WEDGWOOD CREAM WARE DESSERT BASKET.
Showing fine pierced work.
By the courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.
WEDGWOOD CREAM WARE DESSERT CENTRE-PIECE.
Designed from Josiah Wedgwood's collection of shells.
(In Museum at Etruria.)
By the courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.
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]
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.