Josiah Wedgwood was an English potter and entrepreneur, born in Burslem, Staffordshire, in 1730, who founded the Wedgwood company and transformed the British pottery industry. Combining scientific experiment, artistic ambition and commercial flair, he became one of the most influential figures of the Industrial Revolution.
Wedgwood perfected a refined cream-coloured earthenware which, after he supplied a service to Queen Charlotte, he marketed as Queen's Ware. He developed black basalt, a fine black stoneware, and jasperware, an unglazed stoneware coloured in blue, green, lilac and other tones and decorated with white classical reliefs, which became his most famous product. In 1769 he opened the Etruria factory near Stoke, working for a time in partnership with Thomas Bentley, and he employed artists including John Flaxman to model Neoclassical designs. He pioneered showrooms, pattern books and other modern marketing methods, and was a campaigner against the slave trade. Wedgwood wares are generally impressed with the factory name, and date codes on later pieces help with dating. Collectors prize eighteenth-century examples from his lifetime, though fine Wedgwood continued to be made long after his death in 1795.
