A couple weeks ago, I got a flyer in the mail for the upcoming two-day Quality Auction at one of my favorite auction houses. These are the house’s “prices-in-the-stratosphere” auctions for those of us who are used to paying $10 for a box of junk, or getting lucky and finding a rare pricey item.
But it’s always interesting to see what tony items will be up for sale and how much people are willing to pay for them. As I perused the photos in the flyer, my eyes stopped on an item to be auctioned on the second day:
An 18k Wedgwood abolitionist pin in a lovely blue velvet case.
I recognized that pin. It was a white Wedgwood cameo with a black male slave kneeling in supplication, his hands outstretched, pleading to be free. Around the edge was inscribed: “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”
I had first seen the symbol in the movie “Amazing Grace” about two years ago during a screening at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The movie, released in theaters in 2007, told the life of abolitionist William Wilberforce, who led a campaign in the 18th century to force Parliament to end the slave trade in the British Empire.
The movie was as amazing as its title, and one of the things that stayed in my head was that symbol. The piece at the auction was a reproduction, and the auctioneer guessed that it was produced in the early 1900s. It was inscribed with the word Wedgwood on the back, along with a few other details.
The sole bid on the pin was from an absentee bidder, and it sold for $325. The starting price was too high for me. Hopefully, another one will come around or I’ll find one hidden away in some junk item I get at auction.
The original Wedgwood piece was a black and white Jasper medallion, created around 1787 by renowned potter Josiah Wedgwood. An abolitionist, he created it to serve as a symbol for abolitionists fighting the slave trade and to garner support for the anti-slavery movement, according to my Google research. The medallions were used in various ways as political statements: Men had them inlaid in snuff boxes, women wore them as hatpins, brooches and neckaces. They could be found on milk jugs, sugar bowls and tobacco boxes.
Some medallions were sent to Benjamin Franklin, who was then head of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society. The kneeling figure was modeled after the seal of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, formed in 1787 in London.
Interestingly, in 1830, another abolitionist, writer and poet Elizabeth Margaret Chandler, adopted a female version: a kneeling female slave woman (“Am I not a Woman and a Sister”). Years later, Sojourner Truth would make famous her speech in 1854 at the Ohio Woman’s Rights Convention with the same inquiry: “Ain’t I A Woman.”
I love auctions because they are the place to get in touch with history. This one small pin, which measured only 1 ½” x 1 ¾”, opened up a past for me just by being here at this auction. You can find some of the most valuable artifacts in museums, but auctions are among the non-museum sites where you come face-to-face with the day-to-day pieces from people’s personal lives.
After an auction, when I’m going through boxes at home, I wonder about the person who owned these items, who touched them and who used them. And I ask myself: Did they ever wonder if these fragments from their lives would be held years later by someone else? And by whom?
