This jar was made by Thomas W. Commeraw, a free African American potter in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side during the late 1700s and early 1800s. He had a kiln in Corlears Hook, near the East River between where the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges are today. Like most pottery of that time, his pieces were useful for everyday life and decorated with carved designs painted with a blue glaze. The leaf-like design on both sides of this jar was common in his work and set his pottery apart from others in New York City. Commeraw created the largest collection of work by a free Black potter before the Civil War. Commeraw\u2019s jar connects to Afro-Futurism because it shows that Black people in the past were artists and creators. It helps imagine a history where they had power and freedom, which is what Afro-Futurism is all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This jar was made by Thomas W. Commeraw, a free African American potter in Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side during the late 1700s and early 1800s. He had a kiln in Corlears Hook, near the East River between where the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges are today. Like most pottery of that time, his pieces were useful for everyday life and decorated with carved designs painted with a blue glaze. The leaf-like design on both sides of this jar was common in his work and set his pottery apart from others in New York City. Commeraw created the largest collection of work by a free Black potter before the Civil War. Commeraw\u2019s jar connects to Afro-Futurism because it shows that Black people in the past were artists and creators. It helps imagine a history where they had power and freedom, which is what Afro-Futurism is all about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":507,"featured_media":32,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","clear"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/507"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/34"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/seminar-1-arts-in-new-york-fall-2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}