Two Abolitionist Salt Cellars, or Toothpick Holders

[Circa 1845].

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Two small footed salt cellars or toothpick holders. Approximately 2¼" tall and 2¼" in diameter. White soft paste porcelain, each bearing the classic image of a kneeling chained female slave. On the opposite side of each is the printed phrase: "Take courage – go on – persevere to the last. Thomas Clarkson Age 84." Clarkson actually uttered the phrase at age 80 in 1840, at the anti-slavery convention in Freemasons' Hall, London. Presumably these vases would date from between 1840 and 1845, and were almost certainly either manufactured in England for the American export market (slavery having been abolished in England with the passage of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, after which time Clarkson focused his efforts on abolishing slavery in the U.S.), or manufactured in America itself. While we are somewhat out of our depths identifying porcelain, our consultations with others more expert lead us to believe the former. Fine condition, with no visible flaws. Rare – while we have seen other vintage abolitionist china – most notably the jasper ware "Slave Medallion" depicting the famous and similar image of a kneeling male slave, made by Josiah Wedgwood, we have never encountered these vases, and can find no reference to them.

Item #96124

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Item #96124 Two Abolitionist Salt Cellars, or Toothpick Holders. Thomas CLARKSON.
Two Abolitionist Salt Cellars, or Toothpick Holders

Thomas Clarkson
birth name: Thomas Clarkson
born: 3/28/1760
died: 9/26/1846

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Biography

One of the founders of the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the author of its manifesto, and its indefatigable researcher and propagandist. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called him, "the moral Steam-Engine, or the Giant with one idea." At Saint John's College, Cambridge, he entered a Latin dissertation contest with an extended work which was translated into English and published as An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African. Shortly after winning the contest, for which he undertook considerable research, Clarkson experienced a spiritual epiphany and decided to devote his life to abolition. Through his work, the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was directly responsible for the ending of the trade in the British Empire in 1807, and the abolition of slavery itself throughout most of the British Empire in 1833. He was writing for the cause up to his death in 1846.more