Tagged with Josiah Wedgewood
Resource : Chamber pot with Napoleon’s head
In the early 1700s, most potteries were small, family-run businesses with pieces being handmade using traditional methods. The industrial revolution transformed the production of pottery (and other goods) in Britain, meaning it could now be mass produced – on a scale previously unimagined. Pottery designers and manufacturers like Wedgewood and Spode were among the most successful pottery industrialists of the time, becoming household names.
Resource : Drawer handle with abolitionist plaque
In the late 1700s, the image of a kneeling, enslaved African man, accompanied by the words ‘Am I not a man and a brother’ became the most prominent emblem for those wishing to abolish the Transatlantic slave trade, in both Britain and America. As well as appearing in books, prints and pamphlets, it was also reproduced on an extraordinary variety of everyday and household items – from crockery and soft furnishings, to jewellery and hairpins.
Resource : Anti-slavery sugar bowl
Between the 1500s and early 1800s, millions of Africans were kidnapped, sold and transported to the Americas to work as slaves in unimaginably cruel conditions on hugely profitable plantations. These plantations were largely owned by Europeans and Euro-Americans. Britain grew rich on the profits from this transatlantic slave trade, reinvesting the profits in other economic sectors. Only in the late eighteenth century did public opinion slowly begin to turn against the trade in Africans, and campaigners for abolition used every way they could to bring the issue to people’s attention in Europe.
