Josiah
Wedgwood 1730 – 1795
“Vasemaker
General to the Universe”
Born
in Burslem, Staffordshire in
1730, Josiah Wedgwood was the youngest of 13 children of a pottery
making family. When Josiah was just 9 years old his father died and the
size of the family meant that he had to start earning his living so he
was apprenticed to his elder brother as a potter. The
work was hard and the days long
and, when Josiah contracted smallpox that left him with a damaged knee,
he could no longer work the kick-wheel for 10 hours a day so he had to
find new ways to help the family. He
studied the market and realised
that there was a demand for more elegant designs and shapes than the
heavy earthenware that Staffordshire was famous for. He began a
number of experiments to find a finer clay and better colours. At the
age of 24 he found a sponsor in the form of Midlands potter Thomas
Whieldon who financed the experiments. It was here that Wedgwood
invented the clear green glaze that became commonplace on
vegetable-shaped pottery that was popular in the 1750s.
Around
the same time the taste for
tea was growing in England and Josiah took over a pottery kiln in
Burslem where he made teapots to exploit the market. Around the same
time imports of fine porcelain from China were being bought by the rich
but the middle classes could not afford the delicate blue and white
items. Wedgwood began another series of experiments to manufacture a
cheaper alternative that gave as fine a result as the Chinese wares. It
took more than 4,000 experiments before he developed his cream ware for
which he was to become well-known.
In
1764 he married his cousin Sarah
and opened a new factory, the Bell Works, in Burslem. The following
year he was commissioned by George III’s wife Queen Charlotte to make a
dinner service. The set was such a success that Josiah began calling
himself “Potter to Her Majesty” and everyone wanted the new
“Queensware” tableware. Soon
after with business partner
Thomas Bentley he opened showrooms in London and launched the country’s
first mail-order homeware service. New styles were being introduced to
the Wedgwood range and he began to make English copies of some Etruscan
vases that had been discovered during the recent excavations at
Pompeii. Wedgwood refined the black Staffordshire ware to create a fine
pottery he called “basalt”.
The
demand for Wedgwood’s pieces made
him understand that he needed an efficient transport system to deliver
it and he soon realised that the new canal system was ideal. Unlike
pannier carriage by donkey on rough turnpike roads, canal journeys were
smooth and less hazardous to cargo. He supported the Trent and Mersey
Canal, which linked The Potteries to Liverpool and brought new markets
as well as making it easier to bring in raw materials. It
was around the same time that he built his largest works “Etruria”
named after the Italian style that had brought him fame.
He
also began work to find lighter
coloured clays to exploit the changing taste for pastel colours that
was sweeping the country in home decoration. After another 5,000
experiments he discovered the recipe for the green and blue Jasper
wares that today symbolise a “typical” Wedgwood piece. Ever
the scientist he designed a
pyrometer that measured shrinkage in a piece of clay so that the exact
temperature of a kiln could be gauged so that more repeatable
conditions could be applied to kilns to reduce waste. For his invention
he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. Perhaps
Wedgwood’s most famous piece
was his copy of the Portland Vase, which he made in black Jasper that
replicated the classic glass original. It was produced in 1789.
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