Two American Carved & Painted Wood Black Figures, Dressed as Footman:
Two American Carved & Painted Wood Black Figures, Dressed as Footman
American, mid-19th C., On faux marbleized bases.
These rare surviving artifacts offer a powerful yet painful documentation of a seldom-mentioned aspect of slavery in early America. The carved wooden figures, created in the mid-19th century, were commissioned by wealthy enslavers to stand in entrance halls and doorways as silent sentinels.
As noted in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg, slave-holders with vast holdings often dressed those who worked at the house or with the horses and carriage in traditional livery outfits as a conspicuous sign of their wealth.
Standing approximately 5’9″ tall, the figures were carved from pine and painted to depict enslaved men wearing elaborate livery coats, like those found in the collections of the Bullock Museum of Texas and The Maryland Center for History and Culture (MCHC)
The detailed workmanship seen in these figures – from the tight curls of their hair to the brass buttons on their coats – represents the height of the wood-carvers skills. However, this technical skill cannot be separated from the figures’ disturbing purpose: to celebrate and normalize the institution of slavery while literally objectifying enslaved people. The figures’ frozen poses and painted-on smiles present a sanitized fiction that masked the true horrors of bondage.
The silver slave collar, dating to around 1850, provides stark physical evidence of slavery’s inhumanity. Made of heavy gauge silver, the collar’s high-quality material – silver rather than iron – perversely reflected the enslaved person’s monetary value to their enslaver rather than their human dignity.
These objects can now serve a vital role in collections – not just as the decorative pieces they were originally intended to be, but as powerful teaching tools that help demonstrate slavery’s physical and psychological violence.
Their preservation allows us to confront uncomfortable truths about America’s past and the ways that enslaved people were dehumanized through both physical restraints and decorative representations.
Repairs, losses to paint.
69 x 22 x 15 in. (175.3 x 55.9 x 38.1 cm.)
Condition
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