Image Detail: Portrait of Josiah Wedgwood. (Source)

The idea of removing Britain’s involvement in the slave trade was pushed by a notable abolitionist group formed in 1787 called The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Their mission was to spread awareness to the greater public about the atrocities of the transatlantic slave trade and lobby for a new law that would abolish it across British colonies. (Jeremy Norman’s History of Information, n.d.). Josiah Wedgwood was involved in the society as a member. During his time affiliated with them, he was commissioned to manufacture an emblem that was meant to reflect the values of the abolitionist group (Katz-Hyman, 2008). 

The Society recruited sculptors Henry Webber to illustrate the design for the seal and William Hackwood to prepare the medallion for mass-production in Wedgwood’s ceramics factory. (Guyatt 2000). The medallion utilized Wedgwood’s revolutionary black jasper glaze to colour the figure  against a white ceramic background. 

Image Detail: Antislavery Medallion, ca. 1787, manufacturer: Josiah Wedgwood, modeler: William Hackwood.

Though incredibly dark and questionable, the imagery and materiality of the medallion was used to give weight to the inhumane practices of the slave trade. These abolitionist medallions were objects that could be worn and exchanged, eventually becoming fashionable accessories that signalled intellectual openness and modern thinking. It became a popular symbol for the British movement against slavery. The potent imagery was appropriated by other entrepreneurial minded individuals at the time who saw the potential of reproducing the image onto other personal objects including pendants, bracelets, shoe buckles, hair pins, etc. (Katz-Hyman 2008). No longer bound to a ceramic object, the image was reproduced endlessly in metal, glass, and fabric. The mass reproduction of this motif holds many contradictions.