Wedgwood

It was especially successful at producing fine earthenware and stoneware that were accepted as equivalent in quality to porcelain (which Wedgwood only made later), though considerably less expensive.

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 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".

Relatives leased him the Ivy House in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent,[10] and his marriage to Sarah Wedgwood, a distant cousin with a sizable dowry, helped him launch his new venture.

[citation needed] Wedgwood led "an extensive and systematic programme of experiment",[11] and in 1765 created a new variety of creamware, a fine glazed earthenware, which was the main body used for his tablewares thereafter.

[15] 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" (by 1769), caneware and jasperware (1770s), all designed to be sold unglazed, like "biscuit porcelain".

[18] Wedgwood's slightly younger friend, William Greatbatch, had followed a similar career path, training with Whieldon and then starting his own firm around 1762.

[citation needed] From 1769 Wedgwood maintained a workshop for overglaze enamel painting by hand in Little Cheyne Row in Chelsea, London,[21] where skilled painters were easier to find.

Complicated figure scenes and landscapes in painted enamels were generally reserved for the most expensive "ornaments" like vases, but transfer printed items had these.

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.

In recent years, the Wedgwood Prestige collection continued to sell replicas of the original designs, as well as modern neo-classical style jasperware.

[citation needed] 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.

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.

[24] Wedgwood developed an attractive reddish stoneware he called rosso antico ("ancient red") This was often combined with black basalt.

[citation needed] Instead Wedgwood concentrated on more sculptural figures, and produced many busts or small relief portrait plaques of celebrities, both types of high quality.

[28] 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.

As well as updated versions of wares from the previous century, bathroom ceramics such as sinks and lavatories had been important in recent decades, and Wedgwood's reputation for technical and design innovation had sunk considerably.

[citation needed] Wedgwood's first decades of success came from producing wares that looked very like porcelain, and had broadly the same qualities, though not quite as tough, nor as translucent.

Towards the end of the 18th century other Staffordshire manufacturers introduced bone china as an alternative to translucent and delicate Chinese porcelain.

[33][34] However West End taste did not perhaps represent all of Wedgwood's markets, and it was not the huge commercial success promised, and after thinking of doing so in 1814, the firm finally stopped making it in 1822.

[35] From very early on Josiah Wedgwood was determined to maintain high artistic standards, which was an important part of his efforts to appeal to the top end of the market with pottery rather than porcelain wares.

[47] In 1968, Wedgwood purchased many other Staffordshire potteries including Mason's Ironstone, Johnson Brothers, Royal Tuscan, William Adams & Sons, J.

[citation needed] In 2001, Wedgwood launched a collaboration with designer Jasper Conran, which started with a white fine bone china collection then expanded to include seven patterns.

A new purpose-built visitor centre and museum was built in Barlaston in 1975 and remodelled in 1985, with pieces displayed near items from the old factory works in cabinets of similar period.

A video theatre was added and a new gift shop, as well as an expanded demonstration area, where visitors could watch pottery being made.

[citation needed] Adjacent to the museum and visitor centre are a restaurant and tea room, serving on Wedgwood ware.

[60][61][62] The collection with 80,000 works of art, ceramics, manuscripts, letters and photographs faced being sold off to help satisfy pension debts inherited when Waterford Wedgwood plc went into receivership in 2009.