Anti-slavery or Abolitionist seal

This glass intaglio was used to seal letters and correspondence. The image on the intaglio, an enslaved female figure genuflecting, is based on Josiah Wedgwood's (1730-1795) abolitionist medallion design, which portrayed an enslaved man and became a popular emblem of the global movement to end the slave trade in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This small impression conveyed a big idea that could travel around the world and back.