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.