Josiah Wedgwood & Sons

This plate was made in England as part of a series that depicted New England industries. Tobacco was already being grown by Indigenous communities in New England when European settlers first arrived. More than 300 years later, designer Clare Leighton created this series to show the power of the land and, as an objection to industrialization, trades that were being phased out. Leighton participated in tobacco harvesting in Connecticut to learn about this process, bringing that new understanding back to her practice. While tobacco farming has diminished greatly in New England in the last decade, the industry is still alive today.

–Marny Kindness, exhibitions manager