Material culture associated with the campaign to abolish slavery in Britain emerged in the 1780s, after the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade held its first meeting towards the end of that decade. Between the 1780s and 1860s abolitionists used various means to disseminate their anti-slavery message to British society, not only producing printed pamphlets and books, but also transferring prints and poems onto everyday objects such as textiles, ceramics and glass.

This extremely rare blue glass sugar bowl, dating from 1820-30, and inscribed with the message ‘EAST INDIA SUGAR / not made by / SLAVES’, is an important material remnant of the boycotting of sugar produced through exploitative labour practices.The bowl is one of possibly only two known examples, the other being in the British Museum (museum no. 2002,0904.1) and enclosed within an associated wooden tea caddy, signifying the place of these objects within the 18th and 19th century social practice of tea and coffee drinking. Like the many other ceramic objects which convey the same messages, and other key pieces in the V&A collection such as the Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion modelled by William Hackwood in c.1787 (414:1304-1885), this object would have allowed men and women sympathisers of the abolitionist movement to signal their support in social settings as they mixed with acquaintances and engaged in topical conversation.

There are a number of comparable sugar bowls to this one produced in ceramic, including drabware sugar bowls with the same inscription that are in the collection of Norwich Castle Museum and Wilberforce House, part of Hull City Museums. A bone china sugar bowl c.1825-30 in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg (1998-37) is painted with a scene of an enslaved person in chains, bending down on one knee with their arms out in supplication, after the imagery used on the Wedgwood abolitionist medallion, and on the reverse is the inscription 'East India Sugar not made / By Slaves / By Six Families using / East India, instead of / West India sugar, one / Slave less is required. A blue earthenware example, complete with its lid is in the collection of the Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, USA (1999.22.a-b). Bowls of this form were advertised in a pamphlet as being sold by B. Henderson, retailing at her China-Warehouse in Rye-Lane, Peckham in c.1828. The advertisement reads that Henderson: 'Respectfully informs the Friends of Africa that she has on Sale an Assortment of Sugar Basins, handsomely labelled in Gold Letters "East India Sugar not made by Slaves."'