Wedgwoods

Two centuries ago Catherine the Great of Russia had a 952-piece set of Wedgwood pottery. Today Queen Elizabeth II of England still sips her morning tea from Wedgwood. Added evidence that Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. keeps pace with the times was last week's laying of a cornerstone for a new hyperefficient, modern electric kiln outside Hanley, England.

Spode, Minton, Staffordshire may bring gleams to collectors' eyes, but none of England's famed potteries has quite so hoary or famed a past as Wedgwood. The first Josiah set up for himself in 1759, nine years later built a factory on 1,000 acres of land at Hanley. He became famous for his cream-colored earthenware (called ''Queen's Ware" for George Ill's Charlotte), was respected for improving turnpike roads, founding schools and chapels, was hated for espousing the cause of the upstart American colonies. Bit by bit the Wedgwoods disposed of their land, until a bare five-acre plot on which the plant still stands was jostled by other potteries, mines, factories. Neighbors' smoke marred the fine finish of glazed Wedgwood ware; sapping shafts of a nearby coal mine made Wedgwood ovens sink two feet; Hanley's congestion, for which Critic Lewis Mumford damned the place as a "non-city" (TIME, April 18), blocked Wedgwood expansion. So the firm bought a wooded 400-acre tract five miles outside the grimy town, planned a $1,500,000 factory with electric ovens and a model town for 600 Wedgwood employes and anyone else who cares to live there. Including the new plant, Wedgwood's assets total some $2,500,000. Profit is a secret, but dividends have been paid every year except 1929-33 since the company's founding.

Wedgwood now boasts seven active direct descendants of Josiah I. Family tradition has it that each generation have a Josiah. Present Josiahs are No. 6 ("Colonel Josh"), who has been a Labor M. P. for 32 years, and No. 7, who is managing director of the firm. No. 1's sympathy for the American colonies has proved prophetic. Of the 2,000,000 pieces of pottery the Wedgwoods make and sell for about $1,000,000 each year, over 50% are sold in the U. S. and Canada, where the favorite pattern is undecorated, embossed, cream-colored. So vital is the U. S. market that when the company's representative in Manhattan, Kennard Laurence Wedgwood, was made chairman in 1930, he stayed right where he was. The only thing which takes Chairman Kennard back to England is the annual stockholders' meeting, tantamount to a family reunion since all stockholders are Wedgwoods.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.