CHAPTER VII
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD
1730-1795
Josiah Wedgwood's place in the ceramic world--His business abilities--Josiah Wedgwood's wares--Cream Ware and its invention--Jasper Ware and its imitation--The influence of Josiah Wedgwood--Wedgwood Marks--The Prices of Wedgwood.
The time is now ripe to form a mature judgment as to the exact niche in the temple of fame which Josiah Wedgwood is to occupy permanently. His immediate successors were in too close proximity to his own day to form an opinion as to his life-work in relation to what had gone before and what has succeeded him.
The inquiry into the origins of certain inventions attributed to him have been pursued of late years with a scientific thoroughness, and many facts have come to light which tend to raise the reputation of other lesser known potters who immediately preceded him or were his contemporaries.
John Dwight (of Fulham) has come into his own. The Elers (of Staffordshire) have been dethroned from the unique position they occupied as pioneers of salt-glaze ware. In regard to the Astburys, father and son, credit has been given them for great work, and Whieldon is held to have had an immense influence on his contemporaries. During the great outburst in salt-glazed ware, cream ware, its later rival and conqueror, was in a transitional stage. This transitional period embraces a great field of pioneer workers who experimented unceasingly with clays and glazes. The days of salt-glaze were drawing to a close, it had many obvious defects; the ware would not readily stand hot liquids--and this in an age when tea drinking was becoming fashionable. The artistic side for the moment was cast aside in these experiments, the uppermost question in the Staffordshire potters' minds was the invention of some ware that could hold its own against the competition of the new English porcelain factories.
It thus came about that this period of great technical activity (1720-1740) was immediately succeeded by an almost simultaneous exhibition of work, suggesting a renaissance of earthenware in England (1740-1800) and establishing the European reputation of Staffordshire.
Josiah Wedgwood with John Turner, of Lane End, and William Adams, of Greengates, stand as a trio of master potters who developed the classic spirit in jasper and kindred ornamental ware. In regard to developing the manufacture of cream ware and stone ware for domestic use, and in building up a continental and American trade which won for British earthenware the supremacy of the world's trade in pottery, Josiah Wedgwood takes an equal prominence together with Warburton and the Baddeleys and the Adamses and Turner.
In roughly detailing the stages which led up to the manufacture of the main classes of ware for which Wedgwood was famous, it will be shown how with a masterly mind for realising broad results he combined the patient industry of a practical potter. He commenced with a capital of twenty pounds and died worth half a million. In spite of his ill-health and the loss of his leg, his unflagging energy and his keen foresight enabled him to build up an important business which is still carried on by his descendants. His love of organisation and the system of control which he exercised over his own enormous output had a lasting effect on the methods of the Staffordshire potteries.
The genius of Josiah Wedgwood has won the continued admiration of succeeding generations. It may be that he has somewhat overshadowed many of his contemporaries, and his successors have been termed imitators. In order to adjust matters there is a tendency in some quarters to belittle the work of the great Josiah. But surely the pendulum has swung too far the other way when it is advanced that "Wedgwood himself was no artist, he was a tradesman pure and simple."
This is not the opinion of critics with nicer balanced judgment and of cosmopolitan taste. The epitaph upon his monument in the parish church of Stoke-upon-Trent, which bears the inscription that he "converted a rude and inconsiderable Manufactory into an elegant Art," has been assailed in order to prove it to be a "travesty of the fact," and to state that "what he _really_ did was to convert an Art--rude it may be, and inconsiderable, but still an Art--into a manufacture. In other words, he inaugurated an entirely new order of things in the production of pottery, and a less desirable one."
The truth is that it is not necessary to belittle Wedgwood in order to put his great contemporaries in the order of their merit. The later and more corrected opinion may be arrived at quite judicially by crediting them with some of the artistic impulses he possessed. While he lived he worked harmoniously and in close friendship with his fellow potters, and a century after his death it should not be difficult to determine their relative positions without bespattering his epitaph with mud.
=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. He cut the first sod of the Trent and Mersey Canal.
In 1759 he was master potter, but he made most of his own models, prepared his own mixtures, superintended firing, and was his own clerk and warehouseman. Less than ten years afterwards, on the advice of the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Gower, and Lord Spencer, he opened showrooms in London in Newport Street.
A year after this the demand for his fine jasper ware and expensive ornamental productions had so increased that he found the greatest difficulty in finding sufficient workmen.
His catalogues were printed in several languages, and he had the shrewd common sense to add some forewords of his own to indicate the lines on which he was working as a potter and to bring the attention of likely buyers to his ware.
=Wedgwood as a potter.=--There is no doubt that Wedgwood always had in view the improvement of whatever ware he engaged to make. When with Whieldon he perfected the green glaze in the cauliflower and kindred ware, and when he became a master potter in 1759, he produced pieces which were eminently remarkable for their fine technique. There is no doubt that his connection with silversmiths induced him to follow their designs. Some of his early ware, such as teapots, have punched perforated ornament in the rims for which he invented tools. In the museum at Etruria are some six thousand trial pieces, some few inches in length, covering a wide period when Josiah was pursuing his way towards his crowning achievement, the invention of his jasper ware.[3]
[Note: 3 These have been recently arranged and catalogued by Mr. Frederic Rathbone.]
He claims credit for great improvements, both as an inventor and as a ready and masterly adapter, quick to seize the salient points of a half-perfected ware and by a few touches of genius make it his own. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for his invention of a pyrometer, an instrument for registering high temperatures in the kilns. His experiments led him into new fields in connection with bodies, glazes, and colours, and he introduced for the first time in pottery certain minerals such as barytes in his pastes.
=Josiah Wedgwood's wares.=--It will be seen, in the enumeration of the various classes of ware which were produced by him, in what respect he added improvements which in their turn were improved upon by later potters, and to what extent his productions were entirely original, adding a new note in English pottery, creating an entire school, and leaving the mark of his genius on his successors for nearly a century.
_Variegated ware._--The agate, the cauliflower, and melon ware, the clouded and mottled glaze, and the various imitations of marbling, came into vogue in the days of Whieldon. But Wedgwood was more ambitious in his designs. We have already seen, in dealing with Whieldon ware, how the "solid" agate ware was produced by means of fine layers of clays of different colours, which after careful manipulation produced a series of waves resembling the natural ornamentation of the stone. Wedgwood also employed "surface" colouring for this variegated ware, the body being of the common cream-coloured earthenware and the veining and mottling being applied to the surface. In such pieces the handles and the plinths were usually oil gilded; later he used a white semi-porcelain for plinths of such ware.
Two agate vases and ewers marked "Wedgwood and Bentley" belong to the period 1768 to 1780. The plinths of the agate vases show the white undecorated body. Wedgwood imitated Egyptian pebble, jasper, porphyry, and various kinds of granite speckled with grey, black, white, or green. Much of this is a flight higher than the agate ware.
_Black basalt Ware._--In this ware, which was termed "Egyptian black," Wedgwood triumphed over his predecessors. We know the black ware made by Elers and by Twyford (two fine black Twyford teapots are in the Hanley Museum), but the ware into which Wedgwood infused his genius is worthy to be called what he termed it--"black porcelaine." With its rich black, smooth surface it was capable of varied use, including useful as well as ornamental ware. In the former, we find tea services and coffee or chocolate pots strictly adopting the severe Queen Anne silver shapes, and in vases he followed bronze prototypes. See illustration (p. 241) of two _Black basalt Teapots_. It was used in fine manner for life-size busts and for medallion portraits of "illustrious Ancients and Moderns."
This basalt ware Wedgwood further used in combination with other processes. He imitated the ancient Greek vase paintings by decorating the black surface with unglazed colours, or he had ornaments in relief in red. Another replica of classic art was his simulation of bronze, and this black ware formed the groundwork to which he added the bronze metallic colouring in his rare bronze examples.
The two black basalt ewers, entitled _Wine_ and _Water_, designed by Flaxman, are well known. It is at once evident that they owe no inconsiderable debt to the metal worker. It requires no great stretch of imagination to believe them to be in bronze. Technically, as specimens of earthenware, they are perfect, but it is open to question whether the potter has not trespassed on the domain of the worker in metal. There are canons which govern the art of pottery; form and ornamentation strictly appropriate in metal are utterly unfitted for the worker in clay. Branched candelabra are false in porcelain though extremely beautiful in silver. In passing this criticism, which applies to some of Wedgwood's work, we are incidentally brushing aside the contention of those critics who find him unoriginal. As a matter of fact he was so original and so responsive to the suggestion of allied arts that he often undertook the creation of pieces in his kilns the like of which no potter had ever attempted before.
_Red Ware._--It is not to be supposed that Wedgwood would allow the fine red Elers ware to stand as representative of the uttermost that Staffordshire had produced without attempting to emulate this early ware. Accordingly, we find in what he terms his _rosso antico_, a red ware of extraordinary beauty. Some of the engine-turned pieces of this red ware are exceptionally fine. There is in the Hanley Museum a coffee-pot of great technical and æsthetic value. Wine-coolers and other useful creations, with classic ornamentation in relief, show the wide range of this red terra-cotta or unglazed ware. The Elers style was simple, with applied stamped ornament of small dimensions and Oriental rather than classical in _motif_. The red stoneware of Böttcher, of Dresden, was by this time fairly well known, and Wedgwood had both Elers and Böttcher to serve as models, although he does not seem to have employed this red ware to any great extent. Nor did Wedgwood confine himself to red in this type of ware; he made chocolate-coloured examples, and in his cane-coloured and bamboo ware he made articles for domestic use, such as tea and coffee services as well as mugs and jugs of this type, which differed from the black basalt inasmuch as the basalt was an especially hard body, whereas these others were porous and soft. As was usual with Wedgwood, not only did he have a series of wares of different colours, but he often worked with a combination of these colours in the same piece.
=Cream Ware.=--Something must be said concerning the development of cream ware before it can be accurately determined how much Staffordshire was indebted to Wedgwood for its development. At the outset it must be granted that he did not invent the ware. But he improved it. Similarly it was further improved subsequent to his day by other potters who made it finer and whiter.
But to this day, a hundred and fifty years after the introduction of this cream ware, his descendants, still trading under the name of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, produce this cream ware exactly as it was then produced. Dinner services are made with Flaxman's designs on the border, essentially English in character and feeling. Last year Messrs. James Powell and Sons, of the Whitefriars Glass Works, near the Temple, which were flourishing in 1710, and still continue to produce the finest glass in England, held an exhibition of Wedgwood ware. Considerable interest was drawn to the subject of this revival of the old patterns of 1775 from the designs of Josiah Wedgwood's band of artists. Those connoisseurs who love old furniture and old eighteenth-century glass ware, as made by Messrs. Powell, welcomed the Wedgwood queen's ware designs as being something eminently fitted to strike the right note of harmony, and accordingly, by arrangement with the firm at Etruria, some of the finest patterns of the old ware are exclusively made for Messrs. Powell. The English dinner table may now be as English as it was in Georgian days, and, happily, this æsthetic revival has met with a warm response by the patronage of the royal family, the nobility, and by all those who love the old-world charm of the domestic art of our forefathers.
Before Wedgwood's day cream ware was made. Astbury used an addition of white clay and flint to his bodies about 1720. In 1726 the grinding of flint stones into powder for the potters' use became so important that Thomas Benson took out a patent for a machine to do this. In 1750 we find cream ware being largely made. Aaron Wedgwood and William Littler introduced about this time a fluid lead glaze instead of the old manner of using powdered galena (native sulphide of lead). Body and glaze were at this period fired at one operation. Enoch Booth improved this by revolutionising the method of glazing. He fired the pieces to a biscuit state and then dipped them in this fluid lead glaze (ground flint and white lead), and refired them at a lower temperature. At this date two other potters, Warburton (of Hot Lane) and Baddeley (of Shelton), followed Booth's practice, and cream ware may be said to have been in a fairly flourishing condition.
These facts are all important and cannot be ignored in arriving at a satisfactory conclusion. Wedgwood commenced as a master potter in 1759, that is, about nine years after the latest inventions in cream ware had brought the ware into something more than an experimental stage. In 1761 Wedgwood's cream ware, both by its variety of beautiful form and its finer glaze and body, had surpassed that of his rival potters.
In 1762 Wedgwood presented to Queen Charlotte a caudle and breakfast service of the ware; this was painted by Thomas Daniel and David Steele. The Queen and the King were so pleased with the ware that complete table services were ordered, and Wedgwood received the Queen's command to call himself "Potter to Her Majesty" in 1765, and from that date he termed the ware "Queen's Ware."
Though the invention of cream ware may not be his, there must have been something essentially more pleasing in his productions to have made such strides in so short a time. Perhaps Wedgwood, "the tradesman pure and simple," had something to do with this achievement, but we prefer to think it was the master hand of Wedgwood the potter and Wedgwood the artist.
We cannot leave this _cream ware_ question without referring to an old legal controversy. This brings us down to the year 1775 when Wedgwood, in company with John Turner (of Lane End) journeyed to Cornwall and jointly leased some clay mines. The reason for their visit was that the whole of the Staffordshire potters were up in arms. Salt glaze was coming to an end in spite of the enamelling in colours in emulation of English porcelain. And now Cookworthy, the potter of Plymouth, the maker of the first hard porcelain in England, had sold his patent rights to Champion of Bristol, who, in 1775, applied for a further patent for fourteen years to use certain natural materials for making porcelain. The Staffordshire potters elected Josiah Wedgwood and John Turner as their representatives and petitioned against the granting of this patent, and Wedgwood urged that
"the manufacture of earthenware in Staffordshire 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."
He further adds that "the natural productions of the soil ought to be the right of all."
Incidentally, this controversy throws light on the position of Wedgwood as a maker of cream ware, and it had a lasting effect, as we shall show in the improvement of cream ware itself and upon the class of ware turned out in Staffordshire.
Champion, in his reply to the Staffordshire outburst in petitioning parliament not to grant his patent, pays Wedgwood a great compliment:
"Mr. Champion most cheerfully joins in the general praise which is given to Mr. Wedgwood for the _many improvements which he has made in the Staffordshire earthenware_, and the great pains and assiduity with which he has pursued them. He richly deserves the large fortune he has made from these improvements."
Champion goes on to make a most vital point in upholding his claim to protection that he
"has no objection to the use which the potters of Staffordshire may make of his or any other raw materials _provided earthenware only, as distinguished by that title, is made from it_."
Here, then, is the reason of the visit of Wedgwood and Turner to the West, in search of the natural earths that half the potters in Europe had been hunting for since Böttcher, of Dresden, made his great discovery of white clay.
But the story of _cream ware_ is not ended. Wedgwood to this printed "Reply" by Champion entered the lists with some printed "Remarks," which he circulated to members of parliament. In this--and we must bear in mind that he was holding a brief on behalf of all the Staffordshire potters--we find the following statement:--
"_When Mr. Wedgwood discovered the art of making Queen's Ware_, 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. Instead of one hundred manufactories of Queen's Ware there would have been one; and instead of an exportation to all quarters of the world, a few pretty things would have been made for the amusement of the people of fashion in England."
In spite of the opposition of Staffordshire, the Bill enabling Champion to obtain his patent rights passed both houses of parliament, and in the last stage a clause was inserted throwing open the free use of raw materials to potters for any purpose _except for the manufacture of porcelain_; practically this patent was to be enjoyed by Champion for nearly twenty-two years.
Two extraordinarily important effects upon the pottery industry in Staffordshire were the result of this controversy: (1) The Staffordshire potter confined himself to earthenware. (2) Growan stone and Cornish Kaolin were added to the cream ware body, which enabled earthenware to compete successfully with china.
It may have struck an inquiring spirit as singular that the Staffordshire potters as a body were content to imitate English porcelain and compete with it. At first, of course, the remoteness of the Potteries from the West accounted for this, but clay was brought by sea from Bideford to Chester and carried overland to Staffordshire, but not the growan stone nor Cornish kaolin. Chelsea and Bow did not have natural earths to hand. But the additional reason seems to be the one we have given--that practically Champion's patent precluded them from making porcelain. When, in or about 1769, cream ware was perfected there was no need to cast about for new bodies. Staffordshire earthenware had found itself, and all other improvements after that date, for fifty years, until early nineteenth-century days, mainly concerned enamelling, printing, glazing, and the _exterior_, or developments in mechanical production, or attempts at higher artistic effects.
In the illustrations we give of cream ware it will be seen that it was of varying form and it received a variety of decoration.
It was _plain or undecorated_, relying chiefly on its symmetry of form as an artistic asset. The cut and pierced designs and many other shapes followed those of the silversmith, and in dessert dishes and centre-pieces considerable beauty was exhibited in modelling--a style which was closely followed by the Leeds potters, who made excellent cream ware.
A beautiful example of the perforated basket ware is illustrated (p. 225). It is a dessert dish of most pleasing shape, and is a rare specimen of the pierced work in Wedgwood's cream ware.
Wedgwood, as early as 1775, still experimenting with a view to make his cream ware better, determined to make a whiter body by the addition of more china clay and flint and to kill the yellow tone by the use of blue (oxide of cobalt). This later white ware he termed "Pearl ware." Among the most noticeable productions in this whiter ware are the dessert services modelled from shells. We know that Wedgwood had a collection, although he was not a conchologist, yet it is not improbable that the contemplation of these beautiful forms suggested ideas and he derived many of his artistic shapes from the forms of shells. The use of shell forms was not unknown. Salt-glaze pieces repeatedly show the pecten shell design, and Plymouth porcelain had adopted shell designs in salt cellars and similar pieces. We illustrate (p. 225) a remarkable example of a centre-piece in the form of a nautilus shell. Some of the shell dishes have a faint wash in pink, and yellow radiating bands, hardly perceptible, but conveying the suggestion of the interior of the shell.
Queen's ware, when decorated, was of two classes: (1) painted; (2) transfer-printed in red or puce or black.
It is not necessary to go into details in regard to these two forms of decoration. It is interesting in regard to the enamelling in colour to know that Wedgwood sent his ware to Mrs. Warburton's factory at Hot Lane to be painted. He also employed a band of enamellers at Chelsea who had been trained in the china factory. We reproduce an illustration (p. 233) of two painted queen's-ware plates from the celebrated service executed for Catherine II. of Russia. The enamel painting of the views and borders cost Wedgwood over £2,000. In the centre of each piece is a scene representing some place of interest in the country. Each view in this series of British scenery is different, and there are some twelve hundred. The body is in pale brimstone and the view painted in a brownish purple; the border was a wreath of mauve flowers and green leaves, and, as will be seen in the illustrations, each plate has a green frog in a reserve. This design has puzzled many writers, but as the Messalina of the North intended to place this service in her palace of La Grenouillère, near St. Petersburg--Grenouillère meaning a marshy place full of frogs--explains the whimsical design of the frog on each plate.
This dinner and dessert service was completed in 1774 at a cost of about £3,000. It was exhibited in London, and set the town agog with amazement. The rooms in Greek Street, Soho, were thronged with fashionable people, and, as may be imagined, it gave a great impetus to the manufacture of Wedgwood's ware.
The other decoration employed by Wedgwood on his cream ware was transfer printing. He availed himself at once of the new style of printing by Sadler and Green on the glazed surface of his ware, which was periodically sent to Liverpool to be so decorated. In the earlier pieces the tile design is evident, quite unsuitable for a round plate, in spite of Wedgwood's addition of wreaths and ribbons in enamel painting to help out the incongruity. In early books illustrated by Bewick with square woodcuts a similar use of garlands and ribbons as an ornamental border is observed.
Nor was the cream body confined to strictly domestic ware. Among his multifarious productions Wedgwood made some fine coloured figures, remarkable for strong modelling and subdued and harmonious colouring. The large figures, such as Fortitude, Charity, Ceres, Juno, Prudence, and many others, are not always marked. "Fortitude" and "Charity" both bear the impressed mark WEDGWOOD, the latter belonging to the series Faith, Hope, and Charity designed for Wedgwood by Mrs. Landré, and a marked example is in the Willett Collection. Many small coloured cream-ware busts were made. We illustrate two typical examples (p. 233) of Rousseau and Voltaire. They were evidently intended for the French market, and are very dainty though somewhat highly-coloured likenesses of two great Frenchmen. Jean-Jacques is portrayed in Armenian costume, after the well-known portrait. The coat is a chocolate brown and the stand is marbled. Voltaire has a blue surcoat, a terra-cotta cloak, and lilac vest.
=Jasper Ware.=--As early as 1773 Wedgwood was experimenting with a view to producing jasper body. It is here that his greatest triumph in the ceramic art was won. Nothing like it had ever been seen in pottery before, and the ware he produced in an endless variety of forms which were termed "ornamental" by him to distinguish them from the queen's ware, or "useful" ware. About 1775--a great date in Wedgwood's history--the jasper ware was perfected, and from 1780 to 1795 is the period when it was at its best, when he poured forth from Etruria, then filled with a highly-trained body of workmen and artists, his jasper ware, exquisite with grace and beauty of form and fascinating in its charm of dainty and subtle colour.
The spirit of classicism was in the air in the days of Wedgwood. Dr. Johnson had imposed his ponderous latinity on the world of letters. Alexander Pope was still writing when Josiah was apprenticed and known already as a "fine thrower." Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ had appeared in many editions just prior to Wedgwood's manhood. The statues of naval and military commanders in Westminster Abbey were in Roman costume. The Brothers Adam were in the heyday of their popularity. From sedan chairs to silver-plate their style was the vogue. The classical mouldings, capitals, and niches, the shell flutings and the light garlands in the Adam style are welcome sights in many otherwise dreary streets in London. In furniture, the Adam style is as severe as the French prototypes which had absorbed some of the ancient spirit of Rome and Greece. As early as 1763 Grimm wrote, "For some years past we are beginning to inquire for antique ornaments and forms. The interior and exterior decorations of houses, furniture, materials of dress, work of the goldsmiths, all bear alike the stamp of the Greeks. The fashion passes from architecture to millinery; our ladies have their hair dressed _à la Grecque_." Men of thought joined in clamouring for simplicity, and Diderot lent his powerful aid in heralding the dawn of the revival of the antique long before the France of Revolution days.
But eyes other than French were fixed on the remote past. The excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii had given a new stimulus to archæological research. In this country Sir William Hamilton, as early as 1765, promoted the publication of the magnificent work, "Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Antiquities," illustrated from his collection. It was a specially valuable exposition of the system and methods and æsthetic value of classic art, especially plastic art; and in promulgating this sumptuous illustrated disquisition on the ancient potter's art Sir William Hamilton laid modern workers in the same field under a heavy debt. Incidentally it may be mentioned that Sir William was the husband of the beautiful Lady Hamilton.
So that in the midst of this eighteenth-century classic revival Josiah Wedgwood was but the child of his age, and, associated in partnership with Bentley, a man of refined and scholarly tastes, he entered into the new spirit with willing mind. Adroitly seizing classic models, Wedgwood in his art adapted all that was most suited to modern requirements. Pope translated Homer into English verse, and Wedgwood translated classic designs into English pottery.
Wedgwood's jasper ware is of various colours--blue in various tones, sage-green, olive-green, lilac, pink, yellow, and black, and, of course, white, which is its natural body without the addition of metallic oxides. It is capable of taking a polish on the lapidary's wheel. In use it was mainly employed for ware of a highly ornamental character, though it was also employed for utilitarian objects, such as tea and coffee services, dishes, and flower vases, and in plaques it was used as interior decorations in fireplaces and in furniture. We illustrate (p. 241) a jasper ware diced pattern _Tea Set_, which shows how wide a field Wedgwood covered with his new ware.
It is usually found with a ground of one colour, such as blue, lilac, _et cetera_--one of the seven--and the ornament applied in relief is, as a rule, white. It was Wedgwood's appreciation of antique gems that suggested the idea of reproducing them in earthenware, and in the period prior to Bentley's death, in 1780, cameos, portrait medallions, and plaques were mostly made.
There are two classes of jasper ware--_solid jasper_ and _jasper dip_. The difference is similar to that between solid agate and surface agate. Solid jasper is coloured throughout. That which is coloured only on the surface is jasper dip. This latter gives more delicate effects, and was employed, after 1780, in the important series of classic vases which required translucency and greater delicacy in the white reliefs, which is especially effective in the filmy garments and flowing draperies of the classic figures.
Considerable progress had been made in Staffordshire since Elers left in 1710, but it is the Elers method of stamping the ornaments and applying them to the body of the ware that Wedgwood adopted. But there was more than enough originality of invention in this jasper ware to carry his fame to the confines of Europe. Blue and white porcelain in imitation of his jasper was made at Sèvres, and other continental factories, such as Meissen, Furstenburg, and Gros Breitenbach, made similar echoes of this wonderful English jasper ware of Josiah Wedgwood.
No illustrations can do justice to the charm and tender colour of some of the finer examples of this Wedgwood jasper ware, varying from pale lemon colour to delicate mauve as a ground, and having translucent diaphonous draperies in white standing in relief in the groups of figures.
To the sense of touch fine old specimens of this jasper ware are as soft as satin. Usually the dull matt surface of this ware is left without polish, though it is so dense and hard as to receive a high polish, which was occasionally employed in the inside of basins and cups and on the bevelled edges of some of his cameos.
His classic subjects were no feeble echoes of ancient art, but were executed from designs by a band of great artists working together and saturated with the spirit of the new classic revival. John Flaxman, James Tassie, John Bacon, William Hackwood, Thomas Stothard, George Stubbs, William Greatbach, were all employed by Wedgwood. And distinguished amateurs such as Lady Diana Beauclerk and Lady Templeton supplied him with designs, and it is interesting to note that Mrs. Wilcox, an accomplished painter of figures and borders on his Etruscan ware, was a daughter of Fry, the mezzotint engraver and founder of the Bow porcelain factory.
We illustrate (p. 245) a fine jasper vase representing _The Apotheosis of Virgil_, the cover surmounted by a Pegasus. The square pedestal has griffins at the corners. A companion vase, _The Apotheosis of Homer_, changed owners at eight hundred guineas, and is now in the possession of Lord Tweedmouth.
Wedgwood himself regarded his copy of the celebrated Barberini vase, which was lent to him by the Duke of Portland, as his masterpiece. This vase is a cameo glass vase, which was discovered in the middle of the seventeenth century in a marble sarcophagus on the road to Frascati, two miles from Rome. This vase belongs to the early part of the third century. It was bought by Sir William Hamilton for £1,000, and subsequently purchased by the Duke of Portland. This vase, of rich dark blue glass, almost black, is decorated with opaque white enamel cameos in relief cut with the most extraordinary skill, and it stands as a superb example of classic art. 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.
=Wedgwood and his influence.=--As a final word on Wedgwood and his influence, something should be said as to the charge laid against him that he inaugurated the factory system as applied to pottery. There is no doubt that he organised what was before his day a somewhat chaotic industry. And it is certain that he trained his workmen to become specialists, and that the system of the division of labour was the order of the day at Etruria. But how else could such an output as his be handled? It has been advanced that the quaintness of the peasant potter and his later development was submerged, and that all individuality was lost under the new system. There was a growing tendency to develop mechanical perfection and to introduce labour-saving appliances, but this was the spirit of the oncoming modern age. 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. Similarly all over the country artisans in the china trade were becoming specialised. There were the enamellers at Chelsea and other places, and a little examination will show that Wedgwood did not inaugurate this modern factory method, but without doubt, in common with all other master potters, he had to go with the times. Trade rivalry was very strong, and competition was not unknown when every potter in Staffordshire was jealously watching the latest improvement of his neighbour. But to saddle Josiah Wedgwood with the responsibility of stamping out original talent is beside the mark. His life-work stands impregnable against petty assault. "In a word, no other potter of modern times has so successfully welded into one harmonious whole the prose and the poetry of the ceramic art."
WEDGWOOD MARKS.
1.--This mark occurs upon a very early specimen of "Queen's Ware," a teapot, painted with flowers, &c., supposed to have been made by Wedgwood at Burslem: each letter apparently stamped singly with printers' type.
2, 3, 4.--These marks, varying in size, were, it is thought, used by Wedgwood up to the accession of Bentley as his partner, 1768-9, and are found upon specimens said to have been purchased about that period.
5.--The circular stamp, without the inner and outer rings, and without the word Etruria, is doubtless the earliest form of the Wedgwood and Bentley stamp, and is found upon a set of three early painted vases, in imitation of natural stone, with gilt serpent and scroll handles. No other example of this mark is known: it may have been an experimental one, afterwards changed for No. 6, and never in general use.
6.--This mark, with the word Etruria, is made upon a wafer, or bat, and fixed in the corner, inside the plinth of old basalt vases, reversing for candelabra and some large specimens; it is sometimes found on the pedestal of a bust or large figure.
7.--The well-known circular stamp, with an inner and outer line, always placed round the screw of the basalt, granite, and Etruscan vases, but is never found upon the jasper vases of any period.
8, 9, 10, 11.--These marks, varying in size, are found upon busts, granite, and basalt vases, figures, plaques, medallions, and cameos, from the largest tablet to the smallest cameo for a ring (the writer has one, only half an inch by three-eighths of an inch, fully marked); also found upon useful ware of the period.
12.--Marks upon the Wedgwood and Bentley intaglios, with the catalogue number, varying in size. Very small intaglios are sometimes marked W. & B. with the catalogue number, or simply with number only.
13.--This rare mark is found only upon chocolate and white seal intaglios, usually portraits, made of two layers of clay; the edges polished for mounting.
It may be noted that the word "and" in every Wedgwood and Bentley mark is always contracted "&," that no punctuation or other points, excepting those in marks No. 5, 6, 7, and 13, are ever used.
14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.--Marks, varying in size, attributed to the period after Bentley's death, and probably used for a time after Wedgwood died. These marks and others were used by chance--a small piece often bearing a large stamp, and a large one a minute stamp.
21.--This rare mark exists upon some large square plateaux in cane-coloured jasper. It may have been one adopted upon the change of partnership in 1790, but little used. The circular announcing the change says: "The mark 'WEDGWOOD' will be continued without any addition."
22, 23, 24.--These marks rarely found upon pieces of very high character--usually upon dark blue stoneware, vases, and glazed ware. Adopted about 1840, but soon disused.
25.--The mark upon Wedgwood PORCELAIN made from 1805-1815. Always printed either in red or blue, sometimes in gold. An impressed mark cannot be used with certainty upon soft-paste porcelain, being so apt to diffuse out in firing.
26, 27.--These marks, varying in size, are still used at Etruria for the modern jasper and useful ware of all varieties.
28.--The manufacture of fine porcelain was revived at Etruria, 1878, and is still continued. This mark, _printed_ in black and other colours, is used.
29.--The word ENGLAND was added to the mark WEDGWOOD in 1891, to comply with the new American Customs Regulations, known as the McKinley Tariff Act.
The occurrence of three capital letters, ANO, REP, &c., in addition to name appears on ware after 1840. The first two letters are workmen's marks, and the third is a date letter, _e.g._, O = 1855, P = 1856, and so on, as in hall-marks on silver.
PRICES.
WEDGWOOD. £ s. d.
Oval. Ganymede feeding Eagle (6-1/4 in. by 5-1/4 in.), marked Wedgwood & Bentley Christie, June, 1906 40 19 0
Oblong oval. Marriage of Cupid and Psyche (6 in. by 7-3/4 in.), marked Wedgwood & Bentley. Christie, June, 1906 54 12 0
Busts, _Minerva_ and _Mercury_, black basalt, 18 in. high. Christie, November, 1906 16 16 0
Oval portrait, in jasper, white on blue ground, of Captain Cook (10 in. by 8 in.), marked Wedgwood & Bentley. Sotheby, February, 1907 16 16 0
Jasper vase, blue, with Venus and Cupid in relief, handles coiled with serpents. Christie, February, 1908 33 12 0
A pair of splashed mauve Nautilus Shells, marked Wedgwood. Sotheby, December, 1908 3 10 0
The above prices are for ordinary collectors' examples of old Wedgwood. But exceptional pieces bring exceptional prices. The largest known example of a blue and white jasper plaque (11 in. by 26 in.) sold for £415 at Christie's in 1880, and the fine jasper vase _The Apotheosis of Homer_ (now in the Tweedmouth Collection) realised 800 guineas.
VIII
THE SCHOOL OF WEDGWOOD