Josiah Spode

He is often credited with the establishment of blue underglaze transfer printing in Staffordshire in 1781–84, and with the definition and introduction in c. 1789–91 of the improved formula for bone china (a form of soft-paste porcelain) which thereafter remained the standard for all English wares of this kind.

In 1745 his elder sister Ann married Ambrose Gallimore,[1] who in 1754 obtained the lease of the Caughley porcelain factory near Broseley.

[3] As a family man Josiah Spode was an accomplished violinist,[citation needed] and he and his wife had further children Samuel (1757), Mary (1759), Ellen (1762) Sarah, William (1770), Ann (1772), and Elizabeth (1777).

There he was in financial partnership with William Tomlinson (a solicitor), and in 1772 he took on a pottery at Shelton, Staffordshire with Thomas Mountford as his backer.

[17] More precisely he was the first to introduce a perfected method to Stoke, (with the help of engraver Thomas Lucas and printer James Richards, formerly of the Caughley Pottery Works,[18] Shropshire), using improvements recently developed at nearby Shelton by or for Ralph Baddeley.

However, the warehouse was finally settled in the former Theatre Royal, no 5 Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, which his firm occupied from 1795 to 1848, when the building was razed.

He was magnificently prepared for the role, an experienced salesman as well as a potter, having gained an invaluable knowledge of marketing in fashionable London.

In 1811, with James Caldwell of Linley Wood, he successfully opposed a move by government to impose taxation on the work of the Potteries.

Josiah Spode (born 1790), the son of Samuel and his wife Sarah, emigrated to Tasmania where he held a position as Controller of Convicts.