Antique Abolitionist Trade Sign Leads Slotin Folk Art Sale – Antiques And The Arts Weekly

BUFORD, GA. — An antique Anglo-American Abolitionist Society large trade sign more than doubled its high estimate to sell for $10,000 at Slotin Folk Art’s February 11 auction. Co-owner Amy Slotin said the figure’s buyer is “one of our longtime self-taught art buyers from New York. He has been participating in our auctions for more than 20 years. The circa Nineteenth Century figure of a kneeling enslaved man was of carved and painted wood with gesso, 17½ inches wide by 57 inches high, including the base. Unsigned, the figure resembled the famous one created by Josiah Wedgewood depicted on the seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, a British Abolition group formed in 1787, which included the motto, “Am I Not A Man And A Brother?”

The 286-lot sale on day two of the two-day event featured the Richard Harris African-American Experience Collection that included objects and ephemera depicting and documenting slavery, the Civil War, KKK/lynching, the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power to today’s media headlines of Hands Up/ Black Lives Matter. Also included was an important collection of African American self-taught art. The uniqueness of the collection is that it is not a “Trophy Collection” but rather a very powerful overview of the true American history that cannot be erased. On February 10 in an online-only auction that ran without reserves, Slotin featured Southern folk pottery and contemporary quilts. An extended review of both sales will appear in a future issue.