Jug

The large so-called sample jug made by Christopher Whitehead would have been displayed in a shop. Jugs, such as this one, provided samples of designs people could order on their own ceramic wares, including the anti-slavery medallion imagery. One of the images on the jug references a famous anti-slavery abolitionist medallion inscribed “Am I Not A Man And A Brother.” Created by the ceramics manufacturer Josiah Wedgwood, the theme became a popular emblem of the global movement to the end the slave trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Versions of the image of the genuflecting slave appeared on objects large and small, including shoe buckles, brooches, hair pins, pendants, bracelets, and, in this case, a design sample pitcher.