Thomas Commeraw, African-American Potter
For years, historians assumed that Thomas Commeraw, a prolific potter in Manhattan in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was just another of the talented craftsmen with European roots who prospered in the New World, just like his contemporaries at the Crolius and Remmey potteries, but based on the research of Brandt Zipp, auctioneer at Crocker Farm and a respected stoneware historian, Commeraw was actually a free African-American. From his workshop on the Lower East Side’s waterfront, Commeraw produced distinctive wares, often with dramatic ovoid shapes and with incised and cobalt-highlighted “clamshell” or drape-and-tassel decoration. According to Zipp, Commeraw’s surviving work is the largest known body of work by a free black potter in the years before the abolition of slavery in the United States. While unraveling the identity of Commeraw, Zipp has also discovered that Commeraw’s life was, overall, a fascinating one. Commeraw was not only in Manhattan during the War of 1812 and may have played some part in that conflict, but also traveled to Sierra Leone in 1820 at the behest of the American Colonization Society to govern a colony of free blacks there. The Commeraw project is a work in progress, and interested readers can find out more about the project and the book Zipp ultimately hopes to publish at http://www.commeraw.com/.