Isaac Scott Hathaway
1872-1967
Richard Allen, First Bishop of the A.M.E. Church
c. 1940
painted plaster
12 x 6-1/2 x 6inches
signed; label across back of shoulders: Tuskegee Institute 100th Anniversary (1881-1981)

Provenance: private collection, Tuskegee, Alabama.
Richard Allen (1760-1831) was a minister, educator, writer and one of the United States' most influential Black leaders of the time. He founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), the first independent Black denomination in the U.S.

Isaac Scott Hathaway opened the Isaac Hathaway Art Company in a basement at 1234 U Street, in Washington, D.C. in 1910. He made and sold small busts and ceramic items. Hathaway's developments in ceramics led him to be labeled by his peers "the Dean of Negro Ceramics". He moved to Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1915, and taught at what would become University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff. He made death masks and busts of various sizes of notable African Americans and sold them to individuals and schools across the country. In 1937, he established the Ceramics Department at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. He became good friends with George Washington Carver and the two experimented with the local clay. In 1946, Hathaway was chosen to design two half dollar coins for the mint, honoring two African Americans (Booker T. Washington and George W. Carver), thus becoming the first African American to design a coin, and also the subjects were the first two African Americans honored on a coin.


REF: Isaac Scott Hathaway (1874-1967), Sculptor, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff , 1996.