CHAPTER II.
POTTERY AND PORCELAIN.
Josiah Wedgwood and the Wedgwood Ware—Worcester Porcelain.
hen Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, a member of the famous firm of potters at Etruria, near Burslem, Staffordshire, went to work about forty years ago, his famous ancestor and founder of the world-famed Wedgwood ware was still named amongst the workmen as 'Owd Wooden Leg.' A son of Mr Godfrey Wedgwood, now in the firm, is the fifth generation in descent, and the manufactory is still carried on in the same buildings erected by Josiah Wedgwood one hundred and twenty years ago.
One hundred years ago Josiah Wedgwood, the creator of British artistic pottery, passed away at Etruria, near Burslem, surrounded by the creations of his own well-directed genius and industry, having 'converted a rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art and an important part of national commerce.' His death took place on 3d January 1795, the same year in which Thomas Carlyle saw the light at Ecclefechan, and one year and a half before the death of Burns at Dumfries. During fifty years of his working life, largely owing to his own successful efforts, he had witnessed the output of the Staffordshire potteries increased fivefold, and his wares were known and sold over Europe and the civilised world. In the words of Mr Gladstone, his characteristic merit lay 'in the firmness and fullness with which he perceived the true law of what we may call Industrial Art, or, in other words, of the application of the higher art to Industry.' Novalis once compared the works of Goethe and Wedgwood in these words: 'Goethe is truly a practical poet. He is in his works what the Englishman is in his wares, perfectly simple, neat, fit, and durable. He has played in the German world of literature the same part that Wedgwood has played in the English world of art.'
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.
Long ago, in his sketch of Brindley and the early engineers, Dr Smiles had occasion to record the important service rendered by Wedgwood in the making of the Grand Trunk Canal—towards the preliminary expense of which he subscribed one thousand pounds—and in the development of the industrial life of the Midlands. Since that time Smiles has himself published a biography of Wedgwood, to which we are here indebted.