The news that Waterford Wedgwood had been put into receivership, with debts in the millions, struck sharply, as the firm's founder, Josiah Wedgwood, has always been a hero to many. He combined a genius for chemistry, a passion for good design, daring innovation in manufacturing and a flair for marketing. It is perhaps the firm's slowness to adapt to changing lifestyles that has caused its collapse today.
Josiah Wedgwood's achievement is intimately bound up with the history of the Potteries. For 200 years before he was born, potters in north Staffordshire had used local clay to make marbled and mottled ware. His family had been potters around Stoke-on-Trent and Burslem for three generations. When he was 28, on May Day 1759, Josiah rented the Ivy House Works in Burslem from his uncle John and set out on his own. He was already known for his innovation, especially for his popular 'greengrocery', using rich green and yellow glazes on pots shaped like cauliflowers and pineapples.
Wedgwood was always on the lookout for promising new inventions. From 1761 he sent pots to Liverpool to be decorated by the new transfer printing process. His vivid printed plates and cups brought colour to the dressers of the new prosperous 'middling classes' of Britain. But he was aiming higher. His skill as a chemist led to the introduction of his pearly 'creamware', which caught the attention of the local aristocracy. In early 1765, he received an order for a tea set for Queen Charlotte, with candlesticks and fruit baskets. He completed it on time, won permission to call himself 'Potter to Her Majesty', and his creamware was given the title Queen's Ware.
The next problem was how to expand and get these beautiful things to distant markets. The roads were terrible, and many pots were smashed by the time they reached Chester, the nearest port. Wedgwood fought for better turnpikes and led the campaign to build the Trent-Mersey canal. He was helped by his friends in the Lunar Society of Birmingham, including Erasmus Darwin, James Watt and Matthew Boulton. Boulton's revolutionary 'manufactory' inspired Wedgwood's new factory, Etruria, which opened in 1766. Etruria was a harbinger of the dreaded factories of later years, with stern rules about conduct and a pioneering system of clocking on, but in its day it was a model, with housing for workers, a school and a health insurance scheme.
