Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion

The figure was likely designed and modelled by Henry Webber and William Hackwood with Wedgwood's involvement. The medallion was produced as a jasperware cameo by Wedgwood's factory—the Etruria Works— and widely distributed in Britain and the United States.^[3] These cameos were worn as pendants, inlaid in snuff boxes, and used to adorn bracelets and hair pins, rapidly becoming fashionable symbols of the British abolition movement.^[1][2] The medallion helped to further the abolitionist cause and is today accepted as "the most recognizable piece of antislavery paraphernalia the movement ever produced."^[4]

Distribution[edit]

By the end of 1787, Wedgwood began work to produce the design in cameo form at his pottery factory in Etruria, Staffordshire.^[4] The quantity of medallions produced and number of variants of the symbol manufactured is not known. According to Mary Guyatt, "basing our figures on the level of demand indicated by the 15,050 copies of Clarkson's pamphlet, A Summary View of the Slave Trade, distributed to supporters in the Society's first fifteen months, it can be presumed that demand for the medallion was of a comparable scale."^[1]


The medallions were likely distributed through the network of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Wedgwood sent parcels of cameos to Thomas Clarkson as well as to Benjamin Franklin in the United States. Historians generally accept that Wedgwood himself financed the cost of production and distribution; cameos of a similar size were commercially sold for three guineas each (£3/-3, equivalent to £506 in 2023).^[1][3]


Wedgwood's anti-slavery cameos were eventually used to adorn a variety of items including snuff boxes, shoe buckles, bracelets, and hair pins which were commercially available in Britain and the United States. These items were purchased by hundreds of movement supporters—many of them middle-class women—who contributed to the increasing fashionability of the abolition movement.^[4]