Title
Label
Made at the Minton Factory, Staffordshire England, 1829-1845
Made of Bone China
Diameter 9.00"
Museum Purchase
With the idea that pictures are sometimes worth a thousand words, anti-slavery images were an important and powerful tool used by abolitionists. Objects decorated with anti-slavery images were used to raise awareness of the abolitionist movement and were also often sold as fund-raisers for abolitionist organizations.
The couplets, "The As borrowed beams illume our way/ and shed a bright and cheering ray
So Christian Light dispels the gloom/ that shades poor Negro's hopeless doom" is joined with two biblical quotes; "I labour and have no rest" is paraphrased from the Book of Lamentations 5:5; "our necks are under persecution; we labor, and have no rest" and "I am oppressed, undertake for me" is from the Book of Isaiah 38:14.
The central image, of a mother weeping over her child, is taken from the Third Report of the Female Society for Birmingham, West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Walsall, and their Respective Neighbourhoods, for the Relief of British Negro Slaves, which was published in 1828 and included several images designed to be sold to raise funds for the group's activities.