ABOLITIONIST THEMES ARE PRESENT on myriad examples of English ceramics made in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of which were sold into the American market. However, there seem to be only a few abolition-themed pieces created by American potters. This vase, made by the Chelsea Keramic Art Works, is a rare exception (fig. 1).[1]
The green-glazed, flat-sided oval vase features a portrait of the prominent American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) and handles in the form of broken chains (fig. 2). Painted or inscribed faintly under the glaze and beneath the portrait is a quote that seems to read “No distinction on account of color” followed by “Garrison” (fig. 3).
William Lloyd Garrison was perhaps the most prominent white abolitionist of the nineteenth century. He was an eloquent and prolific speaker and writer, and one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The Liberator, the newspaper he published in Boston from 1831 until the end of slavery in the United States in 1865, was one of the nation’s leading anti-slavery publications.
Garrison died in 1879, and this piece was probably made shortly thereafter as a memorial tribute. It is not wholly surprising that an abolitionist theme would appear on a piece of ceramics made in Massachusetts, which had a large and active community of anti-slavery activists and where slavery was outlawed in 1783, seventy-seven years before the Civil War.
The Chelsea Keramic Art Works, Robertson & Sons was the first pottery to identify itself as an “art pottery” in the United States. It was founded in 1866 by Alexander Robertson (1840–1925) in Chelsea, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. His younger brother, Hugh Robertson (1845–1908) joined him in 1868. By 1872 their father, James (1810–1880), and brother George (1835–1914) had also joined the family enterprise, which became known as the Chelsea Keramic Art Works. Throughout the next two decades they produced a wide variety of decorative vessels, some imitating the shapes and decoration of ancient Greek pottery and others capturing the distinct influence of Chinese and Japanese ceramics.[2]
Chelsea Keramic quickly received attention and praise for its wares. In 1878 Jennie J. Young, the author of The Ceramic Art, wrote:
The artists and collectors of Boston soon discovered certain qualities in the Chelsea potters and their works deserving recognition. They may possibly have reached the conviction that Chelsea is to be numbered among the places where artists value their work solely according to its truth, excellence, and beauty. Without affecting to disregard commercial considerations, they succeed in giving their art the precedence. It is not, therefore, a matter of surprise either that they should have convinced a section of the public that Chelsea can do noble service in the cause of American art, or that many excellent works should bear its mark.[3]
Much of Chelsea Keramic’s products were modeled by Hugh Robertson, who possessed notable talent as a sculptor in clay. The pottery’s wares were made of either red or buff earthenware, and except for the imitations of Greek pieces, were routinely covered by a thin, glossy glaze. During the late 1870s and early 1880s, Chelsea Keramic’s lead glazes were predominantly olive greens, muted blues, shades of yellow, and browns.
The footed pillow-form vase was a common form made there. It is found most frequently with no decoration on either of its two oval flat sides, but some examples have either molded images or cold-painted designs (fig. 4).[4] Typically, these vases are found with handles in the form of lion heads, but in this example the handles are formed of broken chains, almost certainly a reference to the abolition of slavery in the United States (figs. 4, 2). This is the only known example of a Chelsea Keramic piece with that decorative device, confirming that the overall piece was intended to carry an abolitionist theme and to be an explicit tribute to William Lloyd Garrison. Solidifying that conclusion is the inscribed or painted motto “No distinction on account of color” and “Garrison” under the portrait.
It is not entirely clear why the quote “no distinction on account of color” was used, as it does not seem to have been originated with Garrison. The phrase was used by other anti-slavery activists, most prominently by the African-American activist Frederick Douglass (1817/1818– 1895), who in a letter to Garrison that he published in The Liberator in 1846, wrote of his time in London,
My visit to this city has been exceedingly gratifying, on account of the freedom I have enjoyed in visiting such places of instruction and amusement as those from which I have been carefully excluded by the inveterate prejudice against color in the United States. Botanic and Zoological gardens, Museums and Panoramas, Halls of Statuary and Galleries of Paintings, are as free to the black as the white man in London. There is no distinction on account of color. The white man gains nothing by being white, and the black man loses nothing by being black.[5]
Given the forethought of the specific abolitionist reference of the handles and the quote, it is surprising that the Garrison portrait was cold-painted and not molded. Perhaps cold-painting allowed a broader range of natural colors than what would have been available for underglaze decoration?
While the vase carries the standard impressed “Chelsea Keramic Art Works Robertson & Sons” mark on the underside, neither the modeler nor the painter seems to have inscribed either personal initials or a rebus. Perhaps it was Hugh Robertson, as he was responsible for many of Chelsea Keramik’s models, and painted or sculpted several other portraits on Chelsea Keramic vases; in fact, there are no other portraits signed by anyone other than Hugh Robertson known at this time.[6] Hugh Robertson was also somewhat of a social progressive for his era, lauding the “free thinker” Horace Seaver with a poem for Seaver’s funeral and honoring him with a sculpted bust. It is easy to imagine him commemorating Garrison with a vase.
In his eulogy for Garrison, Frederick Douglass asked that Americans “guard his memory as precious inheritance, let us teach our children the story of his life, let us try to imitate his virtues, and endeavor as he did to leave the world freer, nobler, and better than we found it.”[7] The potter who made this vase may have been motivated by the same sentiments to create this memorial.
