Pots of Innovation
Wedgwood has made some of England’s best loved pottery which has been exported all over the world. Angela Linforth looks back at the legacy of founder Josiah Wedgwood and at the company today.
Wedgwood pottery
THE Wedgwood factory sits in handsome, airy grounds amid the hills of Barlaston, six miles outside Stoke-on-trent. By the entrance, behind a giant teacup, vase and teapot woven in willow on the lawn, a prize-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden has recently been transplanted, ready to bloom afresh later this year.
Why would a Stoke-based pottery have a Chelsea garden on its premises? Well, for centuries the
Wedgwood name and influence has reached into all parts of England’s history and culture.
Take Susannah Wedgwood, who married into the Darwin family and gave birth to the evolutionary pioneer, Charles. Other descendants include the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and Thomas Wedgwood, known to many as “the Father of English Photography”. As for the Chelsea garden, the connection is with Josiah Wedgwood’s eldest son, John, who was the original founder of the Royal Horticultural Society. In 2018 the company sponsored acclaimed garden designer Jo Thompson to create a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to celebrate that connection. Following her goldwinning success there, the garden is now bedding in nicely back at HQ, a living reminder of Wedgwood’s place in history.
It all started with Josiah Wedgwood in 1759. A sculpture of him sits outside the front entrance. Go into the lobby of the World of Wedgwood, as
the factory, museum and assorted cafés and shops are known, and a massive and seemingly random display of plates on the wall in shades of pink, maroon and black magically pixelates into Josiah’s face when you take a picture of it.
Inside the museum you get a firm idea of what a ground-breaking company this was and how Josiah Wedgwood shaped not just lumps of clay but also, like many of his wellheeled contemporaries, society itself.
His lasting legacy is some of the best pottery that the UK has ever produced, exported to some of the finest china cabinets all over the world.
Josiah was born into a Stoke pottery family on July 12, 1730. The youngest son of potter Thomas, he thought his father’s output “uninspired and artistically lethargic”, but it didn’t put him off. After an apprenticeship at his older brother’s works, then experience with the more forward-looking Thomas Whieldon as a partner at his firm, Josiah set up his own pottery on May Day, 1759. He rented his first premises from his uncle, John Wedgwood.
Known as a great pioneer, he set about introducing new techniques and machinery that would revolutionise the industry. His rudimentary thermometer measured how much a small ball of clay shrank. It gave more accuracy to measuring the temperature of the kilns rather than just sticking one’s head in, which was the method prior to this. His rose-turning lathe was another introduction which resulted in new decorative techniques which are still used today. He was also a prolific and meticulous experimenter with glazes and colours and designs.
A tall mahogany cabinet in the museum contains drawers full of different hues and finishes produced by Josiah in his quest to find the perfect shade and glaze.
But it was Jasper ware, the iconic, often blue pottery with white decoration, that was his breakthrough product. It was made from dense white stoneware that was stained using mineral oxides. The body was impervious to liquid without the need for a glaze and could be decorated with applied ornamentation.
Wedgwood’s choice of colours for Jasper reflected the new style of interior decoration, Neoclassicism, which was championed by his architect friends Robert Adam and William Chambers. Trays of trial pieces sit in the mahogany cabinet and each trial piece is numbered, corresponding to an entry in his experiment book. Nearly 5,000 individual trials were carried out between 1772 and 1774 before the creation of Jasper ware in 1775.
This was Josiah Wedgwood’s most important contribution to the ceramics world and it has remained the company’s most recognisable product, known the world over. It expanded from small dishes, bowls and vases into candlesticks, figures and more.
One commission in 1765 saw Josiah lift his pottery beyond the realms of the ordinary. “In the 18th century, Queen Charlotte sent out a notice saying that she wanted a nice white tea set,” archivist Lucy Lead explains. “No potter in the area would touch it with a bargepole, apart from Josiah Wedgwood. I think it was technically quite difficult but Wedgwood, being a young man with a newly founded business, decided to have a go. His cream-coloured earthenware was renamed Queen’s ware. In a flash of marketing genius he gave himself the title Potter to her Majesty.”
Queen’s ware proved to be both incredibly versatile and long-lived and could be used for everything from utilitarian wares to complicated, highly decorated and ornate pieces.
His wife Sarah was instrumental in shaping tastes, advising on product and recognising the buying power of women and how to appeal to them.
A chief quality of Queen’s ware was its flexibility. A display of plates on the wall of the museum shows the different patterns and borders available for clients to choose from.
Word spread about the pottery, with customers from the UK and overseas commissioning china to fill their cabinets. Among them was the soon-to-be-published novelist Jane Austen, who wrote to her sister Cassandra on June 11, 1811.
“On Monday I had the pleasure of receiving, unpacking and approving our Wedgwood ware.”
After launching at his uncle’s premises and adding more workshops, Josiah set up the Etruria works in the centre of Stoke in 1769 and it was here he really made his name.
He kept experimenting and was a consummate networker. Knowing that the reputation of Wedgwood rested on its quality, he made sure his workforce was well looked after with good money and training, housing and schools for his workers and their families in the nearby Etruria village.
Nothing remains of that factory and the site is now home to Stoke’s current largest employer, Bet365.
The museum has a wooden model of how the site looked. Josiah’s fire engine, a vital piece of equipment in those days, bought in 1783, is nearby.
“We still have the receipt for 10 shillings in our archive,” Lucy explains. Elsewhere, in a glass case, sits the only surviving piece of pottery made by Josiah himself – a first-day vase, as it’s known.
With his works established and thriving, as well as campaigning for new roads and canals Josiah got involved in the abolition of slavery.
He designed a Jasper ware medallion with the phrase “Am I not a man and a brother?” which he freely gave away to people. They were worn as brooches, buttons and hairpieces.
Though Josiah died before slavery was abolished, it’s certain he was instrumental in laying the foundations of the abolition movement.
After Josiah’s death in 1795, believed to have been from cancer of the jaw, William Gladstone gave a glowing tribute, calling Wedgwood “the greatest man who ever, in any age or country, applied himself to the important work of uniting art with industry.”
The museum shows how many of the most notable designers of the day were employed by Wedgwood.
Among them were the French
designer Emile Lessore, whom Wedgwood enticed from Minton to work on a range of Majolica. Daisy Makeig-jones and her Fairyland lustre ware is also on display, as are animals by the art deco artist John Skeeping. In the 20th century, Keith Murray and Eric Ravilious produced fantastically collectable pieces.
This century Lee Broom has looked into the archive, making a spectacular updated Panther vase – a real Wedgwood classic. Other names who have produced ranges more recently are Jasper Conran and Vera Wang.
There is much to see at the museum, namely one of the most important industrial collections in the world, and plenty elsewhere on the site. The showroom boasts a veritable feast of china to buy, with a tea room at its centre. There is also a restaurant where the walls are lined with archive images of the factory.
A factory tour takes you around a manufacturing plant, where, alongside industrial organisation and giant kilns, you have a selection of craftsmen and women using “wagglers”, pressing out delicate designs to go on to Jasper ware. Elsewhere, a batch of Huntsman mugs are having fine brown lines painted on by eye. Hand gilding is also being done, each piece going through the kiln seven times as layers of luxury are built up.
A new range of pottery called Sailor’s Farewell, designed by hotelier Kit Kemp, is making its way through the factory destined for her exclusive Firmdale boutique hotel chain.
It’s British manufacturing at its finest and although things may have changed a lot since Josiah’s time, there is plenty here that he would still recognise and be proud of.
World of Wedgwood, which includes the factory, museum, showroom and cafe is at Wedgwood Drive, Barlaston, Stoke-on-trent ST12 9ER. It is open every day although the factory is closed at weekends. For more information, call 01782 282986 or visit www.worldofwedgwood.com.