Casgliadau Arlein

This watercolour scene reveals both the natural beauty on the surface of the Parys Mountain in Anglesey, as well as its exposed underbelly – a source of raw wealth in the form of copper ore that was systematically mined from it. The workers in the image, busy excavating copper, as much a result of the landscape as the copper itself in many ways. It begs the question what could be more Welsh than the landscape of Wales, and what could this reveal about Black history. Perhaps it reveals a defining feature of it - how well it is hidden until you point it out.

The copper mined here was shipped out, first to the ports at Swansea, and then sold around the world, even being used to sheath the hulls of Nelson’s naval ships. Beyond ships, which in themselves played a role in exercising colonial powers over others, copper was also used for the copper plates that were used to boil sugar, grown and harvested by enslaved Africans on plantations across the Caribbean islands, as well as various copper artefacts that were traded from enslaved Africans across West Africa.

This work is included in the PITCH BLACK digital Black History tours of the National Museum Wales collections.