A free gallery talk at the British Museum on Wednesday 26 May, 13.15. Just drop in.
Josiah Wedgwood I (1730-95), a nonconformist, was keenly interested in political and social questions, like his friends Thomas Day, the social reformer, and Erasmus Darwin, inventor and poet, who both wrote in condemnation of the slave trade. Wedgwood issued this jasperware medallion in 1787. It has an applied relief of a kneeling slave and the inscription 'Am I not a man and a brother?' and was modelled after the seal for the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade founded in that year b
The scene of 'The Cock and the Fox' (Fable XXVII) is taken from a wood engraving by Samuel Croxall in his edition of 1722 of Aesop's Fables . Scenes from Aesop's Fables frequently appear on tiles dating to the early 1770s, but are rarely found on plates. It is possible that this plate was decorated with the printed subject either as an experiment or perhaps as a special order. Only fifteen of these plates with printed fable scenes are known. The British Museum has four, and the others can be see
The shape of these vases imitates the ancient Greek kantharos , a type of goblet used as a drinking cup. The hand-painted acanthus and husk decoration is based on motifs found on Greek vases in the collection of Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803) which were published by Baron d'Hancarville from 1767. The motifs remained popular for many decades as decoration on Wedgwood products, which were instrumental in promoting the classical revival style in the late eighteenth century. The vases are made of
Redware, or red stoneware, was a popular type of unglazed pottery in the mid-eighteenth century in many parts of Europe, especially the Low Countries and England. It was principally intended to imitate Chinese tablewares for the preparation and serving of tea. In Stafforsdshire, the preparation of the red clays, using local Stafforsdshire clays which fired at a high temperature, had been perfected at the end of the seventeenth century by the Dutch brothers John Philip and David Elers. They produ
James Cook (1728-79) rose from humble birth to be the pre-eminent eighteenth-century explorer. He joined the Royal Navy in 1755 and in 1768 he was appointed to lead an expedition to Tahiti to observe the Transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. During the voyage of the Endeavour (1768-71) he also explored the South Pacific, circumnavigating New Zealand and mapping the east coast of New Holland, which renamed Australia. During his Second Voyage (1772-75) on the Resolution and Adventure , Cook
'Sugar, one reflects back to childhood when a drink made simply with sugar and water was a substitute for unaffordable soft drinks - a cruel irony given that sugar was one of the impetuses that led to the enslavement of my ancestors. The inscription implies the notion of fair trade. I suspect the slogan was rather a cynical marketing ploy as opposed to a moral stance against slavery - commerce reigning supreme as the conscience of the abolitionist movement was coerced into supporting the consump