Wedgwood
Wedgwood is an English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd. It was rapidly successful and was soon one of the largest manufacturers of Staffordshire pottery, "a firm that has done more to spread the knowledge and enhance the reputation of British ceramic art than any other manufacturer", exporting across Europe as far as Russia, and to the Americas. It was especially successful at producing fine earthenware and stoneware that, though considerably less expensive, were accepted as equivalent in quality to porcelain.
Wedgwood is especially associated with "dry-bodied" stoneware Jasperware in contrasting colours, in particular in "Wedgwood blue" and white, always the most popular colours, though there are several others. Jasperware has been made continuously by the firm since 1775, and also much imitated. In the 18th century, however, it was table china in the refined earthenware creamware that represented most of the sales and profits.
In the later 19th century, it returned to being a leader in design and technical innovation, as well as continuing to make many of the older styles. Despite increasing local competition in its export markets, the business continued to flourish in the 19th and early 20th centuries, remaining in the hands of the Wedgwood family, but after World War II it began to contract, along with the rest of the English pottery industry.
After buying a number of other Staffordshire ceramics companies, in 1987 Wedgwood merged with Waterford Crystal to create Waterford Wedgwood plc, an Ireland-based luxury brands group. In 1995 Wedgwood was granted a Royal Warrant from Queen Elizabeth II, and the business was featured in a BBC Four series entitled Handmade by Royal Appointment alongside other Warrant holders Steinway, John Lobb Bootmaker and House of Benney. After a 2009 purchase by KPS Capital Partners, a New York–based private equity firm, the group became known as WWRD Holdings Limited, an initialism for "Waterford Wedgwood Royal Doulton". This was acquired in July 2015 by Fiskars, a Finnish consumer goods company.
Early history
Josiah Wedgwood, came from an established family of potters, and trained with his elder brother. He was in partnership with the leading potter, Thomas Whieldon, from 1754 until 1759, when a new green ceramic glaze he had developed encouraged him to start a new business on his own. Relatives leased him the Ivy House in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, and his marriage to Sarah Wedgwood, a distant cousin with a sizable dowry, helped him launch his new venture.Wedgwood led "an extensive and systematic programme of experiment", and in 1765 created a new variety of creamware, a fine glazed earthenware, which was the main body used for his tablewares thereafter. After he supplied her with a teaset for twelve the same year, Queen Charlotte gave official permission to call it "Queen's Ware". This new form, perfected as white pearlware, sold extremely well across Europe, and to America. It had the additional advantage of being relatively light, saving on transport costs and import tariffs in foreign markets. It caused considerable disruption to the makers of European faience and delftware, then the main European tableware bodies; some went out of business and others adopted English-style bodies themselves.
Wedgwood developed a number of further industrial innovations for his company, notably a way of measuring kiln temperatures accurately, and several new ceramic bodies including the "dry-body" stonewares, "black basalt", caneware and jasperware, all designed to be sold unglazed, like "biscuit porcelain".
File:Creamware plates, Wedgwood 1771-5.jpg|thumb|Four creamware plates, transfer printed with stories from Aesop's Fables, the other decoration hand-painted. 1770s.
In 1766, Wedgwood bought a large Staffordshire estate, which he renamed Etruria, as both a home and factory site; the Etruria Works factory was producing from 1769, initially making ornamental wares, while the "useful" tablewares were still made in Burslem.
In 1769 Wedgwood established a partnership with Thomas Bentley, who soon moved to London and ran the operations there. Only the "ornamental" wares such as vases are marked "Wedgwood & Bentley" and those so marked are at an extra level of quality. The extensive correspondence between Wedgwood and Bentley, who was from a landowning background, show Wedgwood often relied on his advice on artistic questions. Wedgwood felt the loss keenly when Bentley died in 1780.
Wedgwood's slightly younger friend, William Greatbatch, had followed a similar career path, training with Whieldon and then starting his own firm around 1762. He was a fine modeller, especially of moulds for tablewares, and probably did most of Wedgwood's earlier moulds as an outside contractor. After some twenty years, Greatbatch's firm went under in 1782, and by 1786 he was a Wedgwood employee, continuing for over twenty years until he retired in 1807, on generous terms specified in Wedgwood's will. In the early period he seems also to have acted as agent for Wedgwood on trips to London, and after Wedgwood's retirement he may have in effect managed the Etruria works.
Transfer printing and enamel painting
Wedgwood was an early adopter of the English invention of transfer printing, which allowed printed designs, for long only in a single colour, that were far cheaper than hand-painting. Hand-painting was still used, the two techniques often being combined, with painted borders surrounding a printed figure scene. From 1761 wares were shipped to Liverpool for the specialist firm of Sadler and Green to print; later this was done in-house at Stoke.From 1769 Wedgwood maintained a workshop for overglaze enamel painting by hand in Little Cheyne Row in Chelsea, London, where skilled painters were easier to find. The pieces received a light second firing to fix the enamels in a small muffle kiln; this work was also later moved to Stoke. There was also a showroom and shop in Portland House, 12 Greek Street, Soho, London. Painting included border patterns or bands and relatively straightforward floral motifs on tableware. Complicated figure scenes and landscapes in painted enamels were generally reserved for the most expensive "ornaments" like vases, but transfer printed items had these.
The Frog Service is a large dinner and dessert service made by Wedgwood for Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, and completed in 1774. The service had fifty settings, and 944 pieces were ordered, 680 for the dinner service and 264 for the dessert. Although Wedgwood was already transfer printing many tablewares, this was entirely hand-painted in Chelsea in monochrome, with English views copied from prints and drawings; the final appearance was not dissimilar to transfer printing, but each image was unique. Also at Catherine's request, each piece carries a green frog. Although Wedgwood was paid just over £2,700 he barely made a profit, but milked the prestige of the commission, exhibiting the service in his London showroom before delivery.
File:Portland Vase V&A.jpg|thumb|Wedgwood Portland Vase, black jasperware, c. 1790, copying the Roman cameo glass original.
Jasperware
Wedgwood's best known product is Jasperware, created to look like ancient Roman cameo glass, itself imitating cameo gems. The most popular jasperware colour has always been "Wedgwood blue", an innovation that required experiments with more than 3,000 samples. In recognition of the importance of his pyrometric beads, Josiah Wedgwood was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1783. In recent years, the Wedgwood Prestige collection continued to sell replicas of the original designs, as well as modern neo-classical style jasperware.The main Wedgwood motifs in jasperware, and the other dry-bodied stonewares, were decorative designs that were highly influenced by the ancient cultures being studied and rediscovered at that time, especially as Great Britain was expanding its empire. Many motifs were taken from ancient mythologies: Roman, Greek and Egyptian. Meanwhile, archaeological fever caught the imagination of many artists. Nothing could have been more suitable to satisfy this huge business demand than to produce replicas of ancient artefacts. From 1787 to 1794 Wedgwood even ran a studio in Rome, where young Neoclassical artists were in abundance, producing wax models for reliefs, often to designs sent from England. The most famous design is Wedgwood's copy of the Portland Vase, a famous Roman vase now in the British Museum, which was lent to Wedgwood to copy.
Other dry-bodied stonewares
Wedgwood developed other dry-bodied stonewares, meaning that they were sold unglazed. The first of these was what he called "basaltes", now more often "black basalt ware" or just basalt ware, perfected by 1769. This was a tough body in solid black, much used for classical revival styles. Wedgwood developed an attractive reddish stoneware he called rosso antico This was often combined with black basalt. This was followed by caneware or bamboo ware, the same colour as bamboo and often modelled to look as though objects were made of the plant; first introduced in 1770, but mostly used between 1785 and 1810.Figures
Generally Wedgwood avoided the typical type of Staffordshire figures, white earthenware standing figurines of people or animals that by about 1770 were usually brightly painted, though sometimes sold in plain glazed white. These imitated rather successfully the porcelain figures pioneered by Meissen porcelain, a style which by about 1770 was being produced by the majority of porcelain factories, on the continent and in Britain. Though Staffordshire figures fell precipitously in price and quality after about 1820, in the 18th century many were still well-modelled and carefully painted.Instead Wedgwood concentrated on more sculptural figures, and produced many busts or small relief portrait plaques of celebrities, both types of high quality. The subjects were generally notably serious: politicians and royalty, famous scientists and writers. Many were small, with the oval shape usual in the painted portrait miniature; others were larger. They were probably generally intended for framing; many examples still retain their frames.
Many subjects reflected Wedgwood's religious and political views, Unitarian and somewhat Radical respectively, in particular what is probably the best-known Wedgwood relief, the abolitionist design Am I Not a Man and a Brother?, the basic design of which is usually credited to Wedgwood, although others drew and sculpted the final versions. This appeared in many formats in print and pottery from about 1786, and was very widely distributed, often given away.
In addition plaques of varying sizes, most in jasperware, caught the fashion for Neoclassicism, with a great variety of classical subjects, but mostly avoiding nudity. The smaller ones were intended to be set in jewellery, sometimes in steel by Matthew Boulton's factory, and larger sizes might be framed for hanging, or inset in architectural features like fireplace mantels, mouldings and furniture. Smallest of all were many button designs.