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Anti-Slavery medallion


"Slave-in-Chains" medallion
Made at: Wedgwood Manufactory (Staffordshire, England, active 1759–present)
English
1786–87
Object Place: Europe, Staffordshire, England

Medium/Technique Stoneware (Jasperware), gold
Dimensions Overall: 30 x 28 x 3 mm (1 3/16 x 1 1/8 x 1/8 in.)
Height (with hanging loop): 38 mm (1 1/2 in.)
Credit Line Bequest of Mrs. Richard Baker
Accession Number96.779
NOT ON VIEW
CollectionsEurope
During the late-eighteenth-century abolitionist movement in England, the seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade showed a manacled slave on bended knee above the words "Am I Not a Man and Brother?" Josiah Wedgwood, a member of the society and a ceramics manufacturer, used the image to mass-produce hundreds of cameos in black-and-white jasperware with raised text and rim. One of his company artists, William Hackwood, made the prototype. Wedgwood distributed the badges widely in both England and the United States, where abolitionists set them so that they could be worn as hat pins, brooches, pendants, and watch fobs. The noted abolitionist Thomas Clarkson commented in his writings of the period that these Wedgwood ornaments were powerful tools in "promoting the cause of justice, humanity, and freedom."
Yvonne J. Markowitz, “'Slave-in-Chains' medallion” in Artful Adornments: Jewelry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by Yvonne J. Markowitz (Boston: MFA Publications, 2011), 65.

DescriptionJasper ware; figure of a kneeling slave in chains in black basalt with inscription in white relief around it in relief on a white ground, ""Am I not a Man and a Brother?". Mounted with gold wire frame around edge, and a hanging ring at the top.
Inscriptions"AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER?" around edge.
ProvenanceEllen M. (Mrs. Richard) Baker (b. 1827 - d. 1896), Boston; 1896, bequest of Mrs. Richard Baker to the MFA. (Accession Date: December 3, 1896)