By Freedom or Willpower: Artists in Early Maryland

For too long the thriving history of silver, ceramics, metalwork, and furniture in Maryland has been credited to a workshop’s owner—often a white man. This inaccuracy has obscured centuries of artistic diversity, particularly during the period of slavery and indentured servitude in the United States. Maryland women labored in artistic workshops, established studios, and became nationally recognized in their fields. Enslaved and indentured people brought their artistic talents and material knowledge across oceans. They were compelled to create, in the case of enslaved artists, by force and by a willpower to live. 

In spring 2024, the Baltimore Museum of Art reopened the c. 1773 parlor room from Haberdeventure, the plantation of Declaration signer Thomas Stone, with a display of artworks by free, enslaved, and indentured artists from Colonial and Federal Maryland. The exhibit takes the parlor’s builders and painters, likely enslaved, as its inspiration. Disrupting histories that privilege businessmen and formally educated painters, the display conveys how artists in early Maryland came from varied economic, gender, racial, and national backgrounds through biographies of hitherto underacknowledged artists. From this, a new body of Maryland makers, shared in this presentation, are restored to the forefront of Chesapeake object, furniture, and painting histories.