Thomas Commeraw's Stoneware: A Year in Review
Thomas W. Commeraw had a banner year in 2023, and seeing how dramatically his reputation has expanded since I first announced the Thomas Commeraw Project in 2010 (something I did on this website) has been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my career. Those of you following this story know that I'm obviously extremely biased about this topic, but I don't believe I've ever witnessed such a dramatic turnaround for the legacy of any period American craftsman. We might perhaps liken this to the rediscovery of the works of George Ohr in the 1960's, something that happened before I was born. But while Ohr is certainly one of the great characters in the history of American craft, unlike Commeraw his story does not carry the extreme historical importance of one of the most famous African-American businessmen of early America, of abolitionism, of a desperate attempt to found a new African nation.
As recently as 2009, Thomas "Commereau" was an obscure potter with absolutely no story to tell. Today, he has an extensive published biography, two legs of a major exhibition under his belt, and press in numerous high-profile publications.
A "COMMERAW'S STONEWARE / CORLEARS HOOK / N. YORK" stoneware jug, the finest example known.
Although I happened to be the vessel through which Commeraw's true identity was rediscovered, it was not that rediscovery alone that drove me to spend fifteen years or more writing his life's story at the scale I thought it deserved. Really I just believed that I was in a unique position to tell it, to the extent that I felt burdened with a duty to do so. The historical material of Commeraw's life had fallen into my lap by serendipity, fate or providence, and I knew there were countless people far more qualified than me to write a historical study of a free Black craftsman and community leader living in lower Manhattan in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. But unlike some craftsmen who left no work behind, Commeraw's story is inextricably linked with the work that he thankfully did leave behind for us to study--a relatively large quantity of it. His story was as much a stoneware story as it was an African-American history one, and thus I came to realize something the writing and publication process only proved more fully to be true: that his story could only be properly and adequately told by someone who had an advanced knowledge of the American stoneware craft.
Commeraw's Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner, by A. Brandt Zipp, published September 12, 2022.
I could not have been more relieved in September 2022 when the fruit of this labor finally made it into people's hands: Commeraw's Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner.
Commeraw's cover story in Antiques & the Arts Weekly, Jan. 17, 2023.
Later that year I was contacted by Laura Beach at Antiques & the Arts Weekly, who was writing a major article on Commeraw, my book, and a forthcoming solo exhibition of Commeraw's work at the New-York Historical Society. This article became Commeraw's first significant cover story, published on January 17, 2023: Thomas W. Commeraw: How Groundbreaking Research Restored A Master New York Potter To Prominence.
A small portion of Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw at the New-York Historical Society.
On the evening of January 26, Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw opened at the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side. The first major show dedicated solely to Commeraw's work, Crafting Freedom was beautifully assembled by museum director Margi Hofer and her team. On a personal note, it was incredibly gratifying for me to see the story I worked on for so long presented in such a tangible way there at the N-YHS, and was particularly moved by the thought of Commeraw having his forgotten life restored in the minds of countless New Yorkers, perhaps many of them school children. I truly believe that Commeraw deserves a place in African-American history akin to figures like Benjamin Banneker and Phillis Wheatley, and I can see this starting to happen.
Commeraw in The Guardian, February 15, 2023.
Commeraw had enjoyed some great press during the period I was writing Commeraw's Stoneware, perhaps the most notable example being Eve Kahn's article in the October 13, 2011 issue of The New York Times: From Manhattan to Sierra Leone. But in addition to Laura Beach's article, 2023 saw numerous high-level news stories popping up about this once-forgotten man. Maybe the highest profile of these was one published on February 15 in The Guardian, which achieved major traction online: Thomas Commeraw: The Black 19th-Century Potter Who Historians Assumed was White. Other important articles included:
Albany Times Union: Pottery Exhibit Reclaims Story of 19th-Century Black Artisan. (July 2, 2023.)
The New York Review of Books: Resistance Pottery. (May 11, 2023.)
Hyperallergic: Reclaiming the Story of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw. (April 10, 2023.)
Art News: Potter Thomas Commeraw, One of 19th-Century New York's Few Free Black Entrepreneurs, Finally Gets His Due. (February 2, 2023.)
The New York Times: A Tribute to a 19th-Century Ceramist and His Influence. (March 9, 2023.)
Crafting Freedom at Fenimore Art Museum.
On June 24, Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY opened its version of Crafting Freedom, one that ran until September 24. In conjunction with the launch of the Fenimore leg of the show, I gave an online talk on July 5.
An online talk I gave for the Fenimore on Commeraw in August.
On August 1, Studio Potter journal published a very kind review of the book, and on October 29 I gave another online talk sponsored by Studio Potter in collaboration with the African American Archive of Columbia County. Both of these were well received and if you'd like to learn more about Thomas Commeraw, I welcome you to watch one of them.
An early period Commeraw "COERLEARS HOOK" stoneware jar that broke the world auction record for Commeraw's work in the Summer of 2023.
A few days after the Studio Potter review came out, Crocker Farm broke the World Auction Record for a piece of Commeraw's work when we sold the fantastic early period jar featured on the cover of Commeraw's Stoneware. Realizing $120,000 and purchased by the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C., this surpassed the previous record held by this fantastic jug, sold in our Fall 2021 auction, at $96,000. You can now see this jar in its permanent home, in the general vicinity of where key events took place that eventually sent Thomas Commeraw to the west coast of Africa.
A newly discovered early period Commeraw jar, impressed "COERLEARS HOOK / N. YORK."
Also worth noting, our Fall 2023 auction featured an important, newly discovered Commeraw jar that surfaced in Ohio. Featuring a never-before-seen incised design of bellflowers with intermingled leaves, the jar's decoration pointed to the impressed bellflower and crescent motifs Commeraw would wholeheartedly embrace slightly later in his career. It sold for $72,000 to an advanced collector.
On November 15, Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North opened at the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan. Featuring a jar by Thomas Commeraw alongside numerous examples born out of and depicting the historical Black experience in the North, this important show will run until March 24, 2024. (Also worth seeing if you're in Manhattan is Commeraw's iconic early "COERLEARS HOOK" jar that was acquired by the Met in 1918, now part of Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, which opened in November 2021.)
As we enter 2024, the Thomas Commeraw Project continues to thrive. In addition to a forthcoming article in Ceramics in America and periodic research releases, I will be appearing at Colonial Williamsburg in March to present a lecture on Commeraw as part of their March 22-23 ceramics conference, From the Ground Up: Ceramics in Context, held in collaboration with the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts. I look forward to continuing to do everything I can to make sure Commeraw's recognition only continues to grow, and I am so thankful to everyone who came together to make 2023 such a milestone year for this great man and his legacy.