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Uni
International300 N. Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Ml 48106
8311776
Mason, Phillip Lindsay
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON THE ART AND CRAFTS OF EARLY BLACK AMERICAN ARTISANS (1649-1865) TOWARDS IMPLICATIONS FOR ART EDUCATION
The Ohio State University PhD. 1983
UniversityMicrofilms
International 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
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UniversityMicrofilms
International
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON THE ART AND CRAFTS OF
EARLY BLACK AMERICAN ARTISANS (1649-1865)
TOWARDS IMPLICATIONS FOR ART EDUCATION
• DISSERTATION
Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate
School of The Ohio State University
By
Phillip Lindsay Mason, B.F.A., M.F.A.
* * * * *
The Ohio State University
1982
Reading Committee:Dr, Arthur Efland Dr. Barbara Boyer Dr. Nancy MacGregor Dr. Robert Sutton
Approved by
Department of Art Education
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my sincere thanks to members of my committee
who have been helpful and encouraging in the course of this study.
First of all, I am most appreciative of the counsel and support of my
advisor, Dr. Arthur Efland, at various stages of this project and for
his guidance throughout my graduate study. I am also especially grate
ful to Dr. Barbara Boyer for her helpful insights and invaluable sugges
tions on numerous occasions. Thanks also to Dr. Nancy MacGregor and
Dr. Robert Sutton, both of whom assisted in the development of this
study with positive ideas.
Special mention to Joyce Ann Ford, Karen Waugh-Howell, and Lee
Smith, who with skill and accuracy (and sympathy for my deadlines!)
typed the many letters and various copies of this study in its many
stages of development.
And to Skip Norman, whose time, efforts and professional skill
resulted in the photographed data presented in this study.
PLM
iii
VITA
September 20, 1939............ Born - St. Louis, Missouri.
196 9.......................... B.F.A. (summa cum laude), CaliforniaCollege of Arts & Craft's, Oakland, California.
197 0 . . . . . M.F.A., California College of Arts& Crafts, Oakland, California.
1968-1969 .................... Instructor of Art, Canterbury School,Walnut Creek, California.
19r69-1970 ................... . Instructor of Art, San Francisco Collegefor Women, Instructor of Art, California College of Arts & Crafts.
1970-1972 ..................... Instructor of Art, Laney College,Oakland, California.
1972-1973 .................... Assistant Professor of Art, IndianaState University at Terre Haute.
1973.......................... Visiting Professor of Afro-AmericanStudies, Vincennes University,Vincennes, Indiana.
1973-1977 .................... Associate Professor of Art & DepartmentChairman, North Carolina Central University, Durham, North Carolina.
1978.................... .. University Fellowship, The Ohio StateUniversity, Columbus, Ohio.
1978-1980 .................... Professor of Art, Fisk University,Nashville, Tennessee.
1980-1982 .................... Graduate Administrative Associate, TheOhio State University, Columbus, Ohio.
FIELDS OF STUDY
Major Field: Art EducationStudies in Art Education Research. Professors Arthur Efland,Barbara Boyer, and Nancy MacGregor.
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION,...................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................................iii
VITA......................... . ................................. iv
LIST OF TABLES.................................................... vii
LIST OF FIGURES..................................................viii
LIST OF MAPS......................................................xiii
LIST OF CHARTS.....................................................xiv
INTRODUCTION.................................................... 1
CHAPTER I: THE PROBLEM AND SIGNIFICANCE........................ 3
Purpose of the Study...................................... 3Definition of Terms.................... A
Africanism.......................... AAcculturation . . . . ................................ 5Enculturation . . . . . . . ...................... .. 7Enculturation among Slaves............ 7Apprentice. .......................................... 9Folk Art.............................................. 9
Review of the Literature.................................. 10Limitations of the Study.................................. 1AResearch Procedures........................................ 15Significance for Art Education............................ 17
CHAPTER II: BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM........................... 2A
African Background ........................................ 2 AThe Slave Trade...................................... 27African Survivals in Afro-American Culture............. 29Acculturation ........................................ 30Slave Culture........................................ 32Slave Crafts.......................................... 33
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS CONTINUED
CHAPTER IIT: RESEARCH FINDINGS .................................. 59
Urban Craftsmen. ............................... 62Plantation Craftsmen............................ 62The Pioneer Artists— Free Blacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Woodcarving. . . . . . . .................... . 6A
Georgia Woodcarving: The Coastal Area .................. 6AGeorgia Woodcarving: Inland Areas . . . . . ............ 65Woodcarving: Missouri .................................. 66Woodcarving: Northeastern Region. . . . ................ 67
Basketmaking ........................... 83Cabinetmaking. ...................................... 97
Thomas Day............................................... 106Quiltmaking. . . . . . .............................. . . . 113
Harriet Powers.......................... 115Strip Quilt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Pottery....................................................... 133Dave the Potter.............................. 13AAfro-Carolinian Face Vessels.............................136Monkey P o t . .......................................... 138
Early Black American Painters.............. 153Scipio Moorhead........................ 153Joshua Johnston...... ... ............................ 15ARobert S. Duncanson . . . . . .......................... 158Edward M. Bannister..................................... 16AFree Blacks............................................. 170Metoyer Family Portraits. . . . . ...................... 170
CHAPTER IV: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS.................... 178
Purpose...................................................... 178Limitations and Procedures .................................. 178Summary of Research Findings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179Suggestions for Futher Research....................... 182
BIBLIOGRAPHY 18 A
APPENDICES......................................................... 19A
Explanation of Flow Chart: The Effects of CulturalInfluences on Early Black American Art.. ................... 195Selected Listing of Visual Resource Centers...................198
vi
LIST OF TABLES
Partial list from the Census of Free Colored People in the Charleston, South Carolina, Directory of 1856 .. ....................
LIST OF FIGURES
1* Egyptian wall painting from the Tomb of Huy, Viceroyof Nubia, about 1355 B.C. Metropolitan Museum of Art.New York City.............................................. 39
2. Terra-cotta head, Nok Culture (900 B.C. - 200 A.D.)Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria............................ 40
3. Ife» Bronzed head. Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. . . . . 40
4. Ife, Terra-cotta head. Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. . . 41
5. Ife, bronze portrait head. Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. 41
6. Bronze tusk holder, Benin (17th century). The Museum ofPrimitive Art, New York C i t y .................... 42
7. Amistad Mural, Hale Woodruff, 1939, Panel One,The Mutiny Aboard the Amistad, 1839. Slavery Library of Talladega College ...................................... 43
8. Amistad Mural, Panel Two. The Amistad Slaves on Trialin New Haven. 1840. (1st half)............................ 44
9. Amistad Mural, Panel Two. The Amistad Slaves on Trialin New Haven. 1840. (2nd half)............................ 45
10. Amistad Mural, Panel Three. Return to Africa, 1842........ 46
11. Notice posted for a sale of slaves to be held aboard ship off Charleston, South Carolina. Library ofCongress, Washington, D.C........... ....................... 47
12. Blue and grey striped dress (19th century). Anonymous slave seamstress. Index of American Design, Washington,D.C......................................................... 48
13. Drawing of an African instrument discovered by Benjamin Latrobe in New Orleans, Congo Square, 1819. Collection:Maryland Historical. Society, Baltimore..................... 49
14. Hand-carved wood shuttle, made by an Afro-American slave.Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina. . . . . . 50
viii
51
52
53
54
55
56
56
57
57
58
72
72
73
73
74
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
Peter Alston, employee of the Old Slave Mart Museum with a slave-made rice scoop and rake. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina .. ....................
Slave made, Captain's chair with claw hand-grips.Collection: Paul B, Fuller, Montgomery, Alabama............
Walnut ottoman made by slaves in the plantation cabinet-shop of Ephram Clayton (1804-1892). Collection: Julia A. Clayton, West Ashville, North Carolina. . . . . . .
Corner china cabinet, made by slaves from Mount Hope Plantation ................................ . . . . . . . .
Plasterwork from the stairway of the Dock StreetTheatre, Charleston, South Carolina (ca. 1802) . . . . . . .
Hedge clippers made by a slave blacksmith at Fenwick Hall, John's Island, South Carolina. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina ........................
Heavy garden tool that is a cross between a hoe anda pitchfork made by a slave blacksmith. Old SlaveMart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina....................
Marble-topped washstand. Made by a slave cabinetmaker (1848). Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina .
Walnut sleigh bed made by slave cabinetmaker, and a slave-made quilt. Georgia Historical Commission ..........
Slave-made plantation rocker, with a woven corn shuck seat. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina . .
Right: Carving made by a slave in Missouri. Index of American Design, Washington, D.C...........................
Left: Akuba, or Ashanti fertility doll. Old SlaveMart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina. . . . ............
Left: Detail, Afro-American walking stick (19thcentury). Collection: William Bascom, Berkeley, California.
Right: Lizard carved on Dan wooden effigy, Liberia.Williams (1971)............................................
Top: Walking stick head (magnolia) ........................
ix
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
30. Bottom: Detail of walking stick. Collection:The John W. Stipe Family, Dixie, Georgia .................. 74
31. Top: Walking stick (ca. 1850-1860)......................... 75
32. Middle: Detail of walking stick (hickory).Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.......... 75
33. Bottom: Walking stick. Grandfather of Harve Brown(1850-1860). Taliafero County, Raytown, Georgia .......... 75
34. Top: Carved wooden lizard on Yoruba door, Nigeria........... 76
35. Middle: Carved wooden headrest on Senufo sculpture,Ivory Coast/Mali/Upper Volta .............................. 76
36. Bottom: Scraped lizard design on calabash lid,Dahomey. Williams (1971).......... 76
37. Hardwood stick by Henry Gudgell of Missouri (1863).Index of American Design, Washington, D.C.................. 77
38. The Hen. Made of fitted cypress wood. Carved by a slave of the pirate Jean LaFitte. Index of AmericanDesign, Washington, D.C........................ 78
39. Woodcarving of a youth by an anonymous slave artisan(ca. 1850). Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Virginia . . . . . . . . . . ................ 79
40. Yoruba offering bowl. Ladislas Segy Collection.New York City.............................................. 80
41. Cigar-store Indian, said to have been carved by a slave named Job, in Freehold, New Jersey. (ca. 1825)New York Historical Society................ 81
42. Two Black figures. Wood and mixed media (ca. 1880).Collection: Michael and Julie Hall, Hamilton, Ohio ........ 82
43. Sweetgrass growing in wooded area in CharlestonCounty, South Carolina. Yoder (1976)............ 85
44. Sweetgrass approximately 16" to 18" in length Yoder (1976) . 86
45. Tool used in punching an opening in coils for weftingin making baskets. Yoder (1976) ............ . .......... 87
x
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
46. Sewing of coils in basketry. Yoder (1976) ................. 88
47. Turning coils to form a basket bowl. Yoder (1976) ......... 89
48. Wrapping of overlap handle. Yoder (1976)................... 90
49. Overlap handle near completion. Yoder (1976)............ . 91
50. Food storage basket, Senegambia. Indiana UniversityMuseum, Bloomington, Indiana .............................. 92
51. Rice fanner basket, Senegal. Indiana UniversityMuseum, Bloomington, Indiana .......... 93
5.?. Rice fanner basket, Afro-American (ca. 1850).Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina. .......... 94
53. Freed slaves near Beaufort, South Carolina, harvesting sweet potatoes (ca. 1865). Photograph, Collection ofThe New York Historical. Society, New York C i t y . 95
54. Raffia Basket (19th century), Driskell (1976)............... 96
55. Slave-made desk and chair. The Elms Plantation nearMillbrook, Alabama ........................................ 100
56. Four poster bed made by slaves of Waco, Texas (1840).Baylor University, Waco, Texas............................ 101.
57. Slave-made pine bureau with beaded mirror to match ......... 102
58. China cabinet. Anonymous slave craftsman..................... 103
59. Secretary from the James Hurt Shorter Plantation atSummerville, Alabama (ca. 1850)........................ 104
60. Side table (pine) with mahogany knobs on the drawers.Joins made with pegs. Melrose Plantation (ca. 1807-1872). . 105
61. Advertisement in the Milton Gazette and RoanokeMarch 1, 1827..................................................107
62. Carved mantel. Thomas Day. Milton, North Carolina........... 108
63. Thomas Day, Bed, Milton, North Carolina (mid-19th century) . 109
xi
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
64. Newel Post, Thomas Day, Located in Paschal House,Caswell County, North Carolina. Photograph, collectionof North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, N. Carolina. . 110
65. Thomas Day, Sampler Chest (ca. 1840)......................... Ill
66. Pier Table, Thomas Day (c.a. 1850). North CarolinaMuseum of History.......................................... 13 2
67. Akwete cloth. Chase (1971)................................... 122
68. Appliqued Gown, Chana. R. Sieber (1972) .................. 123
69. Appliqued Textile, Dahomey. The HerskovitzCollection, Chicago, Illinois.................................124
70. Appliqued Textile, Dahomey. The KerskovitzCollection, Chicago, Illinois.................................124
71. Quilt, Harriet Powers. The National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution,Washington, D.C............................................... 125
72. Bible Quilt, Harriet Powers (ca. 1886). The National Museum of History and Technology, SmithsonianInstitution, Washington, D.C............... 126
73. Top: Detail of Fon appliqued symbol of Kpengla (1774-1789), 18th century King of Dahomey.Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts ................ 127
74. Bottom: Detail of Harriet Powers1 quilt.Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C......................127
75. Top: Detail of Fon appliqued symbol of Houegbadja (1654-1685), 17th century King of Dahomey.Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts ................ 128
76. Bottom: Detail of Harriet Powers' quilt.Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C......................128
77. Top: Detail of Fon appliqued symbol for Ghezo (1818-1858), 19th century King of Dahomey.Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts ................ 129
78. Bottom: Detail of Harriet Powers' Bible Quilt.Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. . .............. 129
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
79. Men’s Weave Textile. Upper Volta. The KatherineWhite Collection, Los Angeles, California.....................130
80. Blanket, Luiza Combs (ca. 1890). Collection:Kenneth Combs, Cleveland, Ohio ......................... .. 131
81. Men's Weave Textile, Ghana. The Katherine WhiteCollection, Los Angeles, California...........................132
82. Jug, Dave the Potter (1853). Collection:Dr. James T. Bryson, Washington, Georgia .................. 140
83. Jar, Dave the Potter (1859). Nicholson estate,Cedar Grove Plantation, Edgefield, South Carolina.............141
84. Jar, Dave the Potter (1859). The Charleston Museum,Charleston, South Carolina ................................ 142
85. Jar, Dave the Potter (1840). The Charleston Museum,Charleston, South Carolina ................ . . . ........ 143
86. Face vessel (ca. 1850). Smithsonian Institution,Washington, D.C. . . . . . . . . . . . 144
87. Effigy jug (ca. 1817). Augusta Museum, Augusta, Georgia . . 145
88. Bapende wooden cup. University of South CarolinaMuseum, Columbia, South Carolina .......... . . . . . . . . 146
89. Face cup (1850). Smithsonian Institutiona,Washington, D.C............................................... 147
90. Face jug (ca. 1840-1860). The Ferrell Collection,Easley, South Carolina............ 148
91. Nkisi Figure, Zaire. Collection: Dr. & Mrs.Anspach, New York C i t y....................................... 149
92. Face vessel (raid-19th century?). The CharlestonMuseum, Charleston, South Carolina .. .................... 150
93. Face vessel, Ghana, Akan people, Ashanti tribe?Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C........................151
94. Face vessel (raid-19th century). John Gordon Gallery,New York City................................................. 152
LIST OF FIGURES CONTINUED
95. Joshua Johnston, Portrait of a Cleric. (Oil on canvas,ca. 1810). Bowdoin College Museum of Art............. 157
96. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Untitled Mural. (Oil onplaster, ca. 18A8). The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio . . . 161
97. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Uncle Tom and Little Eva.(Oil. on canvas, 1853). Detroit Institute of Arts,Detroit, Michigan. .. .................................... 162
98. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River. (Oil on canvas, 1851). Cincinnati ArtMuseum, Cincinnati, Ohio .................................. 163
99. Edward M. Bannister, Landscape. (Oil on panel, 1882).Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.Providence, Rhode Island.................................... 166
100. Edward M. Bannister, Driving Home the Cows. (Oil on canvas, 1881). Frederick Douglass Institute, Miller Collection, Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. . . . . 167
101. Edward M. Bannister, Approaching Storm. (Oil on canvas,1886). Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C........ 168
102. Edward M. Bannister, Street Scene. (Oil on panel, 1895).Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design .............. 169
103. Artist Unknown, Granddaughter of Marie Metoyer (1,830?).Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana........... 172
10A. Artist Unknown, Grandson of Marie Metoyer (1830?).Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana........... 173
105. Interior of Melrose House. Augustine, Madame Metoyer's eldest son, is the subject of the largeportrait (signed Feuville, 1829) .......... 17A
106. Franklin stove (unknown Black artisan), in the mainbedroom of Melrose Plantation, Metoyer Estate. . . . . . . . 175
107. Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana,Metoyer Estate ............................................ 176
108. "African House," Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches,Louisiana (early 19th century) ............................ 177
LIST OF MAPS
Pre-Colonial Africa............................
Important Pottery Sites in Greenwood, Edgefield, and Aiken Counties, South Carolina ............
INTRODUCTION
Until the twentieth century, most people accepted the belief that
Black Americans had no past worth mentioning; that in any case their
ancestors came from such widely scattered parts of Africa that none of
their meager cultural inheritance could have survived. The anthropolo
gist Melville J. Herskovitz, who called this misconception "the myth of
the Negro past," did much to dispel it in his book of the same name
(1958); as did such Black scholars as W.E.B. DuBois (1902), J. Blas-
singame (1972), and John Hope Franklin (1964). In spite of changing
attitudes and an appreciation for African art forms, knowledge of Africa
remains fragmentary, and there seems to be little understanding of the
true relationship of Africa to Black American art and culture.
African influences on Afro-American art are sometimes difficult to
discern and do not always appear obvious. Because no Benin bronze head
has been found in a former slave cabin, no Bambara antelope discovered
amidst the carved decorations of a southern planter's mantlepiece, one
cannot conclude that Africa has not left its mark on America (Chase,
1971).
Although history has recorded few names of early Black American
artisans, nevertheless the artisans were contributors to this nation's
cultural development since the arrival of the first slaves in Jamestown
in 1619. Early Black arts and crafts is a relatively unexplored area
2
in the study of art, especially the interrelationships of techniques
and styles derived from Africa and impacting upon the European tradition
in America (V'lach, 1978; Thompson, 1969).
For a full appreciation of the valuable contributions made by Blacks
to American culture, it is necessary to study the Afro-American back
ground and trace the history and the cultural influences from ancestral
beginnings in Africa. Out of this heritage, these early Black artisans
created works of aesthetic quality and beauty through a blending of
three cultures: African, European and American.
This study is an inquiry into the cultural influences on the arts
and crafts of early Black American artisans (1649-1865) towards implica
tions for art education. It is an attempt to show the importance of
Afro-American art for inclusion in curriculum for art students. The
study researches the cultural heritage of Afro-Americans. Additional
investigation by later scholars will obviously lead to further discov
eries, and hopefully will help develop a more complete understanding
of Black American culture and its value in art education.
CHAPTER I
THE PROBLEM AND SIGNIFICANCE
Purpose of the Study
The purpose of this study is to examine cultural influences on the
decorative arts (woodcarving, furniture-making, pottery, basketry,
quiltmaking as well as painting) of early Black American artisans (1649-
1865) as a curriculum resource in art education. Artists of African
descent in America did not begin artistic endeavors in a cultural vac
uum. This study focuses on the work produced by these early Black
artisans.
Most of the African traits have held over in Afro-American behav
ior, often in an uninstitutionalized form. For example, in the retention
of African cultural elements in the motor habits of Blacks, analysis has
been made of motion pictures of such routine activities as walking,
speaking, laughing, and sitting. Many Afro-American forms of dancing
are essentially African, as evidenced in motion pictures taken of the
Kwaside Rites for ancestors of the chief of the Ashanti Village of
Askore. This dance rite is an example of the origin of the "Charleston"
(Herskovitz, 1958). There are also African suvivals in the music of
Afro-Americans. Jones (1963) found that when the early slaves sang or
shouted in the fields, they did so in pure African dialect.
4
African suvivals thought to be much stronger in religion, music
and dance, do not have (as do the plastic arts) artifacts as their end
products and these non-material aspects of the African's culture were
almost impossible* to eradicate. Nevertheless, survival of African ele
ments will be shown to exist in the plastic arts as well.
The geographical source of slave importation also had an effect on
the African elements which made their way to America. The West Coast of
Africa is the source for the major Black cultural contributions to
America. In the region of the West Coast of Africa the artist-craftsman
was highly regarded. This region also produced some of the world's most
significant art.
Definition of Terms
Africanism. The term "Africanism" in this study refers to African
cultural survivals in the arts and crafts of Afro-Americans. Whenever
elements of the slave's culture more closely resemble African than
European patterns, we can be relatively certain that we have identified
African survivals. Then too, since the slaves had to preserve many of
the African elements in their masters language, many were too obscure
for the modern ear to detect. On occasion the Africanisms can be esta
blished because of the frequency of such elements in slave culture when
compared to European culture (Blassingarae, 1972). The term "Africanism"
was coined by Melville J. Herskovitz in 1958. In Myth of the Negro
Past (1958), one of Herskovitz' main points is that most of the atti
tudes, customs and cultural characteristics of American Blacks can be
traced directly or indirectly back to Africa.
Acculturation. The term, "acculturation" in this study is defined
as the impact of the West on tribal societies. Acculturation involves
the prolonged and large scale contact of peoples whose ways of life are
distinct. A different order of social and cultural change comes into
play when massive contact between peoples occur. Such massive cultural
change, usually termed acculturation, was first legitimized as a central
theoretical challenge to anthropology in 1936 by a committee of the
Social Science Research Council, consisting of leading theorists, Red-
field, Linton, and Herskovitz (1936). Acculturation involves direct and
usually prolonged contact, and a cumulative process of culture transfer
and reformation (Kessing and Kessing, 1971).
Acculturation in the United States involved the mutual interaction
between two cultures, with Europeans and Africans borrowing from each
other. When the African stepped on board a European ship he left all of
the artifacts or physical objects of his culture behind him. In Africa,
as in most societies, these objects were far less important than values,
ideas, relationships, and behavioral patterns (Klassingame, 1972).
The similarities between many European and African cultural elements
enabled the slave to continue to engage in many traditional activities
or to create a synthesis of European and African cultures.
The degree to which the African slaves uprooted from their native
lands and set down in a radically different environment were able to
maintain a measure of cultural continuity depended largely upon where
and under what circumstances they were sold. In Latin American coun
tries, where slaves were employed on sugar plantations in work forces
averaging 200 or more fellow tribesmen, there was ample chance for
6
sustaining cultural patterns. However, in North America, particularly
in urban areas, the slave typically was sold as part of a small group or
as an individual, so that cultural ties with Africa were difficult to
maintain. North American slaves were more prone to be victims to the
slave master’s desire to suppress all customs that did not conform to
the familiar patterns of Western tradition (Franklin, 1965; Davidson,
1961).
Unfamiliar Western culture was a source of cultural shock for newly
imported slaves but in addition, they often had to adjust to the cul
tures of other tribes as well. In Africa, the kinship of the tribe had
been of prime importance; the extended family and the mystical divinity
of the king had helped to maintain cohesive tribal units. When this
system was forcibly interrupted, the need for religious ritual and re
lated art objects was soon wiped out (Lewis, 1978).
It is possible that the soufehern-planfration slaves, in general
fared somewhat better, and that their less drastic adjustment to a new
way of life permitted more cultural continuity. Upon their arrival,
the southern plantation slaves often found members of their tribe al
ready in residence on the plantation. In addition certain parallels
existed between the plantation community and that of tribal Africa such
as the following:
1. Each was a self-contained unit with a rigid hierarchy of work
and behavior.
2. Each tribal member was required to work for the benefit of
the group.
3. Punishment for misdeeds was immediate and severe.
7
4. The community as a whole prospered when the crops were abun
dant and suffered together during lean years.
5. In both systems jobs were assigned according to age and social
stratum and parents jealously guarded the right of their
children to inherit their social and economic positions (Chase,
1971).
Enculturation. The term "enculturation" in this study is the pro
cess of learning a culture. The dynamics of the process is best under
stood as taking place in a community within a community (Keesing &
Keesing, 1971). For example, the child in the slave quarter community,
probably within the first six years of his life, internalized an intui
tive understanding of not only of what was, and was not, acceptable
behavior, but also an understanding and acceptance of the system of the
values by which life events take on meaning for those around him (Blas-
singame, 1972; Webber, 1978).
Enculturation among Slaves. The world experienced and internalized
by the slave child in his first years of life was a world largely con
trolled and mediated by the members of his community. It is for this
reason that the most crucial elements of slave thought and social organi
zation, and of the interaction between slaves and whites and among
slaves, can be understood only in the context of the slave child's pri
mary enculturation within the slave quarter community and of his or her
continuing participation in, and reference to, the persons and primary
groups of that community in adult life. In other words this was the
first socialization the slave children underwent in childhood through
which they became members of society.
8
To be sure, slave children lived in a larger world created for and
controlled by whites who had the power to profoundly disrupt the secur
ity, comfort, and relationships of slave children to their families.
At the same time, however, it was their parents, older siblings, and
other members of the slave community who, on a day-to-day basis, pro
vided the behavioral standards and controlled the negative and positive
sanctions most crucial to the happiness and positive self-image of
slave children (Blassingame, 1972; Webber, 1978).
Adult slaves, whatever the nature of their individual attempts to
proclaim and affirm their individual identity within their group, acted
within a definite Black cultural context. Only the rare slave dared, or
thought to dare, to step beyond the bounds laid down by slave quarter
beliefs and community sanctions. To risk losing membership in the
quarter community was to most slaves unthinkable; their primary encul
turation within that community had made it,so.
By the time plantation authorities seriously began their attempts
to influence the beliefs and values of their slaves, most slave children
had already internalized the themes and behavior modes of the slave
quarter community. They had learned the language, sung the songs, eaten
the food, attended the secret ceremonies (with their latent Africanisms),
and stored away in their unconscious the imagery, the collective hopes
and fears of their people.
Thus, to understand the nature of education in the slave quarter
community is to come to grips with the paradox of the "free slave."
Though the chains with which whites controlled Black bodies were very
real, try as they might, whites could not control Black minds. These
9
were molded from birth in an educational process created and managed by
the quarter community. By passing their cultural values from generation
to generation, the members of the slave quarter community were able to
resist most of white teaching, set themselves apart from white society,
and mold their own cultural norms and group identity. While still le
gally slaves, the Black men and women, and children of the quarter com
munity successfully protected their psychological freedom and celebrated
their human dignity (Webber, 1978).
Apprentice. The term "apprentice" as used in this study means the
slave who was bound by his master to serve with a view to learning an
art or trade. In other words the indentured servant or slave learned
his trade, art, or calling under his master, or under another slave who
was a skilled worker.
In the late eighteenth century a system of renting and apprenticing
talented Blacks to white craftsmen developed in colonial America. That
a significant number of Blacks were so apprenticed, and in responsible
occupations, is indicated by numerous advertisements in colonial news
papers; for example, the Maryland Gazette (2 November, 1774) listed the
sale of slave, a craftsman who understood all types of engraving and
woodcutting. Similarly, Edward Peterson's History of Rhode Island
(1853) suggests that Gilbert Stuart, a white New England portrait
painter, received his first lesson in drawing from Neptune Thurston, a
slave employed in a Boston cooper shop (Lewis, 1978; Fine, 1973).
Folk Art. Is that art produced by untrained artisans that is ac
cepted as a legitimate art form, but treated largely as a quaint
10
reminder of the nation’s manners and mores. The functional or purely
decorative aspects of the work are stressed.
The reclusiveness of such folk art is one of its primary character
istics. By and large, they are produced by individuals or groups that
are outside the mainstream of American life, outsiders who are free
from the dogmas and restrictions that the dominant culture (and its
academic art world) imposes (Hemphill, 1976).
The folk arts are made by and enjoyed aesthetically by members of
a society as a whole or by a recognized smaller group within that soci
ety. Based on shared philosophical concepts of life and bounded by
collective ethos, they represent the tastes and points of view of the
group. Individual expression per se is active only within bounds of
shared and accepted patterns. This definition does not classify ’folk’
according to economic or social levels, or geographical location (Davis,
1976).
An art form can be classified as folk art only when representing a
group within the matrix of a larger society having a complex structure
or a group that has had a prolonged contact with a complex society. For
example the art styles of eighteenth century European peasantry is an
example of folk art existing in societies where the baroque and other
court styles are also known (Efland, 1982).
Review of the Literature
There are significant expressions of Black American art that have
remained unrecognized by scholars of Afro-American art. These consist
of works set mainly in the realms of craft and skill. Traditionally
11
crafted artifacts— baskets, walking sticks, pottery jars, quilts— are
commonplace items having not been areas for study in art. While the
expertise of Black artisans, through seventeenth and eighteenth century
newspaper accounts has long been acknowledged, it has not been exten
sively analyzed. We have been given only cursory summaries and limited
statements in passing. Cedric Dover in American Negro Art (1960), gives
all of three pages to four centuries of what he calls manual arts.
James A. Porter, introduces his book Modern Negro Art (1969) with a
chapter entitled "Negro Craftsmen and Artists of Pre-Civil War Days."
But here again the attention given to traditional creativity is minimal.
In fact, more than half of Porter's book is devoted to work done in the
twentieth century. Emphasis on the modern and the elite is also found
in recent studies by Fine, 1973, and Driskell, 1976. Driskell strongly
underscores this trend of focusing mainly on contemporary Black artists
by dividing two centuries of Black American art into two periods: the
first, from 1750 to 1920; the second from 1920 to 1950. Even in so
recent a work as Samella Lewis' Art: African American, 1978, there are
only five pages that discuss and illustrate the work of the traditional
artisan. There is thus a tendency in Afro-American art history to
obscure the efforts of the early Black artisans.
The major cultural source that gives Black artisans their special
identity is, of course, their African heritage. This cultural legacy,
has long been the source of scholarly debate and social tension (Stampp,
1956; Blassingame, 1972; Bodkin, 1945). Generally its presence has been
denied, and often the deep motive behind that denial was racial
12
exploitation. As Herskovitz (1958) has shown, a people bereft of a
history— without a past— has no source of identity.
The survival of Africanisms in Black culture has long been noted
in areas of religion, music, oral literature, and dance. An Africanism
is not an isolated cultural element but an assertive proof of an alter
native history. It is a link to an unwritten past; it is an index of
the existence of African influences (Herskovitz, 1958).
This African mentality even survived the plantation. Webber (1978)
writing in Education in the Slave Quarter Community 1831-1865, viewed
the plantation as a vocational or industrial school. "From the point
of view of the slaveholder, the primary teaching task of the slave plan
tation was to train slaves to handle effectively all jobs relating to
the running of his plantation. Under slavery Blacks were trained in
everything from the technical skills of carpentry, masonry, blacksmith-
ing, shoemaking, to domestic service, to the less technical skills of
field labor." (Webber, 1978, p. 26).
With respect to crafts the continuation of African artistic tradi
tions under slavery had a somewhat secure base. As the colonies ex
panded, the demand for skilled craftsmen exceeded the supply. In 1731
there were reported only one potter in all of South Carolina. Conse
quently, slaveholders frequently found it worthwhile to use some of
their slaves as artisans rather than as domestic or field laborers
(Lewis, 1978).
Margaret Butcher's The Negro in American Culture, 2nd Edition
(1972) deals with history and a full range of expressive possibilities
of Black creativity in the chapter, "The Negro as Artist in American
13
Art." This work, is compiled from the unfinished manuscripts of the late
Black historian/philosopher Alaine Locke.
A valuable bibliographic source is the Subject Index to Literature
on Negro Art, published in 1941 by the Illinois Federal Works Agency.
The main value of the index lies in its listing of possible subject
headings for "Negro" art. However, one criticism of the index is that
until about 1965, the heading of "Art, Negro" in this publication in
cluded African Art. In subsequent years a differentiation is made be
tween "Art, Negro (American)," and "Art, Negro (African)." The headings
"Art, African," or "Art, Afro American (or Black)" may also be listed,
but invariably they are cross-referenced with "Art, Negro, etc." One
must also look under such disparate headings as "Race," "Discrimination,"
"Minorities," and "Negro(es)" for additional material on Blacks in the
early visual and decorative arts (Sims, 1972).
James Porter's "Contemporary Black American Art," in The Negro
Impact on Western Civilization (1970) touches on the issue of mutual
influence between African and Afro-American art.
Robert F. Thompson, a Yale scholar, duscusses at length the work of
early Black craftsmen in an article titled "African Influence on The
Art of the United States," in Black Studies in the University: A Sympo
sium (1969). According to Hemphill (1976) this thesis has forced the
scholarly world to rethink the whole problem of Sub-Saharan Africa's
contribution to American art history.
Thomas L. Webber's book, Deep Like the Rivers: Education in the
Slave Quarter Community 1831-1865 (1978), mentioned earlier, gives an
excellent general analysis of the formal and informal education of
14
slaves. He provides an appendix that includes his methodology and
identifies additional sources.
John W. Blassingame's, The Slave Community (1972) deals with the
cultural lives of slaves on the plantation during the antebellum south.
It is a good general source for the study of Black cultural history.
Limitations of the Study
This study identifies the written and visual (photographs) sources
related to the decorative arts and paintings created by early Black
artisans with a view to constructing an account of how artistic work was
accomplished by Blacks both slave and free. It also examines how these
skills were learned and transmitted formally and informally to others
in the Black community.
This research was limited to the period from 1649 to 1865 because
(1) that period has been neglected in the literature (as demonstrated
earlier); and (2) that period covers the era from the earliest recorded
material on Black artisans in the United States up to the time of eman
cipation.
Categories for inquiry in this study will include only woodcarving,
basketry, furnituremaking, pottery, quiltmaking and painting. These
categories were selected because they provided a large enough framework
to include African, European and American cultural influences on Afro-
American arts and crafts.
Woodcarving and basketry show heavy African cultural influences
(Davis, 1976; Day, 1977), furnituremaking, quilting, and pottery are
influenced by acculturation (Ferrell and Ferrell, 1976; Fry, 1976; Hall,
15
1935; Barfield, 1975); and Afro-American painting is dominated by Euro
pean influences (Bearden & Henderson, 1972; Lewis, 1978). (See Flow
Chart 1 in the Appendix).
Data, both written and visual, was taken from secondary sources
including museum catalogs and brochues; textbooks, articles and photo
graphic reproductions. Primary sources were not consulted since this
would have required travel to such places as the Old Slave Mart Museum,
Charleston, South Carolina, Library of Congress, the Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center, Washington, D.C., and the Melrose Plantation in
Nachitoches, Louisiana to name a few. This limitation was dictated by
time and financial considerations. This study is limited to the art
forms of North American Blacks, to those who lived in the slave quarters
and urban settings in the ante-bellum south, or who were influenced by
the culture of the slave quarter community.
Research Procedures
This study made an extensive search of related literature on early
Afro-American (slave and free) from the years 1649 to 1865, in order to
ascertain the influences of African, European, and American culture on
their decorative arts and paintings. The research material is descrip
tive in nature and identified photographed artifacts (decorative arts/
crafts and paintings) point out similarities of style, influences of
acculturation, Africanisms, and other findings evident in the written
and visual data.
16
Though the historical materials and the artifacts in photographic
form have curricular implications for art education, this study does
not develop these resources as curricula.
A hand search of the Dissertation Abstracts International and Art
Index were used as a basis for the selection of research journals in
art education, Afro-American art history and Negro (Afro-American) his
tory to aid in compiling descriptors to be used for computer searching
of the research material. The research of R.F. Thompson (1969), T. Webber
(1978), J. Blassingame (1972), J. Chase (1971), and E. Grigsby (1977)
was used as guides. The following three sets of descriptors were used
in the computerized searches of ERIC and Dissertation Abstracts Inter
national:
Art
Art CraftsDecorative Arts Folk Art Woodcarving Furnituremaking Cabinetmaking Pottery Ceramics Basketry Quiltmaking
Book Catalogs and Humanities Citation Indexes were also searched by hand
using names of researchers like S. Lewis, J.H. Franklin, R.F. Thompson,
J. McFee, E. Grigsby, R. Blassingame, J. Vlach, R. Sieber, J. Porter,
and M.J. Herskovitz.
The literature was explored to identify stylistic affinities of
Afro-American art with both African and European art, as well as formal
Black Terminology Cultural Terms
Afro-American AfricanismAfrican SlaveryBlack Cultural HeritageNegro Enculturation
AcculturationApprenticeship
17
and informal methods of teaching within the research findings that would
have implications for art education. Support was sought within the
current art education literature (books, articles and papers) between
1960 and 1982.
The research of Thompson and Chase helped to select criteria for
determining African and European cultural influences. The criteria is:
(1) similarity of motif, (2) similarity of symbolism, (3) stylistic par
allel. The research of Thompson and Chase was also useful in selecting
categories and descriptors used in the computer search. The works of
Webber and Blassingame, for example, pointed out the significance of
inquiry into the education and cultural history of early Black Americans.
McFee's and Grigsby's research, suggested this study’s focus regarding
the significance of research into the cultural heritage of Afro-Ameri
cans, for art education.
Significance for Art Education
In a democratic society, the power to determine the quality of life
is shared by all people, not just one person or a self appointed few.
The need for enlightened citizens leads to three primary responsibili
ties of general public education and, by implication, of art education.
General education provides for personal fulfillment, nurtures social
consciousness, and transmits the cultural heritage to each generation
(Chapman, 1978).
Our schools are populated more and more by students who are aware
of their divergent ethnic background, and educators are finding it
18
increasingly difficult to cope with these students who bring cultural
attitudes different from those of the teachers. Schools should recog
nize the need for cultural identification and build lessons around
ethnic situations as much as possible (Grigsby, 1977).
The study of cultural heritage related to art education is the pri
mary concern of this research. Black American culture has been a some
what neglected area for research in art education. Knowles and Prewitt
(1969) have stated that as the situation now stands contemporary 'experts'
in the educational system tend to give little consideration to the dis
tinct culture and lifestyles of minority students.
McFee (1970) recommends that the functions of art need to be consi
dered in developing art curricula for students from various subcultures
as they are affected by social change. Some degree and combination of
these functions of art are found in all cultures past and present. Art
is used to maintain the values, attitudes, and sense of reality from one
generation to another. It is used to give character, identity, and
status to groups of people, individuals and institutions through mutually
understood symbols, styles of architecture and costume. A symbol may
have many meanings depending upon its variation. People with different
backgrounds bring somewhat different sets of concepts into play when
seeing it. The cross, for example,, has pre- and post-Christian meanings
and many derivations— an Ethiopian Coptic cross, a Latin cross and a
burning cross stimulate recall of different concepts and emotions. One
responds to these symbols in terms of one's culture.
Culture is used to identify the values, attitudes, and acceptable
behavior within a common heritage. Our classrooms are filled with
19
students from many cultures whose backgrounds have influenced the devel
opment of quite different values, belief systems, and concepts of ac
ceptable behavior. Cultures vary with different socioeconomic back
grounds, urban or rural environment, and geographical culture, but it
has many subcultures, which may be identified within large or small
groups.
To those trained in education with the melting pot as an ideal,
this pluralistic culture with multiple value systems may seem paradoxi
cal. Even if we decide that the core culture of middle class culture
should be the focus of education for all, we still need to re-evaluate
our goals in terms of the ethnic and cultural diversity of society.
Education through art has been advocated for the minority child.
By cultivating and directing his talents, by achieving an identification
with meaningful work, and by solving the problems involved in creating
a work of art, the child is rewarded with a sense of satisfaction and
fulfillment (Lalley, 1961). Through the arts, the minority child can
overcome environmental barriers and achieve a sense of discipline, in
volvement and confidence essential to all education pursuits (Bushnell,
1970).
The most important single factor emerging in the compensatory edu
cation programs planned to stimulate learning in the minority group
child is the teacher-student relationship, or the teacher’s attitude
toward the child. Children who are treated as uneducable almost invar
iably become uneducable. Pilot studies (Clark, 1965) have shown that
if a teacher is told that a group of children have a high learning
potential, the teacher expects them to learn and they so. Student
20
teacher relationships and most important, the teacher's attitude toward
minority children— is a vital element in student retardation (Clark,
1965).
After reviewing the experimental compensatory education programs
in Hartford, Connecticut, the coordinator of evaluation for Hartford
schools, concluded that, whether in art or literature, in mathematics
or science, it was the teacher's acceptance, respect, and warmth, rather
than operational designs that determined success or failure of a program
(Fine, 1973).
For the ghetto child acceptance means awareness of his individual
needs and talents. There should be respect for his uniqueness and for
the group with which he identifies, and the creation of a tension-free
environment in which the child can mature, develop and seek privacy and
solitude needed to create. The teacher should be aware of the student's
cultural heritage and work with it, rather than trying to impose his
own values on the child. The art lesson should be structured so that
the child can be motivated by his previous success experience.
The projects should be meaningful to the child and should start
with what is familiar to him. The student can use art to communicate
about himself, his clothing, his home, and his family (Hubbard, 1967;
McFee, 1966). A feeling of the worthiness of each individual's personal
view of reality is vital and basic to having skills and materials to
carry out an idea (Armstrong, 1970).
A pilot study conducted by art educator Doris Barclay (1966) for
art teachers working among disadvantaged youth also suggested:
21
1. Encouraging the development of a curious, inquiring approach to the subject.
2. Planning individual rather than group activities to minimize distracting competitiveness.
3. Utilizing male teachers when possible.4. Giving concrete rewards for work well done, at
least initially, due to an apparent distrust of verbal praise.
Experience in the Teachers Corps led art educator Frances Heussenstamm
to conclude that (1) concrete products, three-dimensional constructions,
or craft items should dominate the art program, (2) guest artists of the
same ethnic background as the students should be utilized, (3) after
school activities should be available for students involved in their
project, and (4) art as an aspect of the total community environment
should be stressed (Heussenstamm, 1969).
Studies in art education are needed that focus on the art and cul
tural attitudes of Black Americans. McFee stated that,
a study of the functions of art in societies other than our own should give us insight into the way art forms, no matter how humble, operate in people's lives right now. We may have to be willing to look at these art-forms with a new sensitivity to see how they function to give a sense of continuity and belonging to a community. If their art forms are making this contribution, then our introduction of art to members of minority groups should include their symbolism. If not, we are in some degree teaching their children to devalue their own background. (McFee, 1970, p. 77).
This study will be useful to those teachers working in cultural
heritage areas of curriculum content in art education. For example,
the material can be developed for instruction and would help Black
students to better understand their cultural backgrounds. This material
22
should also be useful to those in elementary, secondary, and college
programs as well as those persons interested in multi-ethnic, multi
cultural research.
Chapters for the study are arranged into the following areas:
I. The problem and significance
This chapter states the purpose of the study, lists definitions
of terms used within the study, reviews the literature, cites the limi
tations of the study, identifies the research procedures used in the
study, and points up the significance of the study for art education.
II. Background of the problem
This chapter gives an historical overview of the topic, discussing
the illegal slave trade of Africans and the effects of acculturation
and enculturation on the lives of slaves. Informal education of slave
craftsmen is discussed and illustrations of ancient Africa and slave
artifacts are presented.
III. Research findings
The decorative arts/crafts and paintings of early Afro-American
artists are discussed in detail. The artifacts are looked at within the
context of the slave system showing the strong presence of Africanisms
in the wood carving and basketry of Afro-Americans. Furnituremaking,
quilting and pottery are discussed, pointing out the influences of ac
culturation upon the works produced by these early Black artisans.
Painting, the most "Europeanized" of all the early Afro-American arts,
23
shows the efforts of Blacks to move into the mainstream of American
culture. These categories of data are accompanied by photographic re
productions of the artifacts.
IV. Summary and conclusions
This chapter briefly summarizes the findings of the compiled data.
Conclusions involve discussing evidence of African cultural survivals,
stylistic differences between work created by urban Blacks and rural
Blacks, the adaption of African techniques in textiles to the European
quilting tradition and the European influences on early Black painting.
Areas for further research on the cultural heritage of Afro-Americans
was suggested.
CHAPTER II
BACKGROUND OF THE PROBLEM
African Background
There were many great cultures that existed from time to time in
ancient Africa. Ancient Egypt was, of course, one of the greatest and
best known of the early civilizations— so well known, in fact, that it
need not be considered at length here (Figure 1). Egypt's outstanding
advancement is usually ascribed to its caucasion population, an assump
tion now being challenged. Probably founded by the same basic stock
that peopled the green Sahara, and fed by additional migratory waves
from Asia and the Near east, it is reasonable to assume that it contained
a large Black population as well. Also, it was in continuous contact
with its neighbors to the south, a contact that took place by means of
either the Nile River or the caravan trails across the desert (Chase,
1971).
It is that area to the south that I want to focus on for the pur
poses of this dissertation. Negroes with considerable facility in iron-
working apparently moved into the area (west of the Niger Delta) over
2,000 years ago— just about the time that Bantu-speaking Negroes, east
of the Delta, began to expand— and established a number of small, inde
pendent societies. A remarkable facility to carve miniatures prevailed
24
25
around Nok, in the southern savanna, between 900 B.C. and 200 A.D. The
Nok society represented a transition from wood and stone to iron in
West Africa, and its motifs were the forerunners of art forms later
adapted to terra cotta and bronze media in central and southwestern
Nigeria. One of Nok*s descendant cultures, that of Benin, developed
ironworking to a remarkable level around 1400. The Benin artisans pro
duced some human and divine figures that are prized for their esthetic
qualities rather than their utility (Wiedner, 1961).
Though many scholars praise the African sculptural tradition, they
remain relatively silent about African painting. African painting also
has a long history, though it is comparatively unknown in the West. The
earliest cave paintings go back several thousand years, but as yet have
not been dated with any great precision. Some of the earliest are huge
representations of human beings eleven feet high and animals as much
as twenty-six feet long. Rock paintings have been found and studied
in most parts of the continent, but according to Bohannon and Curtis
(1971), it will be some decades before a real history of African paint
ing can be written.
In the Sahara, peoples of Negro type were painting men and women
with a beautiful sensitive realism before 3000 B.C. and were, perhaps,
among the originators of naturalistic human portraiture. The Nok dis
coveries add their confirmation. These pottery heads and figures from
central Nigeria stand much nearer to our own day, but they are nonethe
less very old. Thus four scraps of carbonized wood from these "Nok
levels" have yielded datings of about 3500 B.C. and 2000 B.C. as well as
the datings mentioned before. The Nok culture reached its full
26
development in the last two or three centuries B.S. Any doubt of the
authenticity of age of the Nok figurines is removed by the fact that
they were found, during tin-mining operations, at a level whose approxi
mate age is fixed by other evidence. Nok sculpture is the oldest known
sculpture south of the Sahara (Figure 2).
Knowledge of its existence has already helped to revise many old
notions of the African past. Europeans had often thought, for example,
that Negro peoples possessed no native tradition of anthropomorphic
art— of the more or less naturalistic portrayal of humanity. When the
first astonishing heads and busts from Ife and Benin were brought to
Europe and were seen to be portraits, or very like portraits, they were
greeted with disbelief: surely they were Greek or Egyptian or even Por
tugese, for Negroes had never done anything like that (Davidson, 1959).
The bronze heads of Ife (Figure 3) are considered to be among the
finest pieces of measuredly naturalistic sculpture ever produced. They
date from about the twelfth century A.D. The fact that there was no
technique of this sort known to the Purtuguese at this time was not
allowed to intrude against the stereotype. Once carbon-14 dates made
the age fairly precise, it became necessary to admit that they could
only have been done by Africans (Bohannon & Curtis, 1971; Willet, 1968).
Most African sculpture appears to have been associated with reli
gion, which pervaded most aspects of African life. The religious genres
included votive figures which adorned the shrines, ancestral figures,
stools used in initiation to cults, the apparatus used in divinations,
dance staffs, musical instruments, and a variety of other ritual para
phernalia.
27
In African societies with centralized governments, art often served
the purpose of enhancing and maintaining the status of the rulers.
Stools, swords, staffs, sceptors, state umbrellas, royal drums, crowns
and other regalia were insignia of the King's status, and his palace
might be distinguished by special architectural features or forms of
decoration (Bascom, 1973).
African art is today widely acclaimed in its own right, and it will
undoubtedly come to be recognized as one of the great contributions to
the cultural heritage of mankind. Even though some art was reserved to
a favored few, artistic expression was a vital part of the lives of
everyone. In making the humblest or most utilitarian of articles, such
as a hoe, an axe, a woman's comb, or a cooking utensil, the greatest
pride and enjoyment was obtained from shaping it with care and beauti
fying it with some kind of decoration.
The Slave Trade. It was from this background that the African was
wrested and taken to a new land— a land with an entirely foreign culture,
a foreign religion, foreign customs and laws. The Afro-American slave
drew on his heritage to acculturate himself in America. With this in
heritance from Africa, his skills, his approach to art and craft, and
above all, with his intelligent adaptability, he managed both to survive
and to grow, in spite of the stultifying handicaps of slavery. Thus he
was able to contribute his own particular gifts to this new land he was
to call his own.
It is difficult to calculate the loss in lives exacted by the slave
trade. All figures are estimates, but it has been said that about one
third of the Negroes taken from their homes died on the way to the coast
28
and at embarkation stations, and that another third died crossing the
ocean and in the seasoning, so that only one third finally survived to
become the laborers and colonizers of the New World (Tannenbaum, 1946).
Mutinies and suicides were common on slave ships (see Figures 7, 8, 9
and 10) and the brutal treatment and restrictions on the movements of
the slaves tended to increase their mortality (Williams, 1961; Kohn,
1971).
The Blacks who miraculously managed to survive the middle passage
were deposited on the plantations and there they started without the
integrating benefits of their indigenous cultures, for they were either
distributed without regard for their origins or according to the old
principle of divide and rule.
The newly captured slave underwent a series of dehumanizing exper
iences and the total impact was immense and bewildering on those who
survived. The shocks neutralized the system of values and patterns of
culture from which these slaves had taken their identity as Africans.
Suddenly he found himself in a foreign environment, in psychological
limbo (Chace, Collier, 1970).
For example, the concept of a Yoruba captive from Dahomey, would
be that "the universe is ruled by fate and the destiny of each man worked
out according to a predetermined scheme." He would also conceptualize
that there were ways of escape through invoking the good will of the god.
After his enslavement, he began to be reshaped by a philosophy that
attributed all glory to the mind of man. What was the result? When the
concept of "deification of accident in a universe where predetermination
is the rule" is thrown against the concept of a world where all things
29
are explainable and the result of rational processes," something emerges
that must contain both ideas. Not immediately, but gradually. It is
absurd to assume that all traces of Africa were erased from the Negroes'
mind because he learned English. One need only to consider the nature
of the English that Black's spoke (Jones, 1963).
African Survivals in Afro-American Culture. The linguist J.L.
Dillard (1973) postulates that Negro Non-Standard English is different
in grammar (in syntax) from the Standard American English of the main
stream white culture. Like the West Indian varieties, American Black
English can be traced to a creolized version of English based upon a
pidgin spoken by slaves and probably came from the West Coast of Africa.
I feel that Dillard's observation is worthy of serious considera
tion in view of the discoveries made by the linguist, Lorenzo Turner of
Fisk University. Turner found in the vocabulary of the Negroes inr"
coastal South Carolina and Georgia approximately four thousand West
African words, besides many survivals in syntax, inflections, sounds and
intonation. He recorded in Georgia a few songs in the words of which
are entirely African. In some songs both African and English words ap
pear. This is true also of many folk-tales. There are many compound
words one part of which is African and the other English. Sometimes
whole African phrases appear in Gullah without change either of meaning
or of pronunciation. Frequently African phrases were translated into
English (Turner, 1949).
Writing in Blues People, 1961, LeRoi Jones says that African speech,
African customs, and African music all changed by the American experience
into a native American form. They changed, yes. But the Africanisms
30
remained. Joi goes on to point out that for example the popular Black
expression "be cool," is a literal translation into English of an Ashanti
(Twi dialect) phrase meaning "to calm a person." The expression would
be "cool he heart give him."
It is extremely important in a "study" of any aspect of the history
of the American Negro to emphasize how strange and unnatural the initial
contacts with Western slavery were for the African, in order to show how
the Black man was set apart throughout the New World from the start.
This should enable one to begin to appreciate the amazing, albeit agoniz
ing, transformation that produced the contemporary Black American from
such a people as were first bound and brought to this country (Chase,
1971).
Acculturation. The most remarkable aspect of the whole process of
enslavement is the extent to which the American-born slaves is the ex
tent to which the American-born slaves were able to retain their ances
tor's culture. The American slave was able to retain many African cul
tural elements and an emotional contact with his motherland. This
contact, however tenuous, enabled the slave to link European and African
forms to create a distinctive culture (Blassingame, 1972).
When they left Africa the Negroes carried with them a knowledge of
their own complex cultures. These surviving Africanisms were as stated
earlier in this study, evident in their dances, their music, their folk
lore, and in their religion as well as their speech.
Field-hands living on large plantations in isolated areas, such as
the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands, doubtless preserved more
Africanisms than slaves who were widely dispersed in relatively small
31
holdings or who lived in their master's houses as domestics (Stampp,
1956).
Retention of African cultural elements depended on other factors
also. For example, urbanized Northern slaves were imported in small
numbers, usually from the West Indies rather than directly from Africa.
Thus, they were already somewhat accustomed to a European way of life,
or "seasoned," as it was called. Representing many different tribal
groups, and working either alone or with one or two others, the Africans
became more quickly "acculturated," or accustomed to American life,
than did most slaves in the South, where there was more opportunity to
continue African customs (Chase, 1971).
The similarities between many European and African cultural elements
enabled the slave to continue to engage in many traditional activities
or to create a synthesis of European and African cultures. In the pro
cess of acculturation the slaves made European forms serve African
functions (Blassingame, 1972).
The very nature of slavery in America dictated the way in which
African culture could be adapted. Thus a Dahomey River god ceremony
had no chance of survival in this country at all unless it was incorpor
ated into an analogous rite that was present in the new culture— which
is what happened. The Christians of the New World called it baptism
(Jones, 1963).
In many areas, of course, the master tried to prevent the retention
of those African cultural forms which he felt were dangerous to his
existence. However, the Black man's cultural formal differed from those
of the White master and the more they were immune from the control of
32
whites, the more the slave gained in personal autonomy and positive
self-concepts (Blassingame, 1972).
It is interesting to note that often, the white masters themselves
absorbed more Africanisms than they themselves realized. An interesting
example of this came to light in Augusta, Georgia. There it was found,
with the help of anthropologists and linguists on three continents, that
several generations of white people had preserved, orally, a song in
pure African tongue! Sung originally by an African princess who had
become a slave nurse called Tina, it had been crooned to generation
after generation of white babies, yet "Tina's Lullabye" had survived the
years in perfectly intelligible, translatable form! It was the same
language spoken today by the African tribe from which Tina had come so
many years before. Yet to the white people who preserved it, it was a
meaningless rhyme (Chase, 1971).
Slave Culture. During the ante-bellum period, a distinctive slave
culture began to emerge. It combined the slaves' vague memories of an
African past with the ethos which the white man constantly imposed.
Many of the institutions and folkways that resulted from this synthesis
developed during this period.
The most important enemy of African cultural tradition was racism.
Artistic autonomy implies social autonomy. The suppression of all cus
toms which did not conform to the dominance of the Westerner was more
vigorously prosecuted in the British colonies than elsewhere in the New
World. Here the rationale was the notion of inherent superiority over
"dark peoples" (Thompson, 1969).
33
Some apologists for slavery insist that slavery in the South was
primarily a matter of economics. There was more to the South's defense
of slavery than economics; there was also race. All the profits of all
the plantations cannot explain the tenacity, the passion, with which the
little people of the South— the majority of the people who held no
slaves— rallied to the defense of the slave system. Their stake in
slavery is found in that institution's undoubted ability to prevent
Black domination and to provide psychological status where there was no
other. For few Southerners hated Blacks so much as those whose economic
position was almost indistinguishable from that of the slaves. Even
non-slaveholders who happened to abhor the institution for moral or
economic reasons were often silenced by slavery's undoubted ability to
control Blacks (Degler, 1959).
Oppressive and dehumanizing as the plantation was, it was not severe
enough to crush all of the slaves' creative instincts. Such an environ
ment was hardly conducive to any serious pursuits of artistic creation.
And indeed such an environment was not suitable for encouraging the sur
vival of Africanisms. But survive, they did. The suppression of the
more public African influences, such as religious ritual and the use of
subsaharan costume, did not still the voice of more intimate expressions.
Present to this day are African-influenced verbal arts .(Aunt Nancy
tales), healing (conjuring), cuisine (soul food), singing (field hollers
and work songs), and dance forms in considerable quantity (Thompson,
1969).
Slave crafts. The earliest recorded slave craftsmen were in Vir
ginia, in 1949, where one planter had forty Black helpers whom he
34
instructed in spinning, weaving and shoemaking. By the eighteenth cen
tury, the Black artisan figured in the economy of every province in
colonial America, with the largest concentration in the Middle Atlantic
cities (Franklin, 1969; Porter, 1969).
One can assume that it did not take the slavemasters long to disco
ver that many of the enslaved Africans were skilled craftsmen who could
be used more profitably turning out material goods than laboring in the
fields. Some slaves were encouraged to supply the growing varieties
of needs in ways that added aesthetic satisfaction to utility. Some
thereby found opportunities to pass into the rising group of free Black
artisans (Dover, 1960).
In assessing the work of these Black artisans, it is necessary to
have knowledge of African counterparts to recognize African influences.
There are few objects made by Afro-American slaves that can easily be
seen by anyone as carryovers from African culture, because we are not
apt to find any art form in this country identical to ones found in
Africa. Most of the early visual arts in America were intended for
Caucasian use, and the slave-craftsmen had to conform to European tastes
and ideas. No American slaveholder wanted to have his mantle carved
with stylized symbolic designs reflecting African concepts. He was
homesick for reminders of his mother country. Thus, the styles employed
were generally reflections of European ones— mansard roofs and Paladian
or Greek revival facades. Mantels and doorways were decorated with
figures from Greek mythology, or other neoclassical motifs (Chase, 1971).
Some examples of Africanisms may be found, however, in those arti
cles made for personal use by the slaves themselves. Often these were
35
strictly utilitarian in character and merely followed the shapes, mater
ials, and techniques of the mother country. But occasionally an object
was deocrated or embellished in some way that was reminiscent of Africa.
Among the utilitarian items were agricultural and domestic tools and
utensils— rice fanners, weaving shuttles, rice scoops, hoes, rakes,
articles of clothing, quilts, etc (Figures 15, 19, 20 and 27). Decora
tive objects included small articles whittled for amusement or as gifts
— for instance, pipes, canes, or musical instruments (Thompson, 1969)
(Figure 13).
The slave did find various small ways to preserve remnants of his
African past, in spite of the fact that African motifs were superseded
by European designs. The Afro-American slave's contribution to the
visual arts in America came through his expert skills, and his familiar
ity with a variety of techniques. These skills, brought with him from
his African homeland, were put to use from the very beginning.
Craftsmanship offered the Negro slave both a means of earning his
freedom and a way of supporting himself afterwards. The usual way for
a slave to earn his freedom was to persuade his owner to allow him to
"hire his own time." Whatever was earned over and above the payment
required by the owner could be credited to purchasing freedom. Since
the craftsman was in particular demand as a hireling, he held an advan
tageous position. Craftsmanship could lead to self-hire, and self-hire
was often a steppingstone to self-purchase (Chase, 1971).
Sometimes self-hire also aided a slave in making a dash for freedom.
Robert Smalls, a slave in Beaufort, South Carolina, first hired his own
time as a sail maker and rigger in Charleston, South Carolina. With
36
his skills as a harbor pilot, he seized The Planter, a confederate
steamer and with his family escaped from the Rebels and turned the boat
over to the Union Navy (Rose, 1964),
Whether slave or free, Blacks distinguished themselves in many
highly skilled crafts and trades. African skills were taught under an
apprentice system. The new African was apprenticed to an earlier arri
val, who was already seasoned but who still recalled enough of his
African language to understand the newcomer. He served as interpreter
and helped to accustom the new African to the strange way of life in
America. By careful selection, the new African could be assigned work
with which he was already familiar; under the tutelage of the "country-
born," he could apply his African skills to needs in this country. By
preserving his techniques and pride of craftsmanship, the Afro-American
was laying the groundwork for future contributions to American art and
crafts (Chase, 1971).
Many plantations had their slave carpenters, masons, and mechanics.
Slave owners realized the wisdom of training their slaves in the trades,
for their earning power would be greatly enhanced, and if the slave was
ever offered for sale, he would perhaps bring twice as much as a field
hand of a similar age would bring. Only the most demagogic of the
Negrophobes contended that it was not possible to train Negroes in
artisanry. There were too many counter-examples that belied such a
contention. No state and few communities were without highly skilled
Negro slaves (Franklin, 1964).
There are only limited reports and records available to provide in
formation on the Black pioneer artists. We can only conjecture as to
' 37
how many more there must have been whose works are unknown. The follow
ing information from a newspaper advertisement in the Boston News-Letter
is typical of the scanty information one finds about Black artists of
the colonial period:
Negro artist: At McLean's Watch-Maker, near Town- Hall, is a Negro man whose extraordinary genius has been assisted by one of the best masters in London; he takes faces at the lowest rates. Specimens of his performance may be seen at said place (Bearden & Henderson, 1972).
This article raises some interesting questions. What was the name
of this extraordinary genius? How did he manage to obtain an art educa
tion in London? What became of him? Where are his paintings now?
Probably we will never know.
38
Map 1. Pre-Colonial Africa. This map of pre-colonial Africa clearly shows hdv cultural ideas from other continents were funneled via caravan routes towards the great Black kingdoms on the west coast. Some were brought to east-coast ports from China, India, and Indonesia, and then across the northern or southern Savannas; others crossed the Mediterranean from north or east before following the trade routes south across the Sahara.
Dotted lines represent trade routes. The numbers indicate the four principal caravan routes across the Sahara, as follows:(1) Taodenia Trail, (2) Gadames Trail, (3) Bilma Trail, (4)Selima Trail. (Chase, 1971)
*.•1-19t
NDONGO
39
Figure 1. Egyptian wall painting from the Tomb of Huy, Viceroy of Nubia, about. 1355 B.C. Represents a delegation of Nubians presenting tribute to Pharoah. Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
ii ifc-rfi ii imMwaj 41~ V • - ' c— ‘ - . -
h M ta
v
Figure 2
Figure 3
AO
Terra-cotta Head, Nok Culture (900 B.C. - 200 A.D.)
Bronze Head, Ancient Ife-Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. The holes around the mouth and hairline were either for ritual bead pendants or for human or animal hair.
41
Figure 4
Figure 5
Terra-cotta Head, Nok Culture (900 B.C. - 200 A.D.). Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.
Bronze portrait Head, Ancient Ife (960 - 1160 A.D.). Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria. Executed by the lost wax process.
• The longitudinal lines may indicate facial sacrifications.
42
Figure b. Bronze tusk holder, Benin 17th Century. The Museum of Primitive Art, New York City. In African sculpture the head is often judged more important than the body. It is considered the seat of intelligence, will, self-identity, and existence itself (Jahn, 1961; Leizinger, 1967; Griaule, 1950; Frazer,
. 1982).
Figure 7. Hale Woodruff, The Mutiny Aboard the Amistad, 1839. Panel One. Savary Library of Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama, 1939.
Figure 8. Amistad Mural, Panel Two (1st half). The Amistad Slaves on Trial_in_New_Haven.1840. Savary Library of Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama! .>
Figure 10. Amistad Mural, Panel Three. The_ Return to Africa, 1842. Savary Library u Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama.
47
Figure 11. Notice posted for a sale of slaves to be held aboard ship off Charleston, South Carolina. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
'“pO BE SOLD, on board tbc ] Ship Bance- Jfland on tuefday the 6th
o f May next, at Jjhley-Ferry * a choice c.irgo of about 250 fine healthyJ, NEGROES,
ju ft arrived from rhe Windward & RiceCoaft.— The utmoit care has
wl- -TTn—already been taken, and ____ _fliall be continued, to keep them free from th*e Icaft* danger of being infedted with the S M A L L -F O X , no boat having been on board, and all other communication w ith people from CkarUs-Toivn prevented. •
Aufiin^ Laurens, & dpplcby.FuM one H a lf o f the above Negroes have had the
SM A L L -F O X in their own Country.
48
Figure 12. Blue and Grey Striped Dress (19th Century). Index of American Design, Washington, D.C.
Figure 13. Drawing of an African instrument discovered by BenjaminLatrobe in New Orleans, Congo Square, 1819. From the papers of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, Vol. IV, February 16, 1819 - February 26, 1819, p. 32. Collection: Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore.
Aj£Ll
f &
AAAA
' L 1 <1
50
Figure 14. Hand-carved woodshuttle, made by an Afro-American slave. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
51
Figure 15. Peter Alston, employee of the Old Slave Mart Museum with a slave-made rice scoop and rake. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
52
Figure 16. Slave made, Captain's chair with claw hand-grips. Collection: Paul B. Fuller, Montgomery, Alabama.
53
Figure 17. Walnut ottoman made by slaves in the plantation cabinet-shop of Ephram Clayton (1804-1892). Collection: Julia A. Clayton, West Ashville, North Carolina.
55
Figui'e 19. Plasterwork from the stairway of the Dock Street Theatre, Charleston, South Carolina (ca. 18U2).
»* 1*' A A
56
Figure 20. Hedge clippers made by a slave blacksmith at Fenwick Hall, John's Island, South Carolina.
Figure 21. A heavy garden tool that is a cross between a hoe and apitchfork. Both items, Collection: Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
57
Figure 2?.. Marble-topped wash stand. Made by a slave cabinetmaker(1848). Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
Figure 23. Walnut sleigh bed made by slave cabinetmaker, and a slave-made quilt. Georgia Historical Commission.
58
Figure 24. Slave-made plantation rocker, with a woven corn shuck seat. Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
CHAPTER III
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Black involvement in the visual arts can be traced back to Africa
where art flourished long before Africans were enslaved and shipped to
this country. When European explorers invaded Africa during the last
half of the fifteenth century they wrote in their diaries about the
excellent craftsmanship among the Africans. Some Europeans took speci-
ments of this native artistry back with them to Europe as souvenirs and
good luck charms. It was from the ranks of these African craftsmen
that the first Black slaves were to come to Colonial America (Driskell,
1976; Fine, 1973).
In many civilizations where oral, written, or visual history has
recorded man's ways of making art, the form called crafts has preceded
those of fine arts. Such a pattern of creative development held true
among people of African ancestry in the United States.
An apprenticeship in the crafts often served to prepare talent in
painting, drawing, or sculpture, and skilled Black artisans traditionally
moved up the scale from journeyman to master craftsman, then entered a
particular area of the fine arts. This system lasted well into the
late nineteenth century (Chase, 1971).
As previously stated, slavemasters deliberately sought to eliminate
any form of African culture that might have contributed to group
59
60
communication. Much of African art was either destroyed or condemned
as pagan or sinful. This severance of ties with Africa meant a losst
not only of some traditional forms but of the status accorded the crafts
man in various African societies where art was vital to community life.
In America there was no longer a need for the services of the skilled
carver whose position in Africa had called for the making of musical
instruments, ceremonial masks, and other sculptural works essential to
art, dance, and music. Trained carpenters might have decorated architec
tural interiors for their owners, but this was not accorded the same
honor as creating a mask for the village chief.
As the prosperity of the developing White American middle class
increased, they became more and more dependent on craftsmen of African
ancestry to enhance the quality of post-colonial life and, though many
buildings in the south were built entirely by slave carpenters, not
surprisingly the slaves received little or no credit. In fact, there
are few written accounts in which slaveraasters permitted their slaves
to be identified by name, although the refinement and quality of slave-
work was frequently stressed (Lewis, 1978).
Much of the information about the Black artisan from colonial times
to 'the end of the nineteenth century has come to us through newspaper
announcements of slave sales. Press accounts from as early as 1740
announcing the sale of slaves in Charleston, South Carolina provide
evidence of Blacks working as silversmiths when America was still a
British colony. There were so many Blacks in this and other trades that
whites often found themselves at a disadvantage. In 1755 the Provincial
Legislature of South Carolina was petitioned to pass a law that would
61
prevent the acceptance of Black craftsmen into trades where Blacks al
ready outnumbered whites (Chase, 1971; Franklin 1969).
Black furniture makers (Figures 63, 65 and 66) were the master
craftsmen among carpenters. Their shops coi,! be found in small inland
towns and in every principal city along the East Coast. These artisans
counted on the patronage of wealthy men of means, to support their pro
sperous businesses.
In the early years of the Republic, the system of slavery, especi
ally the domestic and rural form, forced rapid assimilation on the newly
arrived African. The plantation created a social system all its own.
Both isolation and intimate contact with the master’s family compelled
American Blacks to adopt the white man’s language, religion, and values,
though not without modification. Furthermore, the white man's blood was
often forcibly mingled with that of Blacks, producing children of mixed
(offspring) origin. These offspring, who frequently served as "house
niggers," became the elite of Black plantation society and scorned the
boisterous common fieldhands (Franklin, 1969).
Imitating their masters' conservative standards and restrained
manners, the domestic servants wanted to be as white as the people with
whom they identified. The middle rank of slaves included the artisans,
the cooks, and the gardener, who "knew their place" and enjoyed special
privileges. It was not from those groups but from the fieldhands that
the Black Folk Arts emerged. Enforced segregation helped to strengthen
and enrich the Blacks' expressive style.
62
Urban Craftsmen
Most of the skilled Black craftsmen, both slave and free, were to
be found in the cities. Information on them is rather meager. Much of
it is statistical, obtained from city directories (see Table 2), adver
tisements, or tax records. From these we can learn how many Blacks were
employed in a given trade and gain some idea of the wide variety of their
vocations. Unfortunately, in most cases, the Black craftsman worked
anonymously for the most part and public records give us only scant in
formation about specific artisans and their work. The records in South
Carolina show that the majority of the white artisans owned Black slaves
and greatly valued their skills as assistant craftsmen (Franklin, 1969;
Driskell, 1976). An astute slave owner was unlikely to put a Black to
the plow if it were learned through an interpreter that he already had
extensive experience as a blacksmith. The returns on a trained crafts
man were too high to waste such a man in the fields.
Plantation Craftsmen
In contrast to the material on urban craftsmen, there is a wealth
of information available on plantation craftsmen. Most of the largest
slave-holders left journals, diaries, or private letters describing life
on their estates and these provide firsthand information. The works of
slave craftsmen, both men and women, still exists. Many of the crafts
men are remembered by name or were known personally by the present owners
of their work (Figures 22, 23, 24, 57, 58, 59 and 60).
There were even slave inventors. In 1835 and 1836 one Henry Blair,
designated in the records as a "colored man" of Maryland, received
63
patents for two corn harvesters which he had developed. By 1858, however,
the Attorney-General ruled that since a slave was not a citizen, the
government could not enter into an agreement with him by granting him a
patent. It was not until after the Civil War that Blacks were able to
secure patents for their inventions without any difficulty (Franklin,
1964).
Often the talents of slave inventors and artisans were greeted with
a mixture of admiration and jealousy. And it was pride of craftsmanship,
as well as monetary rewards, which gave most carpenters, blacksmiths,
coopers, cobblers, and wheelwrights their incentive. The slave carpen
ters on a North Carolina plantation must have gained additional satis
faction from the knowledge that a white laborer had asked for permission
to work with them for the sake of instruction (Stampp, 1956).
Indeed the pride of the slave workman should be added to the complex
of major causes which promoted artistic craftsmanship amongst Blacks.
The Pioneer Artists— Free Blacks
Art in America during the colonial era developed slowly. During
this period all artistic efforts had to be adjusted to the needs of the
new land. The harships of pioneer life first had to be overcome in order
to produce the leisure and wealth necessary for art to flourish.
When the early Black artists began to develop in this country, most
of them, both Black and White, obtained their training in Europe with
the help of the anti-slavery society where many established their repu
tations before they were accepted by the provincial colonists. As more
artists began to set up their own studios where others could be trained,
64
American art began to develop its own distinct characteristics. It was
in this setting that we first distinguish one or two Black artists by
name.
But until such patrons as the abolitionist groups and the Freedmen's
Bureau entered the picture in the 19th Century, aspiring Black artists
had to depend on the enlightened attitudes of a few individuals. Even
the talented free Black was subject to all the legal restrictions, and
social ostracism of the slave system. During the colonial days the
Black artist was apt to be regarded as something of a curiousity; and
since the nineteenth-century provincialism tended to regard art as the
ultimate expression of a "civilized" people, it was looked upon as a
pretension for a Black to identify himself with the creative arts (Chase,
1971). Only limited reports and records are available to provide infor
mation on the Black pioneer artists and Blackfold artisans. We can
only conjure as to how many more there must have been whose works are
unknown.
Woodcarving
Georgia Woodcarving; The Coastal Area. The coast of Georgia has
rich sculptural tradition in Afro-American folk art. The demographics
of the region tilt in favor of the Black population, and the marshy
geography provides isolation from the mainland— two basic factors that
encourage the survival of Black culture in this area (Georgia Writers
Project, 1940).
There were several classes of work in which a carver's talents
might be displayed. Some made walking sticks (Figures 30, 31, 33),
65
while others carved human figures (Figures 39 and 41) or animal forms
(Figure 38). Whittling skills could be used to fashion useful tools
like forks and spoons, or whimsical objects— such as chains or balls,
-in-cages from a single block of wood. In each instance African antece
dents can be suggested (Vlach, 1979; Thompson, 1969).
Walking sticks represent perhaps the most sophisticated sculptural
form in the Georgia tradition. Afro-American artisans favored reptile
motifs— snakes, lizards, turtles, and alligators. These motifs represent
strong retention of African culture. Stylistically, the smooth lustrous
surfaces, the use of diverse media, and the iconic renderings character
ize this carving tradition, traits of which also occur in other forms
of Afro-Georgian wood sculpture (Perry, 1976).
Georgia Woodcarving; Inland Areas. The Georgia carving tradition
was not confined to the coastal areas. As Blacks moved on to new regions
their talents went with them. During the nineteenth century, people
from the swampy marshlands first made their way to the outskirts of
Savannah, then turned inland (Wadsworth, 1976).
The movement of carving traditions is also indicated by the history
which surrounds a cane made by the grandfather of Harve Brown of Raytown,
a small settlement in the Georgia Piedmont. This thin cane is decorated
by a simple wooden head, crosshatching, and a snake that coils two times
around the bottom of the shaft (Figure 33).
The combination of human and reptile forms falls well within the
coastal tradition. Harve Brown, in fact, came from the coast in 1893 to
work on the farm belonging to the Gunn family. Since he claimed that
the cane was carved by his grandfather, we can safely project the date
66
of its creation to fall between 1840 and 1880. Even if it was made in
the latter portion of the nineteenth century, it is still the oldest
cane by a Black carver known in Georgia. If it was made before 1860,
it is the oldest cane by a Black carver known anywhere in the United
States. Harve Brown carried this cane with him because it was an import
ant momento belonging to an ancestor. Most probably the cane was not
used to help an infirm person walk, for it is too thin to take much
stress. Rather it was more of a piece of costume, a prop to show off or
to carry when a bit of pomp was called for. In this walking stick we
have evidence of both the diffusion and sustained appreciation of artis
tic carvings— themes which are important for understanding woodcarving
as it appears elsewhere in Afro-America (Vlach, 1979; Thompson, 1969).
Woodcarving: Missouri. The greatest piece of Afro-American walking
stick sculpture was made in North-Central Missouri, in Livingston County,
over a thousand miles from the geographic center of the Black carving
tradition. It was here that Henry Gudgell, born a slave in Kentucky in
1826, made an extensively decorated cane for John Bryant in 1867 (Figure
37). Gudgell was known as a blacksmith, wheelwright, coppersmith, and
silversmith, and so it comes as no surprise that he was adept at sculp
ture as well. His walking stick can be separated into two sections by
differences in the selection of motifs. The upper portion has serpentine
fluting, raised bands, and diamond forms. These geometric motifs are
followed by a series of naturalistic figures (Porter, 1969; Chase, 1971;
Vlach, 1979; Driskell, 1976).
These naturalistic figures are described by Thompson:
67
At the top appear a lizard and a tortoise, both carved as if seen from above. The figure of a man appears below. He is dressed in a shirt, trousers, and shoes. His knees are bent and the arms are extended as if the figure was embracing the shaft 'of the cane. On the opposite side of the cane below the hands of the figure is a bent branch from which sprouts a single veined leaf. The fork of the branch mirrors the bending of the knees of the human figure. The lower register of the cane is embellished with an entwined serpent, an echo of the serpentine coil of the handle (Thompson, 1969, P. 135)
Gudgell*s work would appear to be the last development of a historical
sequence. His one known cane is the oldest dated example of an Afro-
American walking stick. The skill and expertise of Gudgell is quite
evident as are the strong African influences in his work. The whole
composition shimmers with a metallic gleam due to the care and precision
of his carving (Driskell, 1976). Not long after he made this cane, he
was sold twenty-two acres of land by his master and father, Spence Gud
gell. Was this transaction a recognition of talent? We can only wonder
(Driskell, 1976; Vlach, 1979).
Woodcarving: Northeastern Region. Most of the sculpture analyzed
to this point, particularly the walking sticks, is close to the center of
a Black woodcarving tradition. But there exists other works whose uni
queness removes them from the realm of folk sculpture, though they re
flect to some extent a distinct Afro-American aesthetic. Both European
and African values are blended in these pieces, but this is to be ex
pected. Sculpture made by Blacks in New Jersey and upstate New York
would hardly be expected to conform to the same canons of creativity
found in Georgia. Northern Afro-American sculpture has less Africanisms
than Southern Afro-American sculpture.
68
A slave remembered only as Job is said to have carved a figure of
a female Indian (Figure 41) for a tobacco shop, sometime around 1825
(Lipmann, Winchester, 1974). Vlach (1979) feels it would be more correct
to say that Job "built" an Indian. The head is carved as one piece.
The trunk of the body consists of another piece of wood. Each arm is
composed of two parts. The skirt is constructed of no less than thirteen
tightly fitted sections. It would seem that the talents of carver and
cabinetmaker have been happily united here. The figure is almost five
feet tall and is set in a rather casual posture. This asymmetrical pose
is quite common for the cigar store Indian genre, although it is out of
character with Afro-American sculpture (Klamkin, Klamkin, 1974). From
the shoulders upward Job's statue is symmetrical and rigid. It is as
if the head belonged to a different body. The head has an iconic inten
sity suggestive of a mask. Its powerful frontality does not fit the
casual gesture of the body and also does not conform to the general feel
ing of naturalism found in most cigar store Indians. The mixture of
attitudes in this piece suggests a retention by the carver of alternative
principals of design. Perhaps we have in this statue an example of the
cultural equation that describes the merger of two ethnic groups. It
product reflects both sources but is not quite like either. It may also
be significant that Job chose to make the head more like an African
sculpture rather than like the body. In African sculpture the head is
often judged more important than the body, and so may be greatly enlarged
(see Figure 6, Bronze Tusk Holder). The head is the seat of intelli
gence, will, self-identity, and existence itself (Jahn, 1961; Leuzinger,
1967; Griaule, 1950; Frazer, 1982). It is possible that Job carried
69
this belief to the task of making a trade sign for the local tobacconist
of Freehold.
A figure of a Black youth holding a bucket (Figure 39) (compare
with the Yoruba offering bowl, Figure 40) carved sometime about 1860 in
Fayetteville, New York, has also been attributed to a Black artisan.
The oral history that followed this piece as it passed from hand to hand
claims that a mill owner named Hiram Wood gave this statue as a birthday
gift to his daughter Martha, born 1842, telling her that it had been
made by one of his mill hands (Thompson, 1969). The identity of the
carver remains as yet unknown. It is thought that he was Black, for the
subject is handled with a sensitivity and dignity uncommon in nineteenth
centural portrayals of Blacks (Klamkin & Klamkin, 1976). Although a
European point of view is very strong in this statue, particularly with
respect to anatomical proportion and details of costume, the posture of
the figure suggest what has been called a "dim memory of traditional
African sculpture" (Folk Art in America; Exhibition Catalogue, 1974).
As a figure there is much about this piece that is Western; as an icon
there is much about it that suggests African cult sculpture. Whether
or not the maker was an Afro-American (and there were slaves in upstate
New York), the mixture of European content and African aesthetic priori
ties in this piece follows very much the same pattern seen in Job's
cigar store Indian; the attempted merger of Euro-American culture with
African culture— one refusing to yield completely to the other.
The visual evidence at hand suggests that the carver was not trying
to caricature the Afro-American, but was trying to bring out the
nobility in his presence for example. Thompson uses the following
system to identify the hand that carved this sculpture. He writes
The attribution is based on the fact that no trace of caricature or social distance, between maker and subject, can be detected. This is extremely rare for a century when the Afro-American as grotesque was all the rage in the lithographs of Currier and Ives and black-faced performers in minstrelsy parodied a world they never understood. The manly dignity of the image at hand is removed from the half-apologetic, half-ingratiating smiles of this other world. (Thompson, 1969, p. 55)
Table 1
71
The following partial l.ist from the Census of Free Colored People in the Charleston, South Carolina, Directory of 1856 gives us a glimpseof the variety of trades practiced by them.
50 tailors 6 blacksmiths 1 molder6 wheelwrights 2 cabinetmakers 1 tinsmith65 carpenters 4 dressmakers or 1 sawyer9 mantuamakers seamstresses 1 ship's carpenter2 coopers 9 millwrights 3 mattressmakers9 bricklayers 6 painters 1 jeweler11 shoemakers 1 pumpmaker 1 silversmith1 wharfbuilder 2 shipwrights 1 grist-miller1 dancing master 2 locksmiths 2 cotton-menders1 saddler 4 bootmakers 1 carpenter and1 finisher 1 musician (leader
of the Cadet Band)coffin-maker
72
Figure
Figure
25. Right: Carving made by a slave in Missouri. The head has a strong resemblance to portraits of George Washington.Note that it has no arms. Collection: Index of American Design, Washington, D.C.
26. Left: Armless Akuaba, or Ashanti fertility doll. Most of these dolls have vestigial arms, but armlessness per se is not in itself unusual in African figures. Collection: Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina (Chase, 1971).
73
Figure 27. Left: Detail, Afro-American walking stick (19th Century). Collection: William Bascom, Berkeley, California.
Figure 28. Right: Lizard carved on Dan wooden effigy. Liberia (Williams, 1971). Compare the stylistic reptillian motifs present in both the Afro-American and African artifacts.
Figure 29. Top: Walking stick head (magnolia).
Figure 30. Bottom: Detail of walking stick. Collection: The John W. Stipe Family, Dixie, Georgia.
Figure 31 Figure 32
Figure 33
. Top: Walking stick (ca. 1850-1860).
. Middle: Detail of walking stick (hickory). Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston,South Carolina. Ln
. Bottom: Walking stick. Orandfather of Harve Brown (1850-1860). Taliafero County, Raytown, Oeorgia.
76
Figure 34. Top: Carved wooden lizard on Yoruba door, Nigeria (Williams, 1971).
Figure 35. Middle: Carved wooden headrest on Senufo sculpture, Ivory Coast/Mali/Upper Volta (Williams, 1971).
Figure 36. Bottom: Scraped lizard design on calabash lid, Dahomey(Williams, 1971). African and Afro-American carvers share these preoccupations with reptillian motifs on their artifacts.
t
I
Figure 37, Hardwood stick by Henry Gudgell of Missouri (1863)• Index of American Design, Washington, D.C.
78
Figure 38. The Hen. Made of fitted cypress wood. Carved by a slave of the pirate Jean LaFitte. Index of American Design, Washington, D.C. An example of a slave-made, children's toy.
79
Figure 39. Wood carving of a youth by an anonymous slave artisan (ca.1850). Abby Aldrich Rockeffeller Folk Art Center, Williams- bury;, Virginia.
80
Figure 40. Yoruba offering bowl. Ladislas Segy Collection, New York City. (Compare the stylistic parallel of this sculpture to Figure 39, the Youth Carving).
81
Figure 41. Cigar-store Indian, said to have been carved by a slave named Job, in Freehold, New Jersey (ca. 1825). New York Historical Society.
82
Figure 42. Two Black Figures. Wood and mixed media (ca. 1880).Collection: Michael and Julie Hall, Hamilton, Ohio.
83
Basketmaking
On the American plantations, basketry was preserved in purer form
than most"other crafts. Shapes, uses, and technique of manufacture were
similar to those of Africa. Adults taught this art to children exactly
as it had been taught to them, so that the method continued without
interruption. Coil basketry has survived in South Carolina almost un
changed and was perpetuated by the same apprentice system as in Africa.
The materials used were the same as those used in Africa. Both are made
of wild grass found on the edge of the marsh, and bound with strips of
palm or its South Carolina relative, the palmetto. Herskovitz mentions
in Myth of the Negro Past (1958) that the Sea Island basket-making
techniques are also African in what he calls "motor habits" or the phy
sical way of doing things. Both the African and the South Carolina
baskets are laid on in a clockwise direction (Chase, 1971).
The coiled grass basket is known all across the continent of Africa,
and although a similar technology is also found among Euro- and Native
Americans, the relationship between African and Afro-American examples
is particularly striking. A unity of appearance links Black craftsmen
from both sides of the Atlantic for example, compare the rice fanner
basket from Senegal (Figure 51) with the rice fanner basket (Figure 52)
from South Carolina (Davis, 1976).
The oldest Afro-American basket types were simple forms. The
fanner (Figure 52) was very wide with a shallow splayed edge. Storage
baskets also had the same wide, flat base, but the side walls were built
up much higher, sometimes as much as a foot (Chase, 1971). While the
sides of storage baskets tended to be more vertical than the edges of
84
the fanners, the two basket forms are so similar they can be considered
as one type of the Afro-American coiled basket: the agricultural tool.
Since rice fanners and storage and carrying baskets were intended to be
used primarily for practical ends, they had to be made with the stur
diest fibers available. These "old time" Afro-American baskets were
thus, both in form and content, functional items; they were, moreover,
men's baskets (Crum, 1940; Perdue, 1968; Vlach, 1979; and Davis, 1977).
85
Figure 43. Sweetgrass growing in wooded area in Charleston County,South Carolina (Yoder, 1976). Both African and Afro-American baskets are made from wild grass and bound with strips of palm or palmetto.
86
Figure 44. Sweetgrass approximately 16" to 18" in length (Yodern, 1976).This wild grass is similar to the grass that grows in the marsh regions of West Africa.
fTt
88
Figure 4b. Sewing of coils. The "stitch" alternates a wrapping stitch (around the coil being worked) with a sewing stitch (Yoder, 147b).
’ V' , < Vi i W i '
Figure 50* Food storage basket, Senegambia (grass, palm leaves). Collection: Indiana University Museum, Bloomington, Indiana. to
93
Figure 51. Rice fanner basket, Senegal (grass, palm leaves). Collection: Indiana University Museum, Bloomington, Indiana. (Rice fanner baskets are to be found throughout the continent of Africa. They are particularly common among the peoples of Angola, the ancestors of many Black Americans.)
94
Figure 52. Rice fanner basket (rush, split oak, ca. 1850). SouthCarolina, Low Country, between Charleston and Georgetown. Collection: The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.
95
Figure 53. Freed slaves near Beaufort, South Carolina, harvesting sweet potatoes, ca. 1865. Note the large coil basket in the lower right corner. Photograph, Collection of The New York Historical Society, New York City.
97
Cab ine tmaking
It is difficult to tell exactly how many slaves practiced the art
of cabinetmaking, inasmuch as the owners were taxed according to their
slaves’ particular trades. It is thought that many of them were listed
as ’’carpenters," in order to avoid the higher tax required for "cabinet
makers." For instance, the 1864 inventory of Dr. Robert Harllee lists
116 slaves on his extensive plantation, Melrose, at Mars Bluff, South
Carolina. Two of these were called "carpenters," but they were highly
skilled craftsmen who made many of Melrose's beautiful pieces of furni
ture, which are still treasured by Harllee's grandchildren. One of
these items was originally a built-in cupboard or china cabinet so large
it had to be cut in half in order to remove it from the house (Figure
58). Beautifully made of pine grown on the plantation, it is a piece
to be proud of, and certainly the maker was not a mere carpenter. Dr.
Harllee's slaves also made tables, corner cabinets, bureaus, and wash-
stands (Chase, 1971).
As was typical of American design during the period, the examples
of slave cabinetmaking were simpler than their European prototypes,
though they did call for some embellishments that had to be laboriously
handcarved into the wood. Some of the furniture made on the plantation
is so plain as to seem stark in its simplicity. Yet, simple though it
may be, it is undeniably beautiful. Tunis (1965) speculates that these
slave-made pieces had proportions and precise shaping of visible parts
like moldings and legs, and they they also had a perfect fitting of in
visible joinings and the use of the right kind of joint for each purpose..
These slave-made pieces no doubt benefitted from the African's propensity
98
to retain beauty through balance and proportion and interacting tensions
while reducing his design to its ultimate simplicity.
An example of this is the desk made by a slave on The Elms Planta
tion near Millbrook, Alabama (Figure 55). It is a type often used in
plantation offices by the master. In the office, the master, if he
were a conscientious planter and not an absentee owner or a dilettante,
worked over the plantation accounts and record books, all laboriously
kept in longhand. It was a business office in every sense of the word,
and its furniture was utilitarian. Nevertheless, even such pieces are
quite beautiful (Vlach, 1976; Prine, 1929; Chase, 1971).
Many plantations, while not maintaining an actual cabinetship, had
slaves who built whatever was needed. Such items might include a built-
in china closet for the butler’s pantry or a large built-in bookcase or
cupboard. When Dr. Harllee's daughter, Louisa, was married, he had his
slaves build her a washstand as a wedding present (Figure 22). On the
grounds of the estate, Dr. Harllee and his slave cabinetmaker chose the
walnut tree from which it was made. Similarly, when Samuel MacDonald
Carter of Carter's Quarters, in northern Georgia, wanted a couch on
which to take his afternoon naps, he insisted on selecting the particu
lar tree from which his slave carpenter made an exceptionally lovely
sleigh bed (Figure 23). It is single-bed width and was furnished with
rope "springs" and a feather bed mattress. This bed was in use until
about 1961, when Carter's granddaughter, Mrs. Crowell, donated it to
the Georgia Historical Society. According to Mrs. Crowell there were
several slave cabinetmakers at Carter's Quarters, under the direction
of an older slave who was a master of the craft. They made many pieces
99
of furniture still cherished by Mrs. Crowell, including a heavy walnut
lamp table and a walnut chest of drawers (Chase, 1971).
1 0 0
Figure 55. Slave-made desk and chair from The Elms Plantation near Millbrook, Alabama. Collection: Mrs. Alma Hall Pate.
1 0 1
Figure 56. Four-poster bed made by slaves of Waco, Texas (1840).Collection: Baylor University, Waco, Texas. A fine example of the artisanry of slaves from the Southwestern region of the United States.
1 0 2
Figure 57. Slave-made pine bureau with beaded mirror to match. Melrose Plantation (ca. 1807-1872).
> 103
Figure 58. China cabinet. Once a built-in cupboard, it was cut in half. The door has been reversed; the lack of a cornice on the upper right-hand corner shows where the division was made (Chase, 1971).
104
Figure 5y. Secretary from the .lanes Hurt Shorter Plantation at Summerville, Alabana (ca. 1850).
105
Figure 60. Pine side table with mahogany knobs on the drawers.made with pegs. Melrose Plantation (ca. 1807-1872).
Joins
Thomas Day (? - 1861)
Thomas Day was an exceptional Black furnituremaker of Milton,
North Carolina, He was quite well known throughout the state of North
Carolina for both the quantity and quality of his production.
Even though Day had no apparent knowledge of African forms he did
implement an improvisational aesthetic system that has much in common
with African art (Vlach, 1979; Barfield, 1975).
Day employed a white journeyman for years and was one of the best
antebellum craftsmen. His furniture, which as "bespoke" by the richest
clientele, was much sought after, even outside his own state (Fine,
1972).
Thomas Day was born a free Black, in the West Indies during the
late eighteenth century and educated in Washington and Boston. Records
show that Day's workshop was operating as early as 1818. Day found many
wealthy customers, including the governor of North Carolina and a judge
whose descendants still own a mahogany table signed by the craftsman.
Dated 1820, it is Day's earliest known piece. With the price of maho
gany rising in the Pre-Civil War economy, Thomas Day's business failed
in 1858. He died soon after (Fine, 1972; Lewis, 1978).
107
Figure 61. Advertisement in the Milton Gazette and Roanoke. March 1, 1827.
THOMAS DAY,CA B I K E T M A K E H,KF. TURNS tiis thanks tor the patronage
lie has received, and wishes to intoim his friends and the public that lie haa on
band* and intends keeping, a handsome sup ply ofMahogony, Walnut and Stain
ed FURMITUHE,the mo«*t fashionable and common BED $ I £ \ I)S, &c. u liicli he would be glad to sell very low All orders in his line, in Repair, ing. Varnishing, &c will be thankfully re. ceivrd and punctuallo attended to.
Jan. 17. 38
1 0 8
Figure b2. Carved mantel. Thomas Day. Milton, North Carolina. Day implemented an improvisational aesthetic system that has a stylistic affinity with African art (Vlach, 1979; Harfield, 1975).
1 1 0
Figure 64. Newel post, Thomas Day, Located in Paschal House, Casx^ell County, North Carolina. Photograph collection of North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, North Carolina.
1 1 2
Figure 66. Pier Table, Thomas Day (ca. 1850). North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, North Carolina.
113
Quilt Making
Aside from weaving, another important task for women slaves was
making quilts. Quilting is a process of combining two or more fabrics
with many tiny stitches. They fall into two general groups— the "pieced
work" and the "patch-work," or "laid on." Quiltmakers argue hotly over
which is older, more difficult, or more beautiful. The striking dif
ference between the two is that in pieced work small scraps of cloth
are sewn together to form the patterned top. Whereas in patchwork the
design is appliqued on a solid cloth background (see Figures 71 and 72,
the quilts of Harriet Powers) (Webster, 1929).
An old saying says, "A patch is a sure sign of poverty." A person
might imagine a patchwork quilt to be made of leftover scraps patched
together helter-skelter and used for economy's sake. Such quilts were
made and were called crazy quilts, but were not introduced until the
late Victorian period. A patchwork quilt, on the other hand, had no
association with poverty. To make a patchwork quilt, the edges of tiny
"patches" of colored cloth were turned under and attached with minute
hemming stitches to the fabric that formed the background. This "appli
que," or "applied" work, is known to have been made by the early Egyp
tians and rose to a high art in Europe, where it was used on the banners
of the crusaders (Chase, 1971).
In a piecework quilt each integral part of the pattern is a sepa
rate piece of material joined to the next part by a running stitch that
makes a seam on the "wrong" side. Although these quilts were often
made of bits and pieces of discarded or worn-out clothes, they were
114
always carefully matched for color and design and sometimes specially
purchased fabrics were added to the scraps (Peto, 1949).
Quilting, a separate art, was born of a need to protect against
bitter cold and was used for garments and wall hangings. It was first
practiced in Europe by the peasantry, but later became a courtly art,
when the term "quilt" was also given to the stitched, wadded lining used
with body armor. In America usage has restricted the word so that now
it is applied only to a lightweight, closely stitched bedcover, usually
with an interlining of cotton or wool batting (Webster, 1929; Peto,
1949).
Many quilts made by Afro-Americans would seem to be examples of
cultural surrender. The quilt is, after all, a European textile form,
and quilted bed coverings are unknown and unnecessary in tropical Africa
(Holstein, 1973). Blacks encountered the quilt as part of the planta
tion experience.
When slaves stitched together quilts for their masters, it was
perhaps more a task of drudgery than an opportunity for creative expres
sion. Certainly in such circumstances there is not a very great possi
bility for a quilt to reflect anything more than the deliberate instruc
tions of the slave owner. Yet, Afro-American quilting is not simply an
acquired craft, a set of skills borrowed from the dominant Euro-American
culture. The creative art involves at least two choices: the selection
of a technical means and a selection of a design. Africans came to this
country without knowledge of quilting, although they had extensive
expertise with textiles (Sieber, 1972). For example, one of the great
textile traditions of the world is to be found in West Africa, e.g.,
115
Kenti cloth and the strip loom forms found in Ghana, Ivory Coast and
Nigeria (Efland, 1982). The techniques of quilt construction, as men
tioned earlier, were largely derived from Euro-American sources. Thet
choice of design for a quilt top, on the other hand, did not necessarily
have European origins. Some of the geometric combinations of odd scraps
of cloth that decorate American quilts have African analogs (Williams,
1971; Hall and Kretzinger, 1935). It is possible that some of the quilts
made by slaves simultaneously served the requirements of their masters
and preserved a cultural memory. The Afro-American quilt provides us
with an example of how European artifacts may be modified by African
canons of design and thus stand as statements of cultural survivial ra
ther than surrender. What is most significant is not the degree to
which Blacks have learned to replicate Euro-American quilts, but rather
what African elements survive in their quilts and what unique Afro-
American forms may have developed as a result of the effort to render
remembered designs with borrowed techniques. Hence, emphasis in this
study is placed on quilt tops rather than on the selection of materials,
types of stitching, amount of padding, paraphernalia such as quilting
frames, or related social behaviors like quilting bees.
Harriet Powers (1837-1911). The applique quilts of Harriet Powers
of Athens, Georgia are very special creations in which the memory of
Africa is sometimes exceptionally strong. Mrs. Powers is known to have
sewn at least two pictorial quilts in 1886 and 1898 (Vlach, 1976).
The applique techniques used by Powers are generally similar to
methods known both in Europe and Africa. Textiles in Europe have been
decorated with appliqued designs since the medieval period and have been
116
reported from Africa since the seventeenth century (Kent, 1976). There
are two simultaneous sources of support for Mrs. Powers’ creative effort.
Born in Georgia in 1837, Mrs. Powers should have received her heritage
of Africa by example (the source of which is unknown) or by verbal des
cription. Harriet Powers' ancestors apparently arrived in Georgia late
in the eighteenth or early in the nineteenth century. By that time most
slaves were being imported from the Congo-Angola region, although a
steady trickle were still entering from West Africa (Curtin, 1969).
This is extremely important because the African traditions for appliqued
textiles are practiced only by groups from that part of the continent.
The presence of West African slaves in Georgia makes it possible, then,
to link Harriet Powers’ quilts to African aesthetic systems. The Ash
anti, Ewe, and Fanti of Ghana and the Fon of Benin all use applique
techniques in their textiles (Sieber, 1972). Although the overall ap
proach of the Fon seems to correspond most closely to Mrs. Powers' work,
her technique might represent more of an amalgam of African influences
than a single ethnic legacy from old Dahomey (Vlach, 1976).
Compare the Bible quilts of Harriet Powers to the appliqued "tapes
tries" of the Fon. Some of the Fon appliqued textiles represent ordinary
moments in the lives of the persons for whom a cloth is sewn. They
function in a manner not unlike the local panels in Harriet Powers'
second Bible quilt.
The figures of Dahomean appliqued textiles are based on patterns
cut from cloth or paper. These applique' templates are standardized
elements of the tradition and are repeated from generation to generation.
117
Like the Fon appliques, the figures on Harriet Powers' quilts also
show little variation. Her approach to the technical problems of appli
que design is similar to the Fon makers of appliqued textiles. The
similarities involve even the selection of specific motifs. Mrs. Powers'
depiction of the whale that swallowed Jonah (Figure 76) is very similar
to the fish which the Fon use to represent Houegbadja (Figure 75), a
seventeenth-century ruler (Kent, 1976). The placement of one ventral
and two dorsal fins, plus the indication of gills are identical. The
large standing birds that depict the kings Gangnihuesso and Kpengla
resemble the birds in six panels of the second Bible quilt (Figures 73
and 74) (Kent, 1976; Vlach, 1976). Though similarities in birds and
animals may be due more to general accuracy in anatomical detail than to
cultural memory, nevertheless, there is ample precedent in Dahomey (Fon)
for the menagerie found in Harriet Powers' work. The background motifs
in Fon appliqued items include crescents, short-armed crossed, and ro
settes (Herskovitz, 1938). All of these signs appear in the Bible quilts
— most notably the crosses and rosettes (Figure 72).
A stylistic affinity may also tie Harriet Powers' work to African
textiles. Her figures— whether of human, animal, boat, clock, or house
— are very simple, direct, and minimal. They express the essence of a
being or object; they are icons. With this quality of presentation her
work differs markedly from Anglo-American appliqued quilts (Lipman and
Winchester, 1974).
Mrs. Powers created symbols while the Anglo-American appliqued
quilts used shapes to form literal representation. Euro-American folk
artists were capable of creating iconic statements, but they tended not
118
to use the appliqued quilt in such a manner. Fon, Fanti, Ewe, and
Ashanti appliqued textiles, however, trade heavily in symbolic presenta
tion. Most figures embody power and authority. They are immediately
identifiable; their meaning is unquestioned (Vlach, 1976). Also European
peasant designs are often starkly geometric designs with no figurative
references.
Since Harriet Powers' pictorial quilts compare closely with African
appliqued cloths in terms of function, technique, content and style, the
claims of African influence in her work are not without support. In
fact, since her quilts are less like Euro-American a-plique quilts and
more like African prestige cloths, we might even postulate West African
ancestry for her aesthetic sensibilities. All of the similarities be
tween her work and that of Fon applique sewers cannot be explained by
serendipitous accident. Since it seems doubtful that the ethnic identity
of Mrs. Powers' ancestors will ever be discovered, we must depend on
the visual evidence before us.
Strip Quilt. The strip quilt, sometimes called a "string quilt,"
is a form of the pieced quilt that is particularly favored by Afro-
American quilters. In this type of quilt the scraps of cloth are first
sewn into strips, which are then assembled into various patterns. Usu
ally the strip element runs the entire length of the quilt top so that
it is a complete structural unit as well as a design element. Although
Black quilters have made all manner of pieced quilts, often using the
same approaches as Euro-American quilt makers (Holstein, 1973), the
strip technique is the method found most frequently in Afro-America.
It has been observed in Black communities in coastal South Carolina,
119
Southwestern Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Southern Maryland,
and in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia. This wide distribution makes
the strip quilt the most commonplace domestic example of Black material
culture in the United States. Why a single approach to the task of
quilting should be so dominant among Afro-American quilt makers may be
traced to the retention of design concepts found in African textiles
(Perry, 1976; Vlach, 1976).
Unlike the appliqued quilts of Harriet Powers, whose ethnic analogs
are limited to a small geographic area of Africa, the strip quilts may
reflect a heritage of textile making which extends across all of Western
Africa. Throughout West Africa men weave cloth on small horizontal
looms with very narrow warps, usually between four and ten inches in
width. The long strips of cloth produced on these looms are cut into
usable lengths and edge-sewn together to form a larger textile (Sieber,
1972; Lamb and Lamb, 1975). Hence the strip is a basic structural unit
in many West African textiles. It may also figure as a prominent design
unit, since strips with uniformly decorated banding, when placed next
to each other, may be manipulated to produce either checkerboard or hori
zontal stripe designs (Vlach, 1976; Sieber, 1972). Although it is only
a simple concept, the strip pattern is a basic decorative motif for
African textiles throughout the source area for slaves. If we are to
expect any survival of African influences on Afro-American textiles,
it would most likely be in a basic motif rather than an esoteric one,
and it would likely be a design familiar to Euro-Americans. The corre
lation between strip patterns in African textiles and Afro-American
120
quilts may then reflect a transatlantic continuity of aesthetic prefer
ence (Vlach, 1977; Holstein, 1973).
The deliberate retention of the strip pattern is seen in a wool
blanket (Figure 80) made by Luiza Francis Combs of Hazard, Kentucky.
An African-born Black woman who died in 1943 at the age of ninety, she
was totally in command in the making of this textile. She raised the
sheep from which the wool was sheared. She carded the wool and spun it
into thread. After dying the thread red-orange, orange, lavender, and
blue, she wove it into strip pattern. Both the color scheme and the
strip design can be counted as African features. This strip blanket
gives an indication of the significance of strip quilts; both are based
on African memories.
It should be pointed out that strip patterns are not the exclusive
property of Black peoples. They certainly occur in Euro-American quilts
— for example, the quilts made by Pennsylvania Germans in the nineteenth
century (Holstein, 1973; Vlach, 1976). The quilts made by Blacks, how
ever, would never be mistakenly identified as the work of Amish or
Menonite sewers. Euro-American quilters tend to draw their designs into
a tight and ordered symmetry. When strip designs are used they are the
same size and are pieced together in an orderly manner. Moreover, geo
metric motifs set in blocks constitute the core of the Euro-American
quilt design tradition. The strict formality of these works is only
slightly relieved by a few instances of the "crazy" quilt. Rigid, uni
form repetition and predictability are definite characteristics of
Western folk art, and the same is true of the Euro-American quilt (Glas-
sie, 1972). By contrast, Afro-American strip quilts are random and wild,
121
seemingly out of control (Vlach, 1976). Sieber (1972) points out that,
even though controlled geometric motifs are a standard element of Afri
can textiles. Improvisational cloths are also part of the tradition
and actually, the accidentals in such cloths are not unanticipated, but
are allowed for if not calculated (Sieber, 1972).
These African qualities are analogous to the spirit sensed in Afro-
American strip quilts. In both cases there is a use of formal design
motifs but not a submission to them. There is a shared stylistic affin
ity between African textiles and Afro-American quilts. There is in both
a commitment to a deeply imbedded sense of improvisation.
Although the applique and strip forms have been selected most often
as a mode of African inspired creation, even pieced quilts may suggest
an African feeling. Harriet Powers' achievement recalls a single ethnic
source. The strip quilts, in form and particularly in style, reflect
the widespread heritage of African textiles. What may in the end be
regarded as the most important feature of Afro-American quilting is the
apparent refusal to simple surrender an alternative aesthetic sense
to the confines of mainstream expectations. Euro-American forms were
converted so that African ideas would not be lost.
122
Figure 67. Akwete cloth. Made of cotton, gets its name from the town Akwete in Eastern Nigeria, where it is handwoven on looms that produce a cloth measuring 48 by 72 inches, called a "fathom,” It takes a weaver about ten days to make a fathom (Chase, 1971).
124
Figure 69. Appliqued Textile, Dahomey. The Herskovitz Collection, Chicago, Illinois.
Figure 70. Appliqued Textile, Dahomey. The Herskovitz Collection, Chicago, Illinois.
tK
125
Figure 71. Quilt, Harriet Powers. The National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
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126
Figure 72. Bible Quilt, Harriet Powers (ca. 1886). The National Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
v
127
Figure
Figure
73. Top: Detail of Fon Applique. Symbol of Kpeng.la (1774-1789) 18th century king of Dahomey. Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
74. Bottom: Detail of Harriet Powers' quilt. Collection: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
-M *
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128
Figure 75
Figure 76
Top: Detail of Fon appliqued symbol of Houegbadja (1654- 1685), 17th century king of Dahomey. Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Bottom: Detail of Harriet Powers' quilt. Collection: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
129
Figure 77
Figure 78
, Top: Detail of For. appliqued symbol for Ghezo (1818-1858), ]9th century king of Dahomey. Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.
Bottom: Deatil of Harriet Powers' Bible quilt. Collection: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
i
130
Figure 79. Men's weave textile. Upper Volta. The Katharine White Collection, Los Angeles, California.
132
Figure 81. Men's Weave textile, Ghana. The Katharine White Collection, Los Angeles, California.
010100000100000200010200000200238902020201000200010102010201
133
Pottery
Blacks were involved in all major craft activities in the United
States from the early colonial period up to aind through emancipation.
This is not surprising when we understand that Black people constituted
half, if not more, of the labor force for many southern states. A
British traveler in 1759 remarked: "The number of Negroes in the southern
colonies is upon the whole nearly equal, if not superior to that of
White men." (Burnaby, 1960, p. 111.) In Louisa County in central Vir
ginia the number of Blacks was just slightly above the white population
in 1790, but by 1880 their margin of dominance increased to more than
4,000 (Conrad and Meyer, 1954; Genovese, 1974; Starobin, 1970). The
daily chores which were essential to the maintenance of life in rural
eighteenth and nineteenth century America included many tasks other than
field labor. There were houses and barns to build, tools to make and
repair, grain to mill and store, cloth to weave and tailor. Although
most Blacks toiled their lives away under the sharp eye of the field
foreman, some had to be placed in the workshop, forge, mill and loom
house (Vlach, 1979).
None of the historians of slavery ever fails to note the involve
ment of Blacks in the skilled trades. In the Carolinas the overwhelming
majority of artisans were "Negro" slaves (Newman, 1974; Thompson, 1969).
Circumstances such as these give rise to a Black American tradition in
pottery, a craft most often practiced in this country by whites.
That Blacks did not dominate American ceramics is understandable,
given the distinctly European technology and materials involved: treadle-
operated wheels, wood-stoked kilns, decorative slips and glazes. Even
134
if an African slave had known something of his own pottery traditions
of hand built, open field-fired earthenware, he still would have been
inadequately prepared to "turn and burn" stoneware jugs and crocks.
Furthermore, pottery as practiced throughout Africa is mainly a woman’s
craft (Newman, 1974; Thompson, 1969). Early Black male artisans who
became potters had to break sharply away from their past as they entered
into their new trade.
Consequently the rift between a possible memory of an African aes
thetic and the demands of the American experience could only be closed
when Black craftsmen were able to work in groups. This kind of situation
was prevalent in the Edgefield district of west-central South Carolina
(see map of the area). This area was a primary area throughout the
early nineteenth-century for the production of Alkaline-glazed stoneware
(Burrison, 1975), much of which was made by Black labor. Lewis Miles
of Edgefield, for example, owned forty slaves, many of whom were em
ployed in his pottery works (Vlach, 1979). The Afro-American tradition
in ceramics thus began in South Carolina, and it is here that we can
expect to find a distinct Black achievement.
Dave the Potter. The most accomplished Afro-American potter of the
period was a slave who was owned by Abner Landrum. Landrum established
the first pottery in the Edgefield District sometime between 1810 and
1820, named appropriately enough, Pottersville (Ferrell and Ferrell,
1976). In 1827, the Pottersville manufactory passed out of Landrums
hands, but he had a major influence on subsequent developments, and Dave
was taught to read and write by Landrum and was later given over to
Lewis Miles, Landrum’s son-in-law, and owner of Miles Mill.
135
Dave's verbal training was useful to him in his pottery career,
for he often inscribed his works with rhymed couplets. These poetic
pots are among the outstanding achievements of Afro-American folk craft.
Ceramic historians consider his work a delight, for not only did
he sign his name with a distinctive script, but he also recorded the name
or initials of his owner, Lewis Miles, the date of the manufacture, and
occasionally the name of the customer. A stoneware jug splashed with
white Kaolin slip (Figure 82) bears a typical inscription: "Lm/Oct. 25
- 1853/Dave." This is minimal information, but it is enough (Burrison,
1975).
Dave's career in pottery was quite long, and consequently he must
have made hundreds of clay objects. Almost fifty have been discovered
so far (more are sure to turn up). Roughly one-forth of Dave's known
repertoire carries a verbal message, a sign of his education and verbal
skills. His themes tend to describe the function of his large jars,
and often his rhymes were unique compositions, the couplet, "Made at
Stoney Bluff/For making lard enuff," occurs on two pots (Charleston
Museum Collection). Sometimes Dave's verbal skills were directed to
wards monetary matters: "this noble jar will hold 20 (gallons)/fill it
with silver then you will have plenty" (Ferrell & Ferrell, 1976);
patriotism: "The Fourth of July is surely come/to sound the fife and
beat the drum" (Folklore Museum, Georgia State University, Atlanta);
and even his own enslavement: "Dave belongs to Mr. Miles/wher(e) the
oven bakes and the pot biles (boils)."
These verses are somewhat reminiscent of blues poetry (Jones, 1963),
although what can clearly be defined as the blues was still half a
century away at the time of Dave's career. Dave's work consists mostly
of very large open-mouth jars, usually about two feet high, with slab
handles around the rim. His largest piece stands twenty-nine inches
high. This jar, which may hold more than forty gallons, is the largest
piece of stoneware known in the south. Another characteristic of Dave's
work is the scale of his pieces; his pots tend to be very wide at the
shoulder. Their bases conform to the usual dimensions (around twelve
inches), but the walls flair boldly to the shoulder, near the top of the
vessel. Above the shoulder of the jar, the walls break sharply inward
to the mouth, leaving a distinct ridge (Vlach, 1979; Ferrell and Ferrell
1976).
Dave's works are largely renderings of an Anglo-American form. It
may be possible to think of Dave's pieces as modifications of the Ameri
can norm, in the same manner that Afro-American quilts are renderings
of Euro-American designs, but it is more appropriate to view his pottery
as a heroic accomplishment. He threw larger and heavier ware than any
one else, sometimes requiring a mound of clay weighing more than forty
pounds. Great strength and skill were required to turn such pots. He
knew it and his owner knew it. Perhaps in his way he sought to throw
off the shackles of bondage and gain a measure of respect. He was eight
three years old when he died (Vlach, 1979).
Afro-Carolinian Face Vessels. In the literature of folk art, the
ceramic vessels created by Afro-American artisans have been variously
called "grotesque jugs" (Figures 86, 89 and 90) "voodoo pots," "monkey
pots" (Figure 87), and "monkey jugs." There has been speculation that
this genre of artistic expression had its origins in South Carolina
137
(Fine, 1973; Driskell, 1976; Chase, 1971). The scholars Cox (1970),
Stow (1925), and Vlach (1979), disagree. Face vessels, the latter group
argues, were made in every pottery region of the United States. Cox
cites examples by an anonymous potter from Montgomery County in Pennsyl
vania around 1805; Stow gives the example of E.G. Grafts of Whatley,
Massachusetts around 1833, and the Smithsonian Institution displayed
vessels by Henry Remmy of Philadelphia whose work dates about 1838.
Vlach states that even in Edgefield there is evidence of ceramic sculp
ture before 1840 (fragments of a portrait bust— not a vessel— have been
recovered from a site in the area).
The decoration of pottery with faces had been established much
earlier in Europe. In fact, British face vessels date from the period
of Roman domination. This mode of decoration which became part of the
British tradition of folk pottery around AD 200, emerges again in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. By the eighteenth century the face
vessel form had matured into the comical Toby jug (Taggart, 1967), how
ever, as Thompson (1969) points out, the Afro-Caroli’nian Face vessels
are quite different stylistically than the Toby jug.
The face jugs made in Edgefield around 1850 are thus preceded by
an extensive tradition in Euro-American pottery. Moreover, the making
of pots with faces was so widespread by the late nineteenth century that
it would be a mistake to consider all late nineteenth century face ves
sels as necessarily tied to South Carolina vessels tradition— obviously
other pertinent sources of inspiration were also available. Although
Edgefield face vessels are neither the oldest nor the most influential
expression of this type of ceramic sculpture in the United States, they
138
are, nevertheless, stylistically distinct. Because of this, and because
they were made by Black potters, we may view them as an important achieve
ment in Afro-American decorative art and worthy of inclusion in this
study.
Some have questioned whether or not Blacks ever made face vessels
at all. We have already seen that they were deeply involved in the mak
ing of utilitarian ware. Thomas Davies, owner of the pottery at Bath,
said that his slaves made face vessels in 1862 (Barber, 1983, reprint
ed., 1976).
Face vessels are unique in that they represent the transference of
a familiar African form to another material. In this case Afro-American
ceramics that resemble wooden cups, on one level; and direct transference
on another leve, that of using Africanisms and superimposing them on
an American tradition.
Monkey Pot. The term "monkey pot" has an authentic origin. The
name is not a derogatory or descriptive one. It derived from the old-
time expression, "I see a monkey," which was exclaimed by slaves working
in the fields when dizzied by the heat. The pots were used to prevent
the "monkey" by bringing water to thirsty slaves working in the fields.
There are definite resemblances between these jugs and African effigy
pots (Barber, 1976; Chase, 1971; Vlach, 1979).
It has been pointed out that one of the most distinctive and unique
features of the Afro-Carolinian effigy vessels is the way in which white
china clay was used to inset eyes and teeth. Thompson has made the fas
cinating observation that this feature has no European precedents, but
seems to relate in its aesthetic to Kongo figural carving in wood (Thomp
son, 1969; Kan, 1969).
139
Map 2. Important pottery sites in South Carolina. Edgefield and Aiken Counties are roughly equal to what was known as the Edgefield District in the 19th Century (Vlach, 1976).
S o u t h Carol ina
i _Ninety-s ix •
G r e e n w o o d' C O U N T Y /
• Ki rksey ' s Cr oss roads
E D G E F I E L DC O U N T Y
• Miles Mil!
A I K E N C O U N T Y
A ug u s t a •
25
miles
140
Figure 82. Jug, Dave the Potter (1853). Height 16 inches, Diameter 12 inches. Collection: Dr. James T. Bryson, Washington, Georgia.
\
141
Figure 83, Jar, Dave the Potter (1859). Collection: Nicholson Estate, Cedar Grove Plantation, Edgefield, South Carolina.
142
Figure 84. Jar, Dave the Potter (1859). Height 29 inches, Diameter26 inches. (Stoneware, ash glaze.) Collection: The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina. This is thought to be the largest stoneware jar ever made, in the South.Its capacity is estimated at forty-four gallons (Vlach, 1978).
143
Figure 85. Jar, Dave the Potter (1840). Height 15 inches, Diameter13 inches. Collection: The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina,
144
Figure 86. Face Vessel. Stoneware, kaolin, ash glaze (ca. 1850) 4inches. Collection: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
145
Figure 87. Effigy jug, called a monkey pot. Made in Bath, South Carolina (ca. 1817). Collection: Augusta Museum, Augusta, Georgia. Note the strong African stylistic influence.
146
Figure 88. Bapende wooden cup. Collection: University of South Carolina Museum, Columbia, South Carolina. It is not surprising that the Bapende cup and the monkey pot (Figure 87) bear such a strong resemblence. In America men were the potters, though in Africa this was women's work. Therefore a man would likely use designs he was accustomed to making in wood (Chase, 1971).
147
Figure 8^. Face cup. Stoneware, kaolin, ash glaze (ca. 1850). Bath, South Carolina. Height 4 inches. Collection: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
)
148
Figure 90. Face jug, attributed to Lewis Miles Pottery, Stoneware, slip glaze, Height 7 inches (ca. 1840-1860). Collection: The Ferrell Co]lection, Easley, South Carolina.
149
Figure 91. Nkisi Figure, Zaire. Wood, knives, nails, mirror, bone,leopard tooth. Height 12 inches. Collection: Dr. and Mrs. Anspach, New York City. There are linkages between Afro- Carolinian face vessels to the Zaire-Angola region of Africa. For example, the use of pin-point pupils within white eyes, the use of long, hooked noses, and open mouths with bared teeth (Thompson, 1969).
150
Figure 92. Face vessel, South Carolina (mid-19th century ?). White clay. Height 1-3/16 inches. Collection: The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina. Compare the stylistic affinity of this face to the face of Figure 91.
151
Figure 93. Face vessel, Ghana, Akan people, Ashanti tribe? Earthenware, cowries. Collection: Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. Compare the similarity of these facial features with Figures 90 and 94.
15
Figure 94. Face vessel. Bath, South Carolina (mid-19th Century).Redware, ash glaze. Height 5 inches. Collection: John Gordon Gallery, New7 York City.
153
Early Black American Painters
Throughout the colonial period, the Black artisan was never really
integrated into American society. Even the talented Black was subject
to all the legal restrictions, social opprobrium, and caprice of slav
ery. Yet often his priviledged position as a liberally treated house-
servant, the awakening of an anti-slavery sentiment in some northern
localities, and the fact of the small number of Blacks in the New England
Colonies enabled the urbanized Black to approach closer to the status
of true citizenship and to find patrons of his creative ability. But
this was not true of Blacks in the South before 1871. From the gener
alization of course, are excepted those Blacks who are themselves members
of the master class.
Scipio Moorhead (active around 1773). Before emancipation in Massa
chusetts, Blacks there had commonly enjoyed the ordinary rights of free
laborers. The classic example of a slave who received paternalistic
treatment from a genteel bourgeois culture is the poet Phillis Wheatley.
In a poem, "To S.M., a Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works," she
mentions a Black contemporary painter-slave, one of the first Black
artists of the servant class in America. A manuscript note penciled
at the end of the contents of a 1773 London edition of her volume,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in which the above title
appears, identifies S.M. as "Scipio Moorhead, Negro servant to the Rev.
John Moorhead of Boston whose genius inclined him that way." (Porter,
1969; Chase, 1971; Fine, 1972; Dover, 1960).
None of the artist's works has ever come to light, but we are told
that his talent was recognized and cultivated by Sarah Moorhead, wife
154
of the minister, who was herself a teacher of art and expert in the
techniques of drawing and painting on glass. There is unfortunately,
no sound evidence that Scipio was the author of the unsigned portrait
of Phillis Wheatley that is used as a frontispiece for several of her
published works, but it affords interesting speculation. It is known
that Phillis was acquainted with Scipio’s owners and the conjecture that
he made the portrait is strengthened when we realize that both the en
graving for the first time in the same 1773 edition of her work (Chase,
1971; Fine, 1973; Dover, 1960; Porter, 1960; Driskell, 1976, Lewis,
1978).
Joshua Johnston (1976 - 1803). Although he is the best documented
of all the eighteenth century Black artists, Joshua Johnston remains a
shadowy figure at best. He was listed in the Baltimore Directory as a
portrait painter, or limner, from 1796-1824, but following his death his
works were often attributed to other artists. It has taken intensive
research over the years to uncover some two dozen or so of his paintings.
Thanks to the efforts of the late Dr. J. Hall Pleasants of the Maryland
Historical Society, we can draw a vague portrait of Joshua Johnston.
That he was a "Free Householder of Colour" we know, and it appears likely
that he was first a slave, or house servant, who later obtained his
freedom, perhaps earning it through his labor as a painter (Chase, 1971).
Johnston's work strongly suggests the direct influence of Charles
Peale Polk, a relative of Charles Wilson Peale a very active portrait
painter in Baltimore in the 1790s. Tradition in the Moale family,
whose portraits he painted makes him the slave of Colonel John Moale,
who lived on German Street in Baltimore and at one time the artist is
155
listed as residing on the same street, which seems to lend credence to
this story. Perhaps he was given a studio on Colonel Moales property
(Bearden & Henderson, 1972).
Johnson was the first artist of Black ancestry to gain public re
cognition in the United States as a portrait painter. While the majority
of his subjects were members of wealthy slave holding families, his
Portrait of a Cleric is a painting that depicts a Black man; J. Hall
Pleasants has estimated its date as between 1805 and 1810. It is also
possible that Johnston produced other paintings of Blacks. Lewis (1978)
feels that his sensitive handling of Portrait of a Cleric (Figure 95)
suggests that it was not his first attempt at depicting a.Black subject.
She suggests that close examination of the portrait also reveals a re
laxed approach not evident in any of the artist's other surviving works.
None of the paintings attributed to Johnston are signed or dated,
but all bear similar stylistic traits. The portraitures are neatly
rendered and the works are distinguished by an unusually flexible treat
ment of hands. The faces are usually shown in three-quarter view, with
the glances of elliptical eyes directed straight forward. Mouths are
drawn in a linear style typical of the period. The paintings reveal no
physical or psychological relationship between figures, which, in most
cases suggest the stiffness and lack of personality characteristic of
many works done earlier in the eighteenth century. The tightly set
lips, staring eyes, and seemingly inflexible bodies aptly illustrate
that these were posed works, not the products of momentary impression.
The backgrounds suggest only a partial knowledge of vanishing points;
and often no single area of a painting is made dominant, either through
156
color, placement of figures, or rendering of detail (Lewis, 1978; Bear-
don & Henderson, 1972).
Because brass-studded Sheraton sofas and chairs are used frequently
in Johnston's portraits, it has been conjectured that his "metallic
rhythmic use of nails" is an Africanism, Chase (1971) holds these con
jectures as far-fetched. "Had the actual nails themselves been in
serted into the canvas," she postulates, "there might be a clearer re
lationship; but since they are merely painted on, it is more likely
these are, like the other artist's props, merely studio furnishings
that were used because of their popularity at the time" (Chase, 1971,
p. 98).
157
Figure 95. Joshua Johnston, Portrait of a Cleric. (Oil on canvas, ca. 1810.) Collection: Bowdoin College.
Sir
158
Robert S. Duncanson (1821 - 1872). After the Civil War the Anti-
Slavery Society relaxed its effort to nurture Black talent. Then the
Society's cause was taken over by new groups which sought to justify
the freedom that had been bestowed on Blacks. The Freedmen’s Aid Soci
ety, founded after the war, was one of these patron groups of culture
among the liberated Blacks.
Duncanson was one of the youthful artists who, prior to the Civil
War, received help from the Anti-Slavery League. An article in the
New York Age for March 17, 1928, recounts that he was sent abroad by
that organization for study. As his early years in Cincinnati were
marked by struggle and disappointment, it is likely that such conditions
led him to seek permanent residence in Europe (Porter, 1969).
As stated earlier, Duncanson was the son of a Scots-Canadian and a
free Black woman. He spent his early years in Canada and later moved
with his mother to Mount Healthy, a small Ohio community about fifteen
miles north of Cincinnati. A border city between the North and the
South, Cincinnati in the early ]880s was a center of controversy over
slavery and the rights of Blacks who had escaped from southern states.
Ohio's Black Laws, passed in 1804, prohibited settlement in the state
without proof of freedom; however, repressive measures resulting from
these laws did not directly affect resident Blacks, nor prevent those in
Cincinnati from sharing in the city's program of fine arts for the
masses (Lewis, 1978).
Duncanson was a resident in the Cincinnati area at a time when art
was considered an important aspect of education. Cincinnati was a pros
perous, frontier city and it maintained a society in which Black and
159
White artists mingled freely and shared ideas about their work (Dris-
kell, 1976).
By 1842 Duncanson was exhibiting in the Cincinnati area. The cata
log of an exhibition sponsored in that year by a local group (The Soci
ety for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge) listed three of his works.
The other artists in the exhibition were primarily local residents who
painted in the style of the Hudson River School, the romantic-naturalis
tic tradition of which Duncanson was to become a follower. During the
subsequent years, references to Duncanson’s work appeared in numerous
newspaper reviews and articles. Among these, the Detroit Dailey Adver
tiser (2 February 1846) made reference to Duncanson's work and described
him as a portrait painter who had "designed and finished several histor
ical and fancy pieces of great merit" (Lewis, 1978).
Officially a Cincinnati resident, Duncanson also had a long associ
ation with artistic activities in Detroit. Duncanson's abilities as an
artist are best demonstrated in landscape painting, in which he excelled
and in which he was probably influenced by several outstanding American
landscape artists, among them Thomas Cole and Asher B. Durand. Duncan
son's landscape style exhibits the broad range of atmospheric and emo
tional elements typical of works of the Hudson River School. It often
utilizes such striking atmospheric effects as wind and rain storms to
give increased drama to the work; at other times, however, it very ef
fectively conveys the qualities of a calm pastoral setting. Whatever
their mood, Duncanson's paintings, like Durand's, involve a more intimate
scale than do the paintings of Cole and many comparable landscape artists
(Driskell, 1976; Porter, 1969; Lewis, 1978).
160
In 1848 Nicholas Longworth, a lawyer turned realtor, commissioned
Duncanson to do a series of murals for his Cincinnati residence. (This
house, an excellent, example of nineteenth century American architecture,
had been purchased by Longworth in 1829 and is now the Taft Museum.)
Completed over the next two years, the series consists of eight composi
tions that, because of their highly poetic quality, suggests the tradi
tions of French landscape painting (Lewis, 1978).
Duncanson had the opportunity to study in Edinburgh, Scotland at
the expense of the Anti-Slavery League. There, he created painting
based on Alfred Lord Tennyson's poem, completed in 1861, The Lotus
Eaters, which received great acclaim from British art critics, though
all attempts to locate it have failed (Chase, 1971; Fine, 1973; Driskell,
1978; Porter, 1960; Lewis, 1978).
The only known painting by Duncanson in which the special concerns
of Blacks are the central subject matter is one that illustrates an
incident from Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), by Harriet Beecher Stowe (Figure
97) (Driskel], 1976).
Duncanson returned to the United States possibly in the late '60s,
but was not in good health and is believed to have died in 1871 while a
patient in a Detroit hospital (Fine, 1973; Porter, 1969; Driskell, 1976).
Present-day critics disagree in evaluating both Duncanson's artis
tic ability and his character as a person, but there is no doubt that
Duncanson's career is a milestone in the history of Afro-American art,
for he was perhaps the first Black American artist to receive widespread
recognition both at home and abroad (Chase, 1971).
1 6 1
Figure 96. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Untitled Mural. (Oil on plaster, 109 3/8 x 91 3/8 inches, ca. 1848). Collection: The Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
162
Figure 97. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Uncle Tom and Little Eva, 1853.(Oil on canvas, 21\ x 38b; inches.) Collection: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan.
Figure 98. Robert Stuart Duncanson, Blue Hole, Flood Waters, Little Miami River, 1951. (Oil on canvas, 29-s x 42-5 inches.) Collection: Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
163
164
Edward M. Bannister (1828-1901). Porter (I960) feels that the work
of Edward M, Bannister is the most objective and free from racial influ
ence of all the early Black painters. Bannister's work represents a
conscious effort on the part of early Blacks to move into the "main
stream" of American society. In a biographical sketch of Bannister in
William J. Simmon's Men of Mark, it is recounted that he began his stu
dies with the determination to disprove a statement in the New York
Herald in 1867 that "while the Negro may harbor an appreciation of art,
he is unable to produce it." And it is probable that Bannister regarded
such criticism of art by Blacks as a challenge to his own best efforts.
Born in Nova Scotia, Bannister was the son of a West Indian and a
native of St. Andrews, New Brunswick. In his youth Bannister worked as
a cook on a coastal trading vessel, and later much of his leisure time
was spent sailing Narragansett Bay and studying its water and cloud
formations (Dover, 1960).
Unlike most nineteenth-century Afro-American artists, Bannister
enjoyed an excellent art education without ever going abroad. At bowell
Institute in Boston, he studied under the noted anatomist, Dr. William
Rimmer, and throughout his life he enjoyed stimulating and helpful asso
ciation with other artists (Driskell, 1976).
Bannister first supported himself in Boston by making prints, which
sold well, and gave him the necessary leisure to sketch and paint scenes
throughout the city. It was not long before he opened a studio and
installed himself as a professional artist. By 1855 Bannister had pro
duced his first commissioned work, The Ship Outward Bound (Chase, 1971).
165
Although Bannister's life and work as an artist goes beyond the
time period covered in this study his is included because his ealry works
fall within the scope of this dissertation. Also, he was the first Black
artist to earn recognition as an American regionalist painter and more
importantly, Bannister became one of the three founders of the Providence
Art Club, which later inspired the Rhode Island School of Design (Por
ter, 1969; Fine, 1973; Dover, 1960; Lewis, 1978; Driskell, 1976).
In 1876, at the Centennial. Exhibition in Philadelphia, Bannister
received national recognition when he was awarded a bronze medal for a
painting titled Under the Oaks (1875). The painting was purchased for
$1,500. When the artist presented himself for the award he was insulted
by the gallery guards who did not know that the Black was a guest of
the exposition (Porter, 1969).
There is nothing in Bannister's work that shows that he identified
with social causes or themes related to Afro-Americans. Most of Bannis
ter's landscapes are bucolic, and he avoided the overt intrusion of
grandeur into his pictures that was popular in the Hudson River School,
which glorified and romanticized nature. Although Bannister obviously*
enjoyed the picturesque, he did not look at nature merely as a pleasing
setting for idyllic scenes. Rather, he strove to paint what he saw,
so the picturesque quality of his work is not contrived, but natural.
Bannister's continual study of skies and clouds during his sailing
days enabled him to capture the changing moods of weather, especially
the moments he liked to depict— twilight, coming storm, or the aftermath
of a storm— which imbued his landscapes with a mysterious, uncertain
light and created an impression of grave tranquility (Chase, 1971).
166
Figure yy. Edvard M. Kannister, Landscape, 1882. (Oil on panel, 16 x 22 inches.) Collection: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
167
Figure 100. Edward M. Bannister, Driving Hone the Cows, 1881. (Oil on canvas, 32 x 50 inches.) Collection: Frederick Douglass Institute, Miller Collection, Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C..
168
Figure 101. Edward >1. Bannister, Approaching Storm, 1886. (Oil on canvas, 40 x 60 inches.) Collection: Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.
169
Figure 102. Edward M. Bannister, Street Scene, ca. 1895. (Oil on canvas, 8 9/16 x 5 3/4 inches.) Collection: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.
.170
Free Blacks. Because they were generally offspring of aristocratic
white men, free Blacks in both the North and the South in the early
nineteenth century enjoyed a measure of freedom uncommon to most Blacks
at the time. Those who were acknowledged by their fathers were fre
quently provided with opportunities for education, generally including
study abroad, and with a social life based upon the standards of their
white contemporaries. Those who were not sent elsewhere for an educa
tion usually received special training and privileges as servants in the
homes of their fathers (Lewis, 1978).
Metoyer Family Portraits. A contasting view of Black life in the
New Orleans area during this period is provided by the Metoyer family,
descendants of one Marie Therese, who had been freed from slavery by
the French commandant at Fort Natchitoches, and her husband, a Frenchman
named Thomas Metoyer. This family maintained a way of life that re
flected the elegant taste of the period. The mansion Metoyer ordered
built for Marie Therese in 1750 is the oldest surviving dwelling con
structed in the United States both by and for Blacks* it is also one of
the oldest buildings in Louisiana. The famous African House, a two-
story building on the Metoyer grounds, has features reminiscent of the
constructions found in West African villages. Built of brick and cy
press, the house is an impressive structure that stands as a monument
to the ability of early Black architects and builders.
Still remaining in the mansion today are three interesting paint
ings of Metoyer family members. One is a portrait of Augustine, Marie
Therese's eldest son (Figure 105), that was painted in 1829 and signed
with the name Feuville. The two others are undated and unsigned
171
portraits of a grandson and a granddaughter (Figures 103 and 104). All
three paintings are assumed to be the work of Black artists.
In the mid-1800s, as a result of difficulties stemming from threat
ened slave insurrections, the Metoyer family and many other Blacks
became victims of white reprisals; for the Metoyers in 1847, these re
prisals included the takeover of their home (Dover, 1960; Lewis, 1978).
173
Figure 104. Grandson of Marie Metover, (1830?). Artist unknown. Collection: Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana.
174
Figure 105. Interior of Melrose. Augustine, Madame Metoyer's eldestson, is the subject of the large portrait (signed Feuville, 1829.) He is pointing to St. Augustine's Church which, as the leader of the mulatto community, he built for his people in 1829.
175
Figure 106. Franklin stove (unknown Black artist), in the main bedroom of Melrose Plantation, Metoyer Estate.
176
Figure 107. Melrose Plantation, Netchitoches, Louisiana. It was built of earth, mixed with moss and deer hair packed between cypress planks by unkown Black carpenters.
177
Figure 108. "African House." Melrose Plantation, Natchitoches, Louisiana (early 19th century). This slave-built house of Mme. Metoyer is reminiscent of the Bamalike houses of the Cameron, West Africa (Thompson, 1969; Vlach, 1968).
CHAPTER IV
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Purpose
The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the influences of
African, European, and American culture on the arts and crafts (wood-
carving, basketmaking, furnituremaking, quilting, pottery and painting)
of early Black American artisans who lived and worked between 1649 to
1865, and to demonstrate the implications of these findings as a curri
culum resource in art education.
The research was descriptive in nature and identified photographed
artifacts (decorative arts, crafts and painting) pointing out stylistic
similarities, influences of acculturation, Africanisms and European
culture on the arts produced by early Black American artisans. Litera
ture in Afro-American art, and art education, was reviewed to focus on
specific writings of scholars concerned with the cultural heritage of
Blacks.
Limitations and Procedures
The examination of Afro-American art research was limited to such
secondary sources as museum catalogs and brochures, textbooks, articles,
and photographic reproductions of artifacts produced by early Afro-Ameri
can artisans. Though the historical materials and artifacts in
178
179
photographic form have curricular implications for art education, this
study does not develop these resources as curricula.
Financial considerations precluded on-site visits to such visual
resource centers as the Old Slave Mart Museum (Charleston, South Caro
lina), Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, and the Library
of Congress (Washington, D.C.), Oxford University (London, England),
The Nigerian Museum (Lagos, Nigeria) and others; however, this disser
tation has synthesized materials from diverse sources on the cultural
heritage of Afro-Americans and has constructed a thematic framework
(see flow chart) for understanding of cultural influences on that crea
tive body of works produced by early Black American artisans.
Materials were collected on woodcarving, basketmaking, cabinet-
making, quilting, pottery and painting. Comparisons were made between
these objects made by slave artisans with objects originating in various
West African cultures. The criteria included similarities of motif,
symbolism, and stylistic parallel.
Summary of Research Findings
This dissertation considered six of the decorative arts, crafts
and paintings of early Afro-Americans largely from the perspective of
what Webber (1978) called "cultural history." As a consequence of the
analyses made the following conclusions can be stated:
1. By creating and controlling their own education instruments,
Blacks in the slave quarter community were able to pass onto their
children a set of unique cultural themes and aesthetics.
180
2. There is ample evidence of the survival of African culture
in the decorative arts of early Afro-American artisans, especially in
basketmaking. The techniques of manufacturing Afro-American baskets
are similar to African baskets. Black adults taught this skill to their
children exactly as it had been taught in Africa, so that the method
(via the apprentice system) continued without interruption.
3. There were stylistic differences between works created by
urban Blacks and southern plantation Blacks. This can be accounted for
because urban Blacks created artifacts for use by Whites who wanted
Europeanized reminders of "home." This influence of acculturation di
luted or almost obliterated the Africanisms in the artifacts created
by urban Black artisans. Conversely, the artisans of the slave quarter
community, under the heavy influence of enculturation, feeling less of a
sense of isolation from other Blacks, created works closer to African
forms. One may for example compare the work of Dave the Potter (Figures
82 and 83) with the face vessels (Figures 87 and 90) of plantation
slaves, or the woodcarving of the grandfather of Harve Brown (Figure 33)
with the furniture of Thomas Day (Figure 65).
4. (Juilting shows moderate influences from both African and
European culture. Though quiltmaking is a European form, Blacks brought
to it the tradition of African appliqued techniques and textile design.
Therefore quilting done by Black artisans such as Harriet Powers (Fig- •
ures 71 and 72) can in no way be thought of as "cultural surrender."
The motifs employed by Powers were stylistically similar to African forms
(Figures 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 and 78).
181
5. Afro-American painting shows heavy European influence. There
is no reference to African symbolism such as reptillian motifs, etc.,
as manifested in the slave-made walking sticks. The period that produced
the early Black painters is a period that was characterized by the ef
forts of Blacks to move into the "mainstream" of American society.
Another factor to consider is the education of the early Black artists,
both formal and informal. For example, Joshua Johnston was self-taught
but was influenced in his work by his exposure to the work of Charles
Peale Polk. Other early Black painters were educated formally either
in Europe or in the United States— another consideration that accounts
for this medium's overhwelming European influence. Moreover, these
works were produced exclusively for Whites. Only on rare occasions did
these Black artists concern themselves with themes relating to Blacks
(comapre Figures 95 and 97 and Figure 1); the approach, aesthetically,
was decidedly European.
6. The conclusion of numerous scholars that American Blacks lack
a visual legacy is totally unfounded. Recently uncovered evidence like
the Nok and Benin findings, as well as the material presented in this
dissertation suggest contrary conclusions.
7. Though the illustrative materials and text are not a curricu
lum in the ordinary sense of the term, the materials fill in an import
ant missing link between the African and European heritage as they
evolved into the Afro-American heritage. This will enable curriculum
and textbook writers to discuss this heritage with increased understand
ing and appreciation. In particular, visual teaching aids could be
182
developed for teaching drawing, sculpture, design, crafts and criticism
based on the photographic record provided by this dissertation.
Suggestions for Further Research
Further research needs to be conducted in the area of Black cultur
al heritage curriculum for art education. In spite of the dramatic
increase in the number of exhibits and publications devoted to works of
artists who are Black, little attention has been given to them in texts
used in school art curricula. Victor Lowenfeld included works by John
Biggers and Samella Lewis in Creative and Mental Growth, published in
1947, as examples of mural painting. These illustrations have been
omitted in editions published since Lowenfeld's death. In addition these
artists were not identified as Black, but their work was used as examples
of design or mural painting (Grigsby, 1977, p. 12).
Students of African descent need "representative models" to emu
late. Students attending majority schools, predominantly Caucasian,
are constantly presented models with whom they can identify geographically
and ethnically. Most art classes, whether studio or art history, will
touch upon European art and artists; English, French, German, Spanish
and so forth, whose backgrounds will be similar to many members of the
class. Reference to African art is usually made in the context of
"primitive, exotic, or strange" in the sense that these are interesting
but not works to be used as models to emulate. Few historical or con
temporary examples of American artists of African background are in
cluded in the average class, because few are readily available in gen
eral texts (Grigsby, 1977, p. 36).
183
Further research is needed in the categories already touched on in
this study. Other categories requiring research are (1) Musical instru
ments: There is no doubt that Black American music derives its identity
from an African heritage. (2) Blacksmithing: Except for woodworking there
is no other trade in which Black American talent was expressed more often
than in blacksmithing. The beautiful wrought-iron works in New Orleans
and Charleston attest to this. (3) Architecture: Far too often our
view of architecture focuses on huge public buildings and grandiose
monuments. Dwellings are usually ignored by scholarship. In the slave
narratives are abundant references to slave-built cabins and houses (see
the Matoyer-African house). (4) Graveyard Decoration: Throughout
rural Afro-America the cemetery has special significance. In this area,
Herskovitz (1958) and Bastide (1971) have documented a complex set of
Afro-American behaviors regarding funerals.
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APPENDIX
Cultural Influences on Early Black American Art (1649-1865)
This flow chart was designed to show the cultural influences on
early Black American arts and crafts (1649-1865). Data indicates that
the strongest African influences were found in woodcarving and bascket-
making. Slaves carved African motifs on walking sticks; these symbols
included lizards, tortoises, alligators and serpents. In Africa, the
reptile is endowed with magical and mythical qualities (Vlach, 1979;
Thompson, 1969); Basketmaking was taught by slave parents to their young
exactly as it had been taught in Africa. The materials were the same
as those in Africa and the techniques were identical. Both African and
Afro-Carolinian baskets are laid out in a clockwise direction (Hersko
vitz. 1958; Chase, 1971; Davis, 1976); Furnituremaking, quilting, and
pottery were influenced by acculturation (the merger of African and
European culture). The slave artisans furniture tended to show more
African influence than the work of Thomas Day. This is explained by the
fact that Thomas Day's work was intended for use by whites (Barfield,
1975; Driskell, 1976), whereas the slave artisans primarily created
artifacts for personal use on the plantation (Chase, 1971; Fine, 1973).
Harriet Powers' quilts are examples of European forms being modified
to fit African sensibilities (Kent, 1976; Vlach, 1976; T.ipman & Winches
ter, 1974); The Afro-Carolinian face vessels and monkey pots are closer
to the African cultural tradition while the pottery of Dave is in the
European tradition. Dave's work (like Day's) was created exclusively
for Whites, while the face vessels and monkey pots were for the use of
slaves (Thompson, 1969; Kan, 1969; Barber, 1976; Taggert, 1967);
196
Afro-American painting manifests the strongest European influences.
There is nothing in the data gathered to suggest influences from either
African culture or acculturation in the paintings of Afro-Americans.
Painting represents attempts by Blacks to enter the mainstream of Ameri
can cultural life. These painters were primarily Free-Blacks supported
by Anti-Slavery sentiment. Training was provided in either American
art schools or Europe. These painters were, therefore, influenced by
their white American contemporaries or the canons of European taste.
There was no indication in the data that these Black painters had any
knowledge of African tradition in painting. The work they created was,
of course, exclusively for Whites (Porter, 1969; Chase, 1971; Dover,
1960; Lewis, 1978).
Chart 1
p-
PAINTING
EUROPEAN INFLUENCES
BASKETMAKING
Georgia and Missouri
HOODCAKVING
NortheastArea
Face vessels
POTTERY
Dave the Potter
AFRICAN INFLUENCES
QUILTING
Slave artisans
FIIRNTTUREMAKING
Thomas Day
ACCULTURATION Blend of African and European
Culture
CULTURAL INFLUENCES ON EARLY BLACK AMERICAN ART (1649-1865)
198
SELECTED LISTING OF VISUAL RESOURCE CENTERS
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, Williamsburg, Virginia. Anacosta Neighborhood Museum, Washington, D.C.Atlanta University, Atlanta, Georgia.Augusta Museum, Augusta, Georgia.Baylor University, Waco, Texas.Boston African American National Historic Site, Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts.Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine.Chape.l of the Cross, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois.Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.Convent of the Ursuline Sisters, New Orleans, Louisiana.Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, Michigan.Du Sable Museum of Black History and Art, Chicago, Illinois.Elms Plantation, Millbrook, Alabama.Field Museum, Chicago, Illinois.Gordon Gallery, New York City.Hampton University, Hampton, Virginia.Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.Historical Pictures Service of Chicago.Index of American Design (National Gallery of Art) Washington, D.C. Indiana University Museum, Bloomington, Indiana.Institute University Museum, Bloomington, Indiana.Institute Ethnologie, University of Paris, France.Ladislas Segy Collection, New York, New York.Library of the Boston Athenaem, Boston, Massachusetts.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.Museum of Primitive Art, New York City.Louisiana State Museum.Lowey Museum of Anthropology, The University of California at Berkeley. Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland.Melrose Plan-ation (Metoyer Estate), Natchitoches, Louisiana. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.Mississippi State Historical Museum, Jackson, Mississippi. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University, Washington, D.C. New York Historical Society.Nicholsen Estate, Cedar Grove Plantation, Edgefield, South Carolina. Nigerian Museum, Lagos, Nigeria.North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh, North Carolina.Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio.Old Slave Mart Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.Oxford University, London, England.Paints Division, New York Public Library (Aster, Lenox, and Tilden
Foundations), New York City.
199
SELECTED LISTING OF VISUAL RESOURCE CENTERS
CONTINUED
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.Schoraberg Collection of Negro Literature and History, New York City. Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio.The Herskovitz Collection, Chicago, Illinois.University Museum, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South
Carolina.Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia.Yale University Library (Rare Books & Manuscript Division), New Haven,
Connecticut.