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Description: | The Wilberforce, Anti-Slavery and Slavery Collections date mainly to the 18th and 19th centuries, with a few items focusing on 20th-century issues of Afro-Caribbean identity and culture, and on commemorative material. Amongst the collection are 904 items relating to Wilberforce, 320 relating to Anti-Slavery and 744 to the Slave Trade. These comprise books, tracts and archives; artefacts; oil paintings, watercolours and prints; sculptures and ceramics; and costume and textiles.
The collection provides insights into the Transatlantic trade, plantation life and work, and the moral and commercial interests of both sides in the bitter political campaign to end slavery. Its quality and variety is unparalleled in any other British museum collection. It combines personal material relating to Wilberforce; representational material from the Caribbean and the United States; and the records of slave traders and owners. A large number of researchers and visitors from North America, West Africa and the Caribbean come to view and research the collections. Proposals are currently advanced to establish a centre for the study of Diaspora here, in partnership with the University of Hull.
The collection includes Anti-Slavery material, in the form of ceramics, textiles, prints, paintings and documents. These record one of the first single-issue mass political campaigns to be waged in Britain. The motif or "logo" of the Abolitionist movement recurs in much of this material, and remains a potent image today. Wilberforce House contains the largest and most comprehensive collection of Anti-Slavery material in Britain. Of 320 items used in the campaign, the following are particularly significant:
Wedgwood Seals: The leading 18th-century ceramicist and abolitionist Josiah Wedgwood, produced a seal for the Abolition Society in 1787. It depicted a kneeling slave and the legend, "Am I Not A Man and a Brother?". A selection of seals, together with other items, demonstrate how this design developed into the campaign badge for the wider movement, through objects like wall plaques, a painting, sampler and canvas work panel. The motif was most recently used for the Wilberforce Medal.
Model and Description of the Slave Ship 'Brooks': This wooden model was used by Wilberforce during parliamentary debate in the Commons. It illustrates the appalling conditions endured by slaves during the Middle Passage, the journey between Africa and the Caribbean. Bristol Museums reproduced the model for a recent exhibition, describing the original as "one of the most dramatic and powerful pieces of three-dimensional evidence in existence anywhere illustrating Transatlantic slavery". It remains the textbook artefact of the anti-slavery campaign. The accompanying plan, with text, enhances the importance of the model. In its own right, it exemplifies the dissemination of information by abolitionists, who widely copied and distributed such material to strengthen a parliamentary campaign with popular support.
Decorative Arts: A 19th century Coalport Vase is the finest example from a selection of ceramics bearing anti-slavery images and words, designed to take the Abolitionist message to the public. "Antisaccharite" tableware promoted consumer boycotts of unethical food - sugar from the slave-owning West Indies. The collection was strengthened by the acquisition of a 19th-century sampler depicting the image of the kneeling slave, with the legend "Thou God seest Me", recalling the Christian basis of Wilberforce's beliefs. In 1998, a pair of silver candlesticks, bearing the motto, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" came to the Museum. They were first presented in 1813 to Zachary Macaulay, confederate and friend of Wilberforce.
Abolitionists used atrocities of the slave trade for their propaganda value in cartoons such as "The Abolition of the Slave Trade" (1792), and "Barbarities in the West Indies" (1791). The latter depicts a slave thrown into a vat of boiling sugar because he was too sick to work. A more recent acquisition is an 18th-century French sketch, "A Slave Market". Paintings then celebrated Abolitionist success. Francois-Auguste Biard's "Scenes on the Coast of West Africa" was given to the Museum by Lady Buxton, descendant of Thomas Fowell Buxton. This oil painting had been presented to Buxton to celebrate the abolition of slavery in 1833. Widely published and exhibited, this evocative portrayal of a slave market is set against the coastline of Freetown Bay, Sierra Leone. It depicts the captain of a slave ship, African 'caboceers', and slaves being purchased and branded. The painting was described as "the only formal work of art of any consequence" in the 1996 National Portrait Gallery exhibition on David Livingstone (London Standard). In addition to Rising's portrait of Wilberforce, there is another by George Richmond, RA, after the portrait by Lawrence in the NPG. Other anti-slavery supporters also figure: amongst material relating to Thomas Clarkson is a fine portrait by A.E. Chalons, RA.
Slavery Collection
The collection contains 744 items that explore the Middle Passage and plantation life, and the lives of slave owners and slaves. In 1972, the "Atkins Collection" was acquired. It comprises plantation documents, incorporating paylists, labour accounts and punishment records, and an impressive correspondence between J.A .Williamson, Captain of a slave ship, and T. and W. King, plantation owners. The letters discuss payment, cargoes and plantation business, providing an exceptional insight into the setting up of estates, and later, the compensation for release of slaves. Also important are a slave trader's Log Book (1764); slave receipts; records detailing offences and punishments; West Indian plantation journals; and material relating to compensation claims following the 1833 Abolition Act. Other individual and emotive items include whips, branding irons, shackles and a slave collar. | Subjects: | Social History | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 01482 613 710 | Telephone: | 01482 613 902 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:1177 | Go to resource |
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