Anti-slavery medallion

Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.

1787

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Given by Lady Charlotte Schreiber

The anti-slavery medallion was the potter's most radical contribution to design history. It embodied all the global tensions, political awakening and economic contradictions of Georgian Britain. Composed of white jasper with a black relief and mounted in gilt metal, on its edge is inscribed the challenge, “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?” Produced and distributed at Wedgwood’s own expense for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, it was known as the Emancipation Badge and signalled a moral stance on one of the great questions of the day. Wedgwood’s medallion became the most popular symbol of a public commitment to end the trade in enslaved Africans. — Metropolitan Museum of Art

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