The Wedgwood Bicentenary 1730–1930

Abstract

THERE are few names in the world of ceramics which stand higher than that of Wedgwood. And they are few who offhand can name the master potters and painters associated with the beautiful and imperishable pots produced in Meissen, Dresden, Sèvres, Chantilly, Delft, Damascus, Faenza, Copenhagen, Chelsea or Worcester. How little known is that French genius, Bernard Palissy, master potter and reformer in the sixteenth century, who thought he had discovered the secrets of white in enamel providing a ground for pottery painting, although if communications had been better at the time he might have known that the potters of northern Italy had also made this discovery and were even then putting it into use. The name of the young Saxon experimentalist, Frederick Böttger who, in 1710, chancing to note the exceptional weightiness of a finely powdered white clay, procured some from which he made fired pots and discovered that the finished article was a true or hard porcelain, is probably unfamiliar outside of Germany, except to ceramicists. It was his discovery, however, which revolutionized ceramic manufacture to a great extent throughout Europe, and which led to the establishment of the still famous Meissen Porcelain Works.