Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood (
July 12,
1730 –
January 3,
1795) was an
English potter, credited with the
industrialization of the manufacture of
pottery. He was a member of the
Darwin â€" Wedgwood family, most famously including his grandson,
Charles Darwin.
Early life
Born the twelfth and youngest child of
Thomas Wedgwood III and Mary Wedgwood, Josiah was raised within a family of
English Dissenters. He survived a childhood bout of
smallpox to serve as an apprentice potter under his eldest brother
Thomas Wedgwood IV.
Smallpox left Josiah with a permanently weakened knee, which made him unable to work the foot pedal of a
potter's wheel. As a result, he concentrated from an early age on designing pottery rather than making it.
In his early twenties, Wedgwood began working with the most renowned English pottery-maker of his day,
Thomas Whieldon. There he began experimenting with a wide variety of pottery techniques, an experimentation that coincided with the burgeoning early industrial city of
Manchester, which was nearby. Inspired, Wedgwood leased the
Ivy Works in his home town of
Burslem and set to work. Over the course of the next decade, his experimentation (and a considerable injection of capital from his marriage to a richly endowed distant cousin, Sally Wedgwood) transformed the sleepy artisan works into the first true pottery
factory.
Marriage and children
Wedgwood married Sarah Wedgwood (a third cousin). Together, they had children:
* Susannah Wedgwood (1765–1817) (married
Robert Darwin, was mother of the English naturalist
Charles Darwin)
*
John Wedgwood (1766–1844)
*
Josiah Wedgwood II (1769–1843)
*
Thomas Wedgwood (1771–1805) (no children)
* Catherine Wedgwood (1774–1823) (no children)
* Sarah Wedgwood (1776–1856) (no children)
* Mary Anne Wedgwood (1778–1786) (no children)
Work
Wedgwood's work was of very high quality (when visiting his workshop, if he saw an offending vessel that failed to meet with his standards, he would smash it with his stick, exclaiming, "This will not do for Josiah Wedgwood!"). Wedgwood was also keenly interested in the scientific advances of his day and it was this interest that underpinned his adoption of its approach and methods to revolutionise the quality of his pottery. His unique glazes began to distinguish Josiah's wares from anything else on the market.
By
1763 he was receiving orders from the highest levels of the
British nobility, including
Queen Charlotte. Wedgwood convinced her to let him name the line of pottery she purchased "Queen's Ware", and trumpeted the royal association in his paperwork and stationery. As a burgeoning industrialist, Wedgwood was a major backer of the
Trent and Mersey Canal dug between the
River Trent and
River Mersey, during which time he became friends with
Erasmus Darwin.
Later that decade, his burgeoning business caused him to move from the smaller Ivy Works to the newly-built
Etruria Works, which would run for 180 years. The factory was so-named after the
Etruria district of
Italy, where black
porcelain dating to
Etruscan times was being excavated. Wedgwood found this porcelain inspiring, and his first major commercial success was its duplication with what he called "Black Basalt". Not long after the new works opened, continuing trouble with his smallpox-afflicted knee made necessary the
amputation of his right leg.
In
1780, his long-time business partner
Thomas Bentley died, and Wedgwood turned to Darwin for help in running the business. As a result of the close association that grew up between the Wedgwood and Darwin families, Josiah's eldest daughter would later marry Erasmus' son. One of the children of that marriage,
Charles Darwin, would also marry a Wedgwood —
Emma, Josiah's granddaughter. Essentially, this double-barrelled inheritance of Josiah's money permitted Charles Darwin the life of leisure that eventually led to the formulation of his theory of evolution.
In the latter part of his life, Wedgwood's obsession was to duplicate the
Portland Vase, a blue and white
glass vase dating to the
first century AD. For three years he worked on the project, eventually producing what he considered a satisfactory copy in
1789. After passing on his company to his sons, Wedgwood died in
1795.
Wedgwood's company is still a famous name in pottery today (as part of Waterford Wedgwood; see
Waterford Crystal), and "Wedgwood China" is the commonly used term for his
Jasperware, the blue (or sometmes green) china with overlaid white decoration, still common throughout the world.
He was an active member of the
Lunar Society and is remembered on the
Moonstones in
Birmingham.
His home
Etruria Hall, built
1768–
1771 by
Joseph Pickford, was restored as part of the
1986 Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival is now part of a four-star hotel.
*
Wedgwood: The First Tycoon, Brian Dolan, Viking Adult, 416 pp. (October 7, 2004). ISBN 0670033464.
*
Wedgwood collection at the
Lady Lever Art Gallery
