VASES THAT ENGINEERED A REVOLUTION

Aproper princely education included ivory turning on a rose engine-turning lathe. Imported from Africa at horrific cost to its wildlife, ivory was transformed into fragile vessels of extreme virtuosity. In the 1750s, the Birmingham industrialist Matthew Boulton employed rose engine-turning lathes for decorating metal buttons and buckles. By 1764, Wedgwood was producing engineturned surfaces on ‘leather hard’, unfired clay, examples of which he sent to his future business partner, Thomas Bentley.

They applied this new technology to the production of ornamental vases. Since the 1740s, ‘ Sta ordshire ware’ was the name given to Britain’s great ceramic invention, lead- glazed, cream- coloured ware, made from a combination of white-firing ball clay and calcined flint. Wedgwood was appointed Potter to Her Majesty in 1766, and so marketed his Sta ordshire ware as ‘Queen’s ware’ (and briefly, as ‘ Ivory ware’).

In May 1769, John Parker, owner of Saltram House, Devon, and his wife were gripped by a ‘violent Vase Madness’. They acquired examples in various materials, among them this rare suite of unmarked, engine-turned, lightcoloured creamware vases with flame and pinecone finials, made c1767–9.

Wedgwood looked for inspiration to the work of architects patronised by the royal family, such as William Kent and Sir William Chambers, and copied designs for baroque and Palladian garden urns. By 1771, Wedgwood had relegated his ‘ Ivory’ vases to the ‘garrat’ in favour of his recent black basalt wares. Yet, despite the vagaries of fashion, these early engine-turned vases anticipated the Industrial Revolution, when the machine of this recreation became the very engine of change.