Art Institute of Chicago

Anti-Slavery Medallion

Wedgwood Manufactory (1759–present)

Date

1787

Medium

Stoneware (jasperware and black basalt), cut steel, and ivory

Culture

Burslem

Department

Applied Arts of Europe

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

This small plaque featuring a kneeling figure of an enslaved African man beneath the words Am I not a man and a brother? became a symbol of the British antislavery movement. Wedgwood distributed these plaques to advance the abolitionist message; the figure’s supplicant posture was intended to stir benevolence and support for abolition among the white recipients of this token. Made from Josiah Wedgwood’s fashionable jasperware ceramic, more typically used to emulate ancient cameos, the plaque is framed by cut-steel “gems” and set in ivory from Africa. Despite its abolitionist slogan, the medallion embodies the entanglement of British taste, industrial innovation, and colonial exploitation in the late 1700s.

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