The black and white jasper covered urn-form handled vase, mid-Twentieth Century, is marked "Wedgwood, J, Made in England.”
:Were Josiah Wedgwood alive and working today, he would surely be regarded among the most popular Twentieth Century celebrity designers — standing firmly alongside the likes of Dale Chihuly and Jonathan Adler. Producing wares widely considered to be Modern, cutting edge and certainly defining the crux of elegance throughout the Eighteenth Century, Wedgwood, a brilliant entrepreneur and self-taught scientist, changed the very nature of porcelain and, in turn, transformed tabletop design into a symbol of taste and prosperity.
The results of his dedication to a mass-produced art form can be seen in the more than 100 objects on view in the exhibition "Josiah Wedgwood and His Circle," currently on view at the UBS Gallery. However, the lovely and delicate offerings of jasperware with their cameolike reliefs and agateware, compositions of pigment-infused clay that look as much like natural stone as the stone itself, belie the ferocity of the process that produced them.
When viewing the lavish wares, one rarely reflects back to the craftsmen turning pots on a foot-powered wheel or of kilns raging at extremely high temperatures to harden them. What comes to mind instead is the beauty of form and design. And this is where the impact of Wedgwood's genius lies.
Born to a family of poor potters in the clay-producing region of Staffordshire, England, Wedgwood was apprenticed out at an early age. Had it not been for the lingering effects of smallpox that weakened one of his knees to such an extent that he could not power the wheel, he might have become any of a thousand talented pot throwers.
"Ceres and Priestesses,” a late Eighteenth Century Grecian-form basalt vase with encaustic decoration.
He focused instead on designing pots, and at the age of 24 teamed up with Thomas Whieldon, the leading potter of the day. (That fateful collaboration forced Josiah Spode to leave Whieldon's employ and go out on his own.) It was during this association that Wedgwood realized the importance of cost-effective production and gestated business concepts that proved to be far ahead of their time.
Interestingly, porcelain had been invented in China nearly 1,000 years earlier. By 1709, Meissen had discovered its secret: when feldspar is mixed with pure white clay and fired at high temperatures it turns to glass, resulting in a form that is hard and translucent. By the time Wedgwood came along, England was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution and the rapidly expanding middle class was hungry for the trappings of success. They wanted to dine like aristocrats on plates of fine china.
After four years with Whieldon, Wedgwood determined that they could. Upon opening his own shop, he set out to improve on creamware. In order to compete with the Meissen porcelain, Wedgwood had to perfect a ceramic hard enough to hold its shape, but white enough to be considered delicate. After a great deal of experimentation — trials carried out at the oven — he discovered that the white clay of Cornwall, when mixed with silica, yielded the desired results.
