To complete a bald account of Wedgwood’s career as a potter we must add the following notes. Between the years 1759 and 1769 he perfected the cream colour, between 1766 and 1769 the black Etruscan ware was brought to its highest perfection; the jasper body and glaze was undergoing development from 1773 to 1777, and the jasper dip from 1780 to 1786. His mechanical bent showed itself in a persistent and successful effort to develop the turning lathe so as to give a ribbed surface to the ware. This he called “engine turning,” and it is a device which has been largely employed ever since on decorative pieces. In 1783 he invented a neat pyrometre for registering the heat of ovens, and was elected in consequence a Fellow of the Royal Society. His great partner Bentley died in 1780, and for a few years Wedgwood carried on his works alone; but in 1790 he took into partnership his three sons John, Josiah and Thomas, and his sister’s son Thomas Byerley. The style and title of the Firm which had been “Wedgwood and Bentley” from 1768-80, “Wedgwood” from 1780-90, now became for a short time “Wedgwood, Sons and Byerley.” In 1793 his sons John and Thomas, having no aptitude for the systematic work of a master-potter, and being rich enough to be idle, retired from the firm, and conveyed their shares to the younger Josiah. Till Thomas Byerley’s death in 1810, the firm was known as “Wedgwood, Son and Byerley.”[108]
Josiah Wedgwood himself died on January 3, 1795. He bequeathed to his second son Josiah his share in the factory and an estate of 363 acres in Stoke and Hanley, and to his other children a fortune of about £160,000.[109] Mr Burton sums up the result of his work as follows: “His influence was so powerful, and his personality so dominant, that all other English potters worked on the principles he had laid down, and thus a fresh impulse and a new direction was given to the pottery of England and of the civilized world. He is the only potter of whom it may truly be said that the whole subsequent course of pottery manufacture has been influenced by his individuality, skill and taste.”[110]
MAP OF HANLEY IN 1800
CHAPTER VII.
AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
Wedgwood’s financial success with his Jasper and Black Etruscan ware, a success hitherto quite unique in the experience of the Potteries, led every potter of any capacity to attempt the same lines. They cannot be blamed for trying to imitate what was demanded by the fashionable market. The whole progress of the industry had been based upon the copying of successful processes, and Wedgwood did not patent his patterns or methods, even could he have done so.
All over the Potteries they followed in his steps, content to reap with little trouble the advantages of his past labours—reproducing his patterns and avoiding all dangerous novelty. Invention died and the wares, tamely and ignorantly copied by inartistic workmen, sank artistically throughout the next half century. The copyist, imitator or rival, who annoyed Wedgwood most in his lifetime was Humphrey Palmer of Hanley. Most of the Palmer and Neale ware we now know of seems original enough—and good enough—but from 1769-1776 Wedgwood regards him as a copyist of the most objectionable description.[111] It must be said however that he always stamped his imitations with his own name and not Wedgwood’s; a precaution which is not always observed at this present day, even with a patent law to enforce a man’s right to his own trade-mark. It is noticeable too that when Wedgwood did, in 1771, patent the method of painting with an encaustic red on the Black Etruscan ware, Palmer produced the same results and forced him to share the patent rights.[112] Palmer however got into financial difficulties, in 1776, and his business was taken over by his brother-in-law Henry Neale. Neale, in conjunction later on with David Wilson, continued the same style of ornamental ware, and so excellent are some of his granitic ornamental pieces now in museums that he must take rank as a rival rather than as an imitator of Wedgwood. Both Neale and Palmer had married daughters of that Thomas Heath who tried to make Delft ware at Lane End early in the century. Another daughter is said to have married Mr Pratt, a potter of Lane Delf, whose descendants have ever since continued to make pottery on what may be the very spot where Thomas Heath made his original Delft ware.[113]
Vase by John Turner of Lane End. d. 1786. From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums.