Josiah Wedgwood

“ There is no doubt that the wares (especially those having green and tortoiseshell glazes) made during the period of collaboration between Thomas Whieldon and Josiah Wedgwood owed much of their distinctive character to improvements effected by the young potter.
It was probably during the first half of 1759 that Wedgwood, now in his twenty-ninth year, became a master-potter. His capital was extremely small; but he knew his strength, and ventured to take on lease a small pot-works in Burslem, part of the premises belonging to his cousins John and Thomas Wedgwood. ”

“ The life of Adams of Greengates is given in “William Adams—an old English Potter,” Ed. by Wm. Turner, F.S.S. Born in 1745, he was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood, and became his most adept pupil. He commenced manufacturing on his own account at Greengates about 1787, and the jasper he turned out is difficult to distinguish from that of Wedgwood. No doubt he had full particulars of body and firing, but other potters had that information and yet failed to produce the same class of ware. ”

“ The earliest names found upon them are Thomas and Ralph Toft, William Talor, Joseph Glass; all names still known in Staffordshire.
[Pg 220] Burslem. The family of Wedgwood was of long standing at Burslem, and many members of it were employed in making pottery long before the birth of the great potter, Josiah Wedgwood. His father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, as well as many of his other relations, were all engaged in the trade. Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730, at Burslem; he was the youngest of thirteen children; his father, Thomas Wedgwood, died when Josiah was only nine years old. ”

“ Several of Josiah's brothers and sisters never learned to read and write, for like Judith Shakespeare, the daughter of William, they made their mark: which shows us that there are several ways of turning that pretty trick. Children born of the same parents are not necessarily related to each other, nor to their parents.
Mary Wedgwood, Josiah's mother, wrote for him his name in clay, and some years after he related how he copied it a hundred times every day for a week, writing with a stick in the mud. ”

“ It is said that in 1750 no fewer than sixty factories were making salt glaze in the Potteries, and every Saturday, for five hours at the time of firing up, the whole country was black with the smoke of the burning salt—so black, it is said, that people groped their way through the streets of [66] Burslem. But meanwhile Enoch Booth at Tunstall had invented the fluid lead-glaze destined in time to turn plain earthenware into “cream-colour”; Josiah Wedgwood at Burslem was already devising new mixtures which should convert “cream-colour” into “Queen’s Ware” ”

“ The first important manufactory of borax in the Potteries was that of Wood, Kuntz & Co., [173] a firm in which the sons of Enoch Wood were interested. Because the risk of lead poisoning is always present in the preparation and uses of the lead glazes, attempts have been made for 100 years to produce a good glaze free from lead—or rather free from unfritted lead—soluble in hydrochloric acid. Josiah Wedgwood produced such a glaze, but it gave a rough surface wherewith it was useless in those days to try to compete. ”

“ Works; (o) of Cliffgate Bank; (p) afterwards Copelands; (q) afterwards Adams’; (r) of Market St., Longton; (s) of the Foley Works; (t) of High St., Longton.
Of course this list is fallible. Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood potted at Etruria, not Fenton; John Turner, shown at Fenton, should probably be the Turner of Lane End; the Josiah “Wood” of Burslem is almost certainly Josiah Wedgwood, who owned at that time the old Churchyard Works, in which he had been born. (They were sold in 1795 to Thomas Green, and on his bankruptcy in 1811 passed to John Moseley) . Again, both S. and J. Cartlich, and Wm. ”

“ Wedgwood’s financial success with his Jasper and Black Etruscan ware, a success hitherto quite unique in the experience of the Potteries, led every potter of any capacity to attempt the same lines. They cannot be blamed for trying to imitate what was demanded by the fashionable market. The whole progress of the industry had been based upon the copying of successful processes, and Wedgwood did not patent his patterns or methods, even could he have done so. ”

“ It is only of quite recent years that the agate and marble, perfected later by Wedgwood, or the quaint cottage chimney ornaments and tortoiseshell ware of Whieldon, Wedgwood and Ralph Wood, have come to be valued as a native and genuine Staffordshire art. When Whieldon found that his market had left him he made no attempt to follow in the wake of his pupils, and about 1780 retired from business. His factory was just south of the present railway station at Stoke, and he built and lived in the house which still looks down upon the Trent and the railway. ”

“ But the only famous potter in what might be called the old Staffordshire style was Thomas Whieldon.
Thomas Whieldon began making pots at Little Fenton about 1740. He was a better educated class of man than the ordinary potter. He potted well; enjoyed trials and experiments for their own sake; and, through his connection with both Wedgwood and Spode, he may be said to have had the same influence on the taste and education of the Staffordshire potters that Elers had unintentionally half a century before. If we are to believe Shaw, writing in 1828, he began in a very humble way. ”

“ The cream-coloured Queen’s Ware was the chief product of Wedgwood’s early times in Burslem. It was at first decorated, when required, by the widow Warburton, of Hot Lane. But the invention of the cheap method of printing designs on to the glazed ware, made in 1755 by Saddler and Green of Liverpool, provided an excellent substitute for enamelling on the more useful ware. Wedgwood used to send his ware to Liverpool to be printed, and was often there himself, importing clay, or [90] looking after the export trade to America, then, as now, the most important branch of the export trade. ”

“ It had been imported and used by Wedgwood, Turner of Lane End, the Warburtons and others, and an extension of Cookworthy’s patent, giving to Champion of Bristol the monopoly for seven more years of the right to use this material, whether for making china or earthenware, was naturally resisted by the earth potters of Staffordshire. In this opposition Wedgwood and Turner took a leading part; and their action has been criticized by many who thought they saw in Champion the struggling inventor penalized by pushing capitalists. ”

“ And it is this jasper ware that is called to mind when “Old Wedgwood” is spoken of by amateurs. A proper description is impossible here of these Jasper or Black Basalt vases, statues or plaques, in which he received the invaluable assistance of Flaxman as a modeller, and the advice of every gentleman of the period who prided himself upon his taste. Description of manufacture and details of patterns must alike be left to special monographs, such as that of Prof. Church.
To complete a bald account of Wedgwood’s career as a potter we must add the following notes. ”

“ It must be said however that he always stamped his imitations with his own name and not Wedgwood’s; a precaution which is not always observed at this present day, even with a patent law to enforce a man’s right to his own trade-mark. It is noticeable too that when Wedgwood did, in 1771, patent the method of painting with an encaustic red on the Black Etruscan ware, Palmer produced the same results and forced him to share the patent rights. ”

“ As soon as he was able to afford a factory of his own, he went back to Burslem, and in 1759 he hired, from his uncles John and Thomas Wedgwood of the Big House, a factory known as the Ivy House Works. Here, or at the “Brick House” Works which he hired in 1762, [85] he made cauliflower, cream colour, and, later, black basalt ware. There worked for him at the Ivy House Works a first cousin, Thomas Wedgwood, who afterwards became his partner in the production of “useful” ware. ”

“ Certain it is, as will be shown later, that Aaron Wedgwood and his sons Thomas and Richard and also Matthew Garner were making brown stoneware and red teapots in Burslem in 1693. Stoneware, as we understand it, is so hard and dense that it requires no glaze to make it impervious to water, because it can be fired at such a high temperature as to partially fuse the body of the ware. ”

“ The fluid lead glazes used by the skilful potters of the latter half of the century gave a surface smoother and more suitable for food. The demand for ornamental salt glaze was small, and the enormous demand for useful ware sent all the best potters into the useful trade; while in the ornamental lines Wedgwood’s [81] Greek and Etruscan shapes entirely ruled the market. All these causes conspired to ruin the salt glaze, and by 1770 it had fallen into general disuse. The last considerable makers of salt glaze were the Baddeleys and Christopher and Charles Whitehead of the Old Hall, Hanley. ”

“ It was to Dr Thomas Wedgwood (1655-1717) , and his son Thomas (1695-1737) , who made stoneware at “Ruffleys” in Burslem, that local tradition ascribes most of the improvements in salt-glazed wares. Mr Burton writes of the younger Dr Thomas: “It has never been suggested that Dr Thomas Wedgwood, like Twyford or Astbury, learned anything directly from Elers, but as he was a man of intelligence and commercial aptitude, as well as one of the best practical potters of the day, [45] he would naturally adopt such new ideas as were brought in his way. ”

“ I think this jug was made for him by his nephew, Richard Wedgwood, to whom he both leased the Overhouse Works and married his daughter and heiress. Several pieces are marked with the name “Joseph Glass,” who is known to have been a potter in Hanley in 1710-15.
All these early master potters were handy men of many trades. They made their pots in sheds at the “backsides” of their dwelling houses, alongside the cow-shed. They dug their own clay, often in front of their own front doors. The Wedgwoods at least owned and dug their own coal, wherewith to fire the oven. ”

“ Invention died and the wares, tamely and ignorantly copied by inartistic workmen, sank artistically throughout the next half century. The copyist, imitator or [108] rival, who annoyed Wedgwood most in his lifetime was Humphrey Palmer of Hanley. Most of the Palmer and Neale ware we now know of seems original enough—and good enough—but from 1769-1776 Wedgwood regards him as a copyist of the most objectionable description. ”

“ It is only within the last decade that a form of liquid gold has been discovered which requires no burnishing, and yet is fairly durable.
Another form of decoration in which gold was employed was lustre ware. Mr Burton thinks the application of a gold lustre to Staffordshire pottery was introduced first about 1792 at Etruria, and was used on Wedgwood’s “Pearl” dessert ware, made in the form of shells. If this lustre, or silver lustre, is laid on thickly, it converts the earthenware in appearance into gold or silver plate—an inartistic transformation. ”

“ But potting is such a specialized industry, so confined to and associated with North Staffordshire, that it is possible to study very clearly in the case of this industry the cause of its localization, and its gradual change from a home to a factory business. The rise of capitalism, the attempts at revolt on the part of the workers, the increase of machinery and steam power, all these can be studied very closely in the potting industry, just [x] because the history of the district is the history of potting and of the inhabitants’ whole lives. ”

“ It would be a mistake to depreciate these patterns as [79] being unsuitable and vulgar imitations of nature. The natural shapes were adapted and conventionalized in a thoroughly artistic way, as anyone who looks at Whieldon’s or Wedgwood’s samples of this ware preserved in the South Kensington Museum can see at a glance. Slavish imitations there were later, but that was not Whieldon’s way.
Staffordshire figures decorated with Whieldon glaze, probably by Wedgwood. c. 1760. Stoke-on-Trent Museums. ”

“ M. L. Solon, whose special work—pâte-sur-pâte decoration—still holds the public taste and deserves to become classical. In this process white slip clay-paste is painted on to a dark clay body, and the varying thickness and transparency of the layers of paint produce an effect which differs completely from either plain enamelling or the high relief of jasper. At the same time it lends itself to the individual taste of the artist and can never become merely mechanical. ”

“ We know of two other manufacturers who made agate and tortoiseshell ware—Daniel Bird, called “the flint potter” because of his experiments with different proportions of flint in the clay body, [78] and John and Thomas Alders of Cliff Bank. There were probably many others. These two made buttons and knife handles very largely. Both worked at the Stoke end of the Potteries.
Before entering on the fresh epoch in the History of Potting which opens with the work of Wedgwood, it will be as well to recount the end of the salt-glaze industry. It was a risky manufacture. ”

“ When once improvements in manufacture began, invention followed invention; and though the records during the second quarter of [56] the eighteenth century are full of entries of patents, registered for the performance of every possible and impossible pottery process, yet most of the improvements—especially the vital changes in body and glaze made by Astbury and Booth—became public property unchecked by patent law. ”