By Laurie O’Neill — [email protected]
If you possessed a Wedgwood teapot in the 1770s, as pretty as it was, you may have relegated it to the closet — or trash heap.
That’s because it was made in England and was an example of the products the colonists chose to reject while boycotting British trade.
The teapot and about 50 other objects — paintings, historic clothing, political cartoons, textiles, furniture, and ceramics — are on display in a special exhibition at the Concord Museum titled “Whose Revolution.” It commemorates the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolutionary War and includes film and multimedia installations.
The items offer an “inclusive perspective on this pivotal moment in American history,” says a Concord Museum spokesperson. The exhibit addresses “the experiences of women, Indigenous communities, and free and enslaved Black people who grappled with the meaning of revolution in their own lives.”
Reed Gochberg, the museum’s associate curator and director of exhibitions, says the display “brings together a wide variety of objects that speak to many different people and their perspectives on this history, urging us to consider whose stories have been remembered or left out, and what that means for how we understand its significance today.”
Teapot and twivel
Featured objects in the exhibit besides the Wedgwood teapot, which dates to 1750-60, are a needlework sampler made by a 10-year-old girl in 1774 and a lavish silk dress of the type colonial women coveted in the 1760s and 1770s but probably would have shunned as boycotts of English products took hold.
Also included is a media installation exploring the lives of free and enslaved Black people in Concord; an 18th-century embroidered pocket that colonial women would tie onto their dresses or petticoats; and a woodworking tool known as a twivel that Gershom Swan, great-grandfather of Concord Museum founder Cummings Davis, used to pry open crates of East India Tea Co. tea as attempts to return the tea to England broke down in December 1773 and Bostonians voted at Town Meeting to destroy it, setting into motion the Boston Tea Party.
Lisa Krassner, the museum’s executive director, says Whose Revolution “offers a rich addition to our permanent galleries that detail the events of April 19. The expanded view of this period … serves to deepen our understanding of the founding of our nation.”
“Whose Revolution,” which runs through September 1, is open during the museum’s spring hours, Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., including Patriots Day April 19, and Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
