Fired by Creativity

Josiah Wedgwood was a pioneer in modern British luxury. His remarkable combination of artistry, innovation and design excellence transformed ceramics production in Britain and opened up beautiful homeware to entirely new markets. Wedgwood’s ambition was always to take on China at china – to replace Asian porcelain as the world’s most sought-after ceramics with his own Staffordshire earthenware. From branding to marketing, manufacturing processes to retail strategy, today’s designers and entrepreneurs still have much to learn from the father of English pottery.

Whether he caused it, or captured it, Wedgwood was the master salesman to Europe’s first mass consumer society. We can see the taste for new products and experiences in Jane Austen’s novels, Johann Zoffany’s canvasses and the epic Bridgerton ball scenes. A combination of rising real incomes, ethos of social emulation and riches wrung out of the colonial economy made 18th century England the epicentre of accumulation.

There was no embarrassment either, as a growing array of political economists highlighted the merits of high-end making. The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote of how the general “increase and consumption of all the commodities, which serve to the ornament and pleasure of life, are advantages to society”. There was nobility and virtue in seducing the buyer, in pleasing the consumer and expanding the provision of material goods “in order to preserve, at all events, the greatest number possible of manufacturers”, as one commercial writer put it. Luxury underpinned a strong, regional manufacturing economy – a truth so evident today in the range of local suppliers supported by Walpole members.

Wedgwood was determined to capture the new consumer market by focusing, first of all, on “Excellence of Workmanship”. “We must endeavour to make our goods better if possible – other people will be going worse, and thereby our distinction will be more evident,” he noted. Quality was key. He oversaw an alternative to porcelain with the development of Creamware, which captured something of the elegance of ‘white gold’ but was able to be manufactured more cheaply and could have customised transfer prints applied to it.

Wedgwood’s elegant designs soon caught the attention of King George III and Queen Charlotte and a new commission for Buckingham Palace turned Creamware into the must-have brand Queensware. For as any luxury business knows, getting the right influencer’s endorsement is key. Or as Wedgwood put it: “The Progress of the Arts, at all Times, and in every Country, chiefly depends upon the Encouragement they receive from those who by their Rank and Affluence are Legislators in Taste.”

After Creamware came Wedgwood’s greatest innovation, Jasperware. This iconic product, with its range of blue, lilac and green bodies decorated with white relief imagery, such as The Dancing Hours, brilliantly caught the vogue for neoclassicism and soon every stately home had a Jasper vase on its chimney piece. But this was the work of many years’ dedicated experimentation, innovation and improvement until, as Wedgwood triumphantly wrote: “I am now Absolute in this precious article.’’ His ambition was nothing less than to “Astonish The World All At Once, for I hate piddling you know”.

For Wedgwood was deeply proud of his heritage, industry and design studio. He made objects of great beauty that elevated domestic life and he combined it – in his campaigning for the abolition of the slave trade – with a strong social conscience. In his support for luxury retail, regional manufacturing, global sales and British commerce he is an inspiring, if occasionally daunting, figure for modern luxury.

Today, around the world, those same principles and practices are what make British luxury such a successful export sector. From Burberry to Fortnum & Mason, Purdey to Jo Malone London, a ruthless focus on craft excellence, manufacturing precision, expert marketing and brand authenticity provide the fundamentals of success. What is so valued by global markets is the design innovation and production skill that our leading luxury houses so rightly prioritise. It is, perhaps, Josiah Wedgwood’s awe-inspiring ability to command each of those business disciplines that makes him a figure so worthy of study.

As the great Liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone rightly reflected, “Wedgwood was the greatest man who ever, in any age, or in any country... applied himself to the important work of uniting art with industry.” And I am delighted that after years of decline, Wedgwood’s brand custodian, Fiskars Group, is once again investing in those core Josiah principles of product innovation and design excellence.

Lead image credit: First day’s vase thrown by Josiah Wedgwood I in black basalt, 13th June 1769