Commeraw Events

Below you’ll find a running list of events featuring Thomas W. Commeraw:

Thomas W. Commeraw: Forgotten Free Black Potter of Federal New York, by Brandt Zipp, Ima Hogg Ceramic Circle, Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX, April 22, 2024.

Thomas W. Commeraw: Free Black Abolitionist Potter of Federal New York, by Brandt Zipp, From the Ground Up: Ceramics in Context, Colonial Williamsburg in collaboration w/ MESDA, Williamsburg, VA, March 23, 2024.

Commeraw’s work appears in Unnamed Figures: Black Presence and Absence in the Early American North, American Folk Art Museum, November 15, 2023 – March 24, 2024; and Historic Deerfield, May 1 – August 3, 2024.

Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw, Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, June 24 – September 24, 2023.

The Life & Legacy of Thomas W. Commeraw with Brandt Zipp, Online Lecture Presented by Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, NY, July 5, 2023. (Free video available here!)

Crafting Freedom: The Life and Legacy of Free Black Potter Thomas W. Commeraw, New-York Historical Society, New York, NY, January 27 – May 28, 2023.

Book release, Commeraw’s Stoneware: The Life and Work of the First African-American Pottery Owner, by A. Brandt Zipp, September 12, 2022.

An iconic Commeraw jar is featured in Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, November 5, 2021 – ongoing.

Thomas W. Commeraw: Free African-American Stoneware Potter of Federal New York, by Brandt Zipp, American Ceramic Circle Symposium, Old Salem / Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, NC, November 8, 2019.

A Century of Stoneware on the Island of Manhattan, by Brandt Zipp, New York State Museum, Albany, NY, May 5, 2017.

A Commeraw jug is displayed at the White House in Washington, D.C., part of a relatively small number of objects selected from the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture to celebrate Black History Month, February 2016.

Thomas W. Commeraw is featured in the Chipstone Foundation Galleries at the Milwaukee Art Museum, as part of their Dave Project, 2015 – ongoing.

An African-American Potter in Federal New York, by Brandt Zipp, Historic Eastfield, East Nassau, NY, June 23, 2013.