A two-page spread from the introduction to Commeraw’s Stoneware.
Commeraw’s Stoneware is an impressive new book by A. Brandt Zipp that tells the story of Thomas W. Commeraw, who was the first African American potter we can identify by name. Living and working in New York City in the late 18th and early 19th century, Commeraw made functional stoneware pots that are now in the collection of institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Commeraw was also an abolitionist, political active, and was selected by the U.S. government as an emissary to Liberia. It’s an amazing story that is full of research, historical context and the book is full of images.
A jar by Thomas W. Commeraw, acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City in 1919.
Commeraw’s Stoneware was published fall 2022 by the auction house Crocker Farm, where Zipp is a founding partner, The book is full of extensive research, images, and information on other contemporaneous potters. Commeraw, who as Zipp says “almost slipped through the cracks of history,” has an inspiring story that is fleshed out in this book. I found it a compelling read.
Here’s quote from the introduction to Commeraw’s Stoneware:
Thomas W. Commeraw was a patriotic black American living in the age of slavery. He was a key early American stoneware potter, heavily influencing a craft that was understood to be inextricably linked with the development of the nation as a whole. He was a prominent member of the first generation of black New Yorkers living in the new republic. He was the first African-American potter we can identify by name, and the first to own his own shop. He was one of the first African Americans to become what is widely called the “Back-to-Africa” movement. He was a whistleblower who openly challenged—for the nation to see—the most prominent whites in the United States of American. He was the only American stoneware potter we are aware of who was specifically selected by the federal government to go on a mission, in the capacity of a potter. He was an early American abolitionist, a high-profile political activist who openly opposed slavery. And so as we begin our story, it is my hope that you find the life of Thomas W. Commeraw as fascinating as I have found it; that his slip through the fingers of history is as confounding to you as it has been to me; and that, in the end, Thomas Commeraw may be rightfully recognized as not only one of the great figures in the history of American decorative arts, but in the civil rights struggle of the first generation of black people living in the new United States of America.
Commeraw’s Stoneware
By A. Brandt Zipp
311 pages with 589 images
Published 2022 by Crocker Farm
Images of the book
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