verses from Romans 4:11–17. 

  • Figure 37
    Figure 37

     Detail of the 1893 King of the Voodoos engraving illustrated in fig. 39. This 1893 detail emphasizes the use of whiskey as one of the primary ingredients in a variety of hoodoo rituals. 

  • Figure 38
    Figure 38

    Immagine del manoscritto Zoroaster Clavis Artis, MS. Verginelli-Rota, Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Roma, 2:18 (1738). (Photo, The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo.) 

  • Figure 39
    Figure 39

    Louis Wain, “King of the Voodoos,” in Owen, Old Rabbit, the Voodoo, and Other Sorcerers (1893), p. 172. 

  • Figure 40
    Figure 40

    “The Blackville Gallery,—No. IV,” Leslie’s Weekly, January 20, 1898, pp. 40–41. Copyright by Knaffl & Bro., Knoxville, Tennessee, 1898. Photogravure. 22 x 16". (Author’s collection.) The image shows a fortune teller reading the palm of a society lady as the fortune teller’s partner smokes a long pipe next to the fireplace. The caption under the title reads, “A Blackville Fortune Teller,”—“Lawd, Chile! Yo Gwine to Marry Rich.”

  • Figure 41
    Figure 41

    “Mississippi Hoodoo Doctor,” 1920–1940. Gelatin silver print. From Photographs from the Puckett Collection: Folk Beliefs of African Americans in the Southern United States. (Cleveland Public Library, Fine Arts and Special Collections Department; photo, Newbell Niles Puckett.) 

  • Figure 42
    Figure 42

    Conjure objects from the practice of Mrs. Mamie Wade Avant DeVeaux of Savannah, Georgia, mid-twentieth century. (Mamie Wade Avant DeVeaux Archive.) The objects include a string of beads and dice, playing cards, a heart-shaped mojo bag, and a container of “Blue Stone” (copper sulfate.) Bluestone is a traditional magical substance used for making mojo hands and luck balls for protection and good luck. 

  • Figure 43
    Figure 43

    Andrew Hopkins, Dr. Peter Davis, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2017. Acrylic on board. 16 x 20". (Author’s collection.) 

  • Figure 44
    Figure 44

    Andrew Hopkins, Marie Laveau, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2017. Acrylic on board. 16 x 20". (Author’s collection.) 

  • Figure 45
    Figure 45

    Anvil dust sourced from Colonial Williamsburg’s blacksmith shop. Anvil dust, the metallic residue created during the blacksmith’s forging process, figures prominently in the practice of conjure and hoodoo. The 1928 Ma Rainey tune “Black Dust Blues” is a classic tale of “goofering,” a synonym for hoodooing. In it, Ma Rainey sings “Black dust in my window, black dust on my porch mat / Black dust’s got me walking on all fours like a cat.” 

  • Figure 46
    Figure 46

    Modern-day hoodoo materials—including hoodoo water, graveyard dirt, deadmen’s powder, lodestones, gourds, and “roots”—alongside a replica of Dr. Davis’s ring bottle. Those ingredients were used in the “treatment” of Adolph Holuv and his family as gleaned from the newspaper accounts of Dr. Davis’s 1893 court proceedings. (Private collection.) 

  • Figure 47
    Figure 47

    “Court Case Spell” (Order CCS-15), Ritual Supplies Mail Order Source Occult Supplies!, ca. 1960–1970. (Mamie Wade Avant DeVeaux Archive.) A page from a catalog for Miller’s Rexall Drugs, 87 Broad Street, S.W., Atlanta, Georgia, 30303. 

  • Figure 48
    Figure 48

    Court Case Spell Kit, Lucky Mojo Curio Co., Forestville, California. Powders, oil, mojo bag, and nine candles. (Author’s collection.) 

  • Figure 49
    Figure 49

    A group of hoodoo objects and ingredients mentioned in “Folk-Tales and Conjure,” Southern Workman and Hampton School Record 28 (March 1899): 112. (Author’s collection.) The “Remedies to Cure Conjuration” include High John the Conqueror plant bath, salt, cayenne pepper, devil’s shoestring roots, red lodestone, and nineteenth-century American silver coins.