Josiah Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), English potter, well known for developing various finely potted earthenwares. As an astute industrialist, he exploited the popular taste for the Neo-Classical style in 18th-century Britain.

Wedgwood was born in Burslem, in the Staffordshire Potteries, into a family with a long tradition as potters. At the age of nine, after the death of his father, he worked in his family's pottery. In 1759 he set up his own pottery works in Burslem. There he produced a finely potted cream-coloured earthenware which so pleased Queen Charlotte that in 1762 she appointed him royal supplier of dinnerware. From the public sale of Queen's Ware, as it came to be known, Wedgwood was able to build near Stoke-on-Trent a village, which he named Etruria, and a second factory equipped with tools and ovens of his own design. It was ceremoniously opened on June 13, 1769. At first only ornamental pottery was made in Etruria, but by 1773 Wedgwood had concentrated all his production facilities there.

During his long career Wedgwood developed revolutionary ceramic materials, notably basalt and jasperware. Wedgwood's basalt, a hard, black, stone-like material known also as Egyptian ware or basaltes ware, was used for vases, candlesticks, and realistic busts of historical figures. Jasperware, his most successful innovation, was a durable unglazed ware most characteristically blue with fine white cameo figures inspired by the ancient Roman Portland Vase. Many of the finest designs were the work of the British artist John Flaxman.

After Wedgwood's death in Etruria on January 3, 1795, his descendants carried on the business, which still produces many of his designs. Wedgwood was the grandfather of the British naturalist Charles Darwin.