Prince of Pottery

ENTREPRENEURS

The Cherokee Indians were surprised and puzzled a few years ago to learn that an Englishman wanted to buy five tons of clay in the Carolina mountains. But Josiah Wedgwood usually gets what he wants. He offered the Indians -L-500 for the material and had it shipped back to London.

In the Midlands of England, Josiah Wedgwood wanted a canal to connect the Trent and Mersey rivers. So he pushed the necessary legislation through Parliament, contributed -L-1,000 to the cost of the project, and devoted more than ten years to getting it finished. It will open next year, a 93-mile marvel that extends through 75 locks and will reduce transportation costs from 10 pence a ton-mile to 1 1/2 pence.

When Empress Catherine II of Russia ordered a set of cream-colored Queen's Ware like the one that Josiah Wedgwood had made for Queen Charlotte (cost: -L-52), he wanted her to have something better. So he had the 952-piece set decorated with 1,244 hand-painted views of English landscapes (cost: -L-3,000).

From such various activities, it is easy to see that Josiah Wedgwood not only gets what he wants but that his wants are conceived on a very grand scale. They have served to make him one of the richest manufacturers in England and an exemplar of the modern type of merchant. Yet he was born to relative poverty 46 years ago, the 13th and youngest child of a potter in Staffordshire. His schooling ended at the age of eight, when his father died, and he had to go to work as an apprentice in a pottery run by an older brother. He became an expert thrower on the wheel, but an attack of small pox led to an infection and chronic weakness in his right knee. (Constantly bothered by the condition, Wedgwood finally decided a few years ago to have his leg amputated.)

Unable to continue at the potter's wheel, Wedgwood turned to other aspects of the trade, trying out different mixtures of colored clays and various glazes. His brother disapproved of his constant experimenting and refused to make him a partner, so Wedgwood tried two other partnerships, then started a small business of his own. He had ideas for basic improvements that now seem obvious: standardized sizes, for example, so that plates could more easily be stored in piles. And instead of letting one craftsman toil over each plate, Wedgwood introduced a division of labor for faster production. He also had a way of treating important customers so that, as he says, "they will, by being consulted and flatter'd agreeably, consider themselves as sort of parties in the affair."

Wedgwood's business expanded so quickly that within ten years he had built a new factory (cost: more than -L-3,000), opened a London showroom, and started work on a whole village for his workers, to be named Etruria. As a prominent businessman, Wedgwood repeatedly urged Parliament to build new highways and canals to aid commerce. As a man who remembered his own lack of education he contributed toward two free schools for the poor.

Still experimenting, Wedgwood is now concentrating mainly on a new product that he calls Jasper Ware because it is almost as shiny as jasper. Wedgwood was the first to discover that clay containing barium compounds can be more highly polished than any other and can be beautifully colored by various metallic oxides. To exploit the classical revival started by the recent excavations in Pompeii, Wedgwood is embossing his Jasper Ware with bas-relief of Greek and Roman figures.

Although Wedgwood has many American customers, the war has halted such trade. Wedgwood is undismayed, however. He is sympathetic to the American cause (he protests against "the absurdity, folly and wickedness of our whole proceedings with America"). Ever the businessman, Wedgwood fully expects to have a new and improved line of tableware ready to sell in America as soon as the war is over.

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