Signet ring for wax seal

After 1787

Unknown artist

Gold with red stone, possibly jasper

face 2.8 x 2.1 cm

This ring bears the official seal of the London Committee of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade.

Designed in October 1787, it shows an African man with shackles around his ankles and wrists, kneeling in a pose of supplication. Hands clasped, head upraised, he seems to ask the inscribed question, “Am I not a man and a brother[?]” The design is engraved in reverse so that when pressed into hot wax (to seal a document), the resulting impression would have been legible.

The Committee’s seal quickly became an icon of the abolitionist cause. In December 1787, the potter (and Committee member) Josiah Wedgwood translated the design into a black and white jasperware cameo, which he distributed to fellow abolitionists and marketed to great success. Like this ring, Wedgwood’s so-called “Slave Medallions” were often worn on or kept near the body, as decorative inlays on snuff-box lids or set into bracelets and hairpins. The design was also printed on plates, enamel boxes, tea caddies, and tokens.

The Society’s seal is among the most famous of all political images and also one of the most controversial. It appropriates and perpetuates the image of the subservient “kneeling slave,” suggesting that freedom is a privilege to be bestowed upon a passive rather than an active subject. In fact, resistance and action on the part of the enslaved themselves was crucial to the abolition of slavery in Britain.

With motto "Am I not a man and a brother?"

Yale Center for British Art

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[Unknown artist], Signet ring for wax seal [Unknown artist], Signet ring for wax seal. Yale Center for British Art