Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) is perhaps the most distinguished English potter, whose work spread throughout Europe and to the United States and Canada. Wedgwood was the youngest son in a family of potters of Burslem, Staffordshire. By 1749 he completed his apprenticeship with the family pottery works and went on to form partnerships with John Harrison and Thomas Alders at Cliff Bank, Stoke, between 1752 to 1754, and with Thomas Whieldon, another notable Staffordshire potter, from 1754-1759. In 1759, Wedgwood terminated this partnership in order to found his own pottery works, making this year the 250th anniversary of the celebrated factory!

The wares, which were considered to be on par with porcelain for a time, consisted significantly of dinner and tea ware, coffee ware, and decorative objects such as vases and large decorative plaques. Production grew to include smaller plaques, called ‘buttons,’ which were incorporated into buckles, jewelry and decorative boxes. Wedgwood developed a number of stoneware bodies including Jasper, Black Basalt, and Rosso Antico. He was greatly influenced by Robert Adam and the Etruscan style, going so far as to name his factory “Erturia,” and began interpreting those designs into pottery, at first directly using red figures in relief on black basalt background to simulate Etruscan vases. Bodies of Rosso Antico (antique red) could be further enhanced by the addition of black bas-relief decoration in the neoclassical style, as seen in this five-light silvered bronze and Wedgwood porcelain mounted chandelier, circa 1880.

In the late 1700s, Wedgwood’s pottery was adapted for the purpose of creating interesting furnishings; he produced a number of urns and vases with clock faces, and “Wedgwood jasper decorations were used on some clocks in other media during the late eighteenth century.”¹ An unusual mahogany, steel and Wedgwood mounted mantel clock combines the decorative talents Wedgwood with what is most likely the work of Birmingham manufacturer and industrialist Matthew Boulton. Boulton was both friend and business rival of Josiah Wedgwood and he framed Wedgwood cameos in steel for sword-hilts, buckles, and jewelry at his Soho factory. Dr. Anthony North, former Assistant Curator for the Metalwork, Silver and Jewellery Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has said of the present clock that “the mounts are clearly Wedgwood and Boulton…A compelling factor in attributing the actual clock to Soho is the Neoclassical form and the curious steel feet, which…are obviously Soho work.”² The neoclassic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries bore patrons of the arts with a taste dictated by antiquity, and the mounts of the present clock, its shape and finial, uphold this neoclassical ideal.

To celebrate this quarter-millennium of Wedgwood pottery, exhibitions are being held worldwide. We’re particularly excited to be receiving the catalog for the exhibiton at the Royal Ontario Museum, “Wedgwood: Artistry and Innovation.” Their collection includes” pieces of ‘Queen’s Ware’ from the table of Catherine the Great, copies of the famed ‘Portland Vase,’ a black basalt relief that weighs over 800 pounds, as well as exquisite cameo medallions and jewellery.”³

<sub>Footnotes:
1. Kelly, Alison. Decorative Wedgwood in Architecture and Furniture. London: Country Life Ltd., 1965. 111.
2. Dr. Anthony North, former Assistant Curator for the Metalwork, Silver and Jewellery Collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Letter to Carlton Hobbs Ltd. 25 March 2002. London.
3. http://www.rom.on.ca/exhibitions/special/wedgwood.php</sub>