Wedgwood

“ Turns out to be lively, intelligent creature. Wedgwood, always thoughtful of other people's tastes, brought down with him from the roof (in Thomas Roe's pocket) a few chips. One of these he placed in a saucer borrowed from the tea room. Here the grub, which for brevity we will call X., lives. In incredibly short time X. burrowed through the wood, its bright intelligent eyes gleaming out on the other side, as who should say, "Here I am again."
Expects in time to be able to make it converse. Busy teaching it difference between a coup and a plot. ”

“ When Wedgwood began his labours, the Staffordshire district was only in a half-civilized state. The people were poor, uncultivated, and few in number. When Wedgwood’s manufacture was firmly established, there was found ample employment at good wages for three times the number of population; while their moral advancement had kept pace with their material improvement.
Men such as these are fairly entitled to take rank as the Industrial Heroes of the civilized world. ”

“ More accommodation was wanted, not only for an increased number of workmen, but also for carrying out the modern system of division of labour which Wedgwood was introducing, and for improved methods of manipulation. But the master-potter himself was everything and everywhere, and not only superintended all departments, but was the best workman in the place, making most of the models, preparing the mixed clays, and of course acting as clerk and warehouseman. Yet Wedgwood saw the impossibility of conducting upon the old lines the factory which he had begun to develop. ”

“ Sarah's brother accommodatingly died a few years after her marriage, and so she became sole heiress to a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, and this went to the building up of Etruria.
Wedgwood, toward the close of his life, was regarded as the richest man in England who had made his own fortune. And better still, he was rich in intellect and all those finer faculties that go into the making of a great and generous man. ”

“ He had gotten a good road to Cheshire, and an equally good one to Liverpool, and was shipping [Pg 74] crockery in large quantities to America. Occasionally, Wedgwood taught the designing classes, himself. As a writer he had developed a good deal of facility, for three love-letters a week for five years will educate any man. To know the right woman is a liberal education. Wedgwood also had given local addresses on the necessity of good roads, and the influence of a tidy back-yard on character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That is, I mean, to write books, or even articles. He could draw up a pedigree with any man living, or prepare a table of statistics on one of his subjects, but that was as far as his writing went. I should imagine that this manuscript you mention as having been taken by him to Miss Tandy, and now missing, was some pedigree he had prepared. But whose, of course, one has no idea."
Wedgwood considered matters awhile. He was a leisurely thinker, and when any factor in a case was presented to him, liked to meditate on it before going further. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Strictly speaking, Wedgwood's copy of this was at best a copy in one material of the technique of another. But if it be not the highest art to copy thus in intricate detail, yet it must be admitted that such masterly elaboration had never before been attempted by the potter, and the early copies of Wedgwood (he set out to make only fifty) stand unequalled as specimens of potting by the hands of trained workmen directed by genius. ”

“ For these three things I substituted a Jasper spill vase, and many a spill has been caused by the knowing ones calling this Wedgwood, when it is not.
I have been lucky in finding some early specimens of Wedgwood—a plate impressed “Pearl,” printed but touched up by hand, a pair of tortoise-shell (back and front) plates with raised daisy and bead border. One plate, octagonal shape, cupids dancing in centre, with a remarkable light and shade effect, with oak-leaf relief border, and having a fine tortoise-shell back. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Plagiarists of Wedgwood.—We have seen that John Turner, of Lane End, that William Adams, of Greengates, came under the strong influence of Wedgwood, but were no more imitators, in the broad sense, than Gainsborough and Romney may be said to be imitators of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It must be allowed in art that a school may arise under the guidance of some remarkable genius who tinges the originality of his contemporaries with his own master mind. ”

“ Had he seen him when he himself turned in at Henekey's—was the arrangement between them he, Thomas, was to wait at Henekey's while John went to Miss Tandy's? If they had met, did John tell Thomas the result of any investigation he'd been making down at Netherwell? Had he told him something before ever he went to Netherwell?"
"You don't trust Mr. Thomas Wraypoole?" suggested the inspector.
"No!" said Wedgwood, sharply. "In my opinion he's as clever as he's unscrupulous—both highly developed. I think he knows a lot that he's no intention of telling." ”

“ His Egyptian black, or basalt ware, and his jasper ware, are of great excellence and beauty and very closely resemble those of Wedgwood. He was noted for his piracy of these goods, and surreptitiously obtained Wedgwood’s new designs as they came out. His piracy was, however, after a time, carried too far, and an injunction was served upon him to restrain his making Etruscan painted vases in contravention of Wedgwood’s patent. This ended in a compromise: Palmer purchasing a share in the patent right. ”

“ This is in respect to a jasper medallion portrait of John Philip Elers. Wedgwood is wrong in one or two particulars. The salt glaze question is open to doubt, and most certainly Elers never used moulds for their ware.
We give this as showing the continuity which existed between Elers and Wedgwood, the latter certainly owed his application of the ornamentation in relief to the method which Elers had introduced into Staffordshire. We do not say invented, because there is always Dwight standing in the background. ”

“ Other factories, his contemporaries, were adopting the same principles, and those who think Wedgwood unoriginal or uninventive are quite willing to credit him with all the inventiveness and originality necessary to overturn the old system. The truth lies between these two extremes. Wedgwood, in common with his contemporaries, not unwillingly embraced all the newest devices known. It was Sadler and Green, of Liverpool, who together in one day by their invention printed as many tiles as it would have taken a hundred painters to do in the same time. ”

“ Wedgwood did not patent his inventions and improvements, and thus every manufacturer was stimulated, and a host of Queen’s or cream-ware makers soon, sprang up. When he “discovered the art of making Queen’s ware,” wrote Wedgwood himself, “which employs ten times more people than all the china works in the kingdom, he did not ask for a patent for this important discovery. A patent would greatly have limited its public utility. ”

“ They were chiefly of large denomination, but he took a certain amount in smaller notes."
"A man can do a lot of things with eleven thousand pounds at his command," remarked Wedgwood. "And he's a sharp, crafty man in my opinion, full of trickery. You haven't even an idea where he was going? I've heard that he told the man to whom he sold his business that he was thinking of taking up a foreign agency."
"Oh, I should say he's off abroad!" exclaimed the manager. ”

“ MORTOVER GRANGE
Wedgwood took a good look at this venerable survival of a past age before he approached nearer. As a countryman born and bred he had some knowledge of old houses, and he knew that in this he saw one that had lasted for many and many a generation: had he possessed more technical knowledge of such things he would have been able to fix an approximate date for its buildings, for over the entrance a Tudor rose and a portcullis, the badge of Henry VII, denoted that it had been erected at some date between the years 1485 and 1509. ”

“ In Wedgwood’s “memorial” against the petition of Champion, which he presented to parliament, “Josiah Wedgwood on behalf of himself and the manufacturers of earthenware in Staffordshire,” urges “that the manufacture of earthenware in that county has of late received many essential improvements, and is continually advancing to higher degrees of perfection; that the further improvement of the manufactory must depend upon the application and the free use of the various raw materials that are the natural products of this country ”

“ In August, Seventeen Hundred Ninety-six, Godwin borrowed fifty pounds from Thomas Wedgwood, son of Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria, which money was to tide Mary over a financial stress, and afford her the necessary leisure to complete "The Rights of Woman." The experience that Mary Wollstonecraft had in the publishing business, now enabled her to make favorable arrangements for the issue of her book. The radicalism of America and France had leavened England until there was quite a market for progressive literature. ”

“ Wedgwood's business abilities.—He was undoubtedly a keen man of affairs. When in partnership with Whieldon he had travelled to London, to Manchester, to Birmingham, to Sheffield, and to Liverpool, which brought him into touch with silversmiths and metal workers in connection with the agate knife-handles and similar Whieldon ware. He evidently realised that Staffordshire was behind other districts in many respects. Although only a young man, he interested the influential people in the neighbourhood of the potteries and the roads were improved and water transit provided as an outlet for goods. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In giving evidence before a House of Commons Committee in 1785, eight years after the Mersey and Trent Canal was opened, Wedgwood was able to say that there were being employed in the Potteries at that time from 15,000 to 20,000 persons on earthenware manufacture alone—an increase of from 8000 to 13,000 in twenty-five years, independently of the opening of new branches of industry. Work was abundant, and the general conditions were those of a greatly enhanced comfort and prosperity. ”

“ And the said confederates, “the better to colour their said unjust and injurious practises,” pretend that the earthenwares made and sold by them are in no way like those invented by the complainant but differ from them in form and figure and have several additions and improvements ... whereas the truth is they are made in imitation of the complainants wares ... prays that writs of subpena be directed to John Chandler, John Elers, David Elers, Aaron Wedgwood, Thomas Wedgwood, Richard Wedgwood and Matthew Garner and James Morley. ”

“ It may be conceded at once that neither Mr. Wedgwood nor either of the ladies with whom he wrote had any conscious knowledge of Col. Gurwood—his military career, or his sad taking off; but they were all intelligent people. John Gurwood, as it turned out, was a noted man; he was an officer in the Peninsular War, under the Duke of Wellington, performed an act of special bravery and daring, in the performance of which he was severely wounded, and for which he was afterward granted a coat of arms. ”