82 Angela Glendening

It was not a traditional Sunday lunch of meat and two veg! I offered instead Vichysoisse followed by a Moroccan tagine of lamb and prunes and fruit salad. I invited three friends of Jamaican heritage because this year we are celebrating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery and this was the theme of my bowl.  In 1787 Josiah Wedgwood produced an anti-slavery medallion depicting a slave in shackles with an inscription “Am I not a man and a brother?”   Britain’s Committee to Abolish the Slave Trade adopted the phrase as a motto and to draw attention to the horrors of the slave trade Josiah began to reproduce the design on fashionable jasperware medallions and seals.

Inside my bowl were a black and a white hand clasped together and the inscription was around the outside edge.  The colour was chosen to reflect the colour used in PARINS (Partnership Approach to Racial Incidents in North Staffordshire) promotional literature.  If all this seems a rather heavy approach to a light hearted project this was how Disinit spoke to me when I was invited to take part.  It also provoked myriad reflections on Stoke’s heritage and its striving to capture an identity which preserves this. I also enjoyed going up the back stairs of Potclays which I have  passed hundreds of time but never really seen!

My lunch guests, Sharon and Mike, have been energetic in promoting local commemorations of the abolition of the slave trade.  Our third friend was unable to join us for lunch but we knew she was with us in our interest and commitment.  For all three the bowls hold particular resonance and they will be valued for what they symbolise as much as for what they are.

In the past I have tended to shy away from projects of this nature believing that I had a shortfall in imagination and little to contribute. Now, in my older age, I have been reminded yet again that often it is the first step which is the hardest and I am very glad I took part.

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