Title
Label
Jug
Made in Liverpool, England, possibly at the Herculaneum Pottery, 1790-1810
Made of Creamware (Lead-Glazed Earthenware)
13” tall
Museum Purchase with Funds Provided by W. Groke Mickey
This is one of the earliest appearances of the image of a kneeling, enslaved man with the motto “AM I NOT A MAN AND A BROTHER” to appear on a ceramic object. Developed in 1787 by the Society for Affecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the medallion’s message of a shared humanity between people of African and European descent was instrumental in “turning the attention of our countrymen to the case of the injured Africans, and of procuring warm interest in their favour,” in the words of one abolitionist.[xvi]
It is not known for whom the jug was made, but their initials were RBW, and the Cordwainers arms that decorate the other side of the jug suggest that they were a shoemaker (a cordwainer is someone who works with cordwain, or cordovan leather). A jug like this would have been a very public statement that its owner supported abolition, and it would have forced viewers to question their own attitudes towards race, the morality of the slave trade, and slavery itself.
It is somewhat ironic that the jug was made in Liverpool, as the city was Great Britain’s leading slave-trading port. Between 1740 and 1807, Liverpool ships transported an estimated 1,171,171 enslaved men, women and children to the Caribbean and North America and returned to Liverpool laden with slave-produced goods like sugar, tobacco and later cotton.[xvii] The slave trade was a key component of Liverpool’s wealth; “There is not a brick in your dirty town,” said the actor David Garrick, “but what is cemented by the blood of a negro.”[xviii]