(1777) Rattlesnake DON’T TREAD ON ME intaglio seal by Wedgwood and Bentley. Jasperware, dark blue body with black wash. 20 x 18 mm. Wedgwood Portraits and the American Revolution (National Portrait Gallery, 1976), pp. 118-119.

A coiled rattlesnake with head to right and tail aloft to left beneath a ribbon inscribed DON'T TREAD ON ME on obverse, back plain and unmarked. Superb condition and preservation, no chips or visible flaws. This piece is precisely datable to the summer of 1777, when Josiah Wedgwood wrote to his partner Thomas Bentley about this exact piece. On August 8, 1777, Wedgwood wrote "the Rattle Snake is in hand. I think it will be best to keep such unchristian articles for Private Trade." His privacy was a rational response to the issue this piece (and, later, his bust of Washington) would create: while Josiah Wedgwood was an unabashed political left-winger (see The Radical Potter by Tristram Hunt, 2021) and friend to the American cause, he had also been selling his products to Queen Charlotte for over a decade and needed to preserve his inroads to the moderate and conservative British aristocracy. Thus, this piece that was inspired by an American battle flag brought to Wedgwood's attention by his friend Benjamin Franklin was made for exclusive audiences in very small numbers and remains extremely rare today. It did not appear in the Wedgwood catalog of cameos until the 1787 edition. The original mold for this intaglio survives in the Wedgwood collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum. As noted in the museum's online cataloging of the mold, "It is this discrepancy in the time between the production and advertisement of the 'rattlesnake' intaglio coupled with Josiah's own wish to make the 'unchristian' article available only to the 'Private trade' that make this object unusual and fascinating." Out of the entire Wedgwood canon, few pieces exemplify Josiah Wedgwood's interest in and support of the American cause as much as this.

From the Richard Margolis Collection. Earlier from Simon Bendall, May 1996.

Estimate: $2000