The Radical Potter: Josiah Wedgewood and the Transformation of Britain

Interesting online lecture from ARTscapapes on the Enlightenment potter Josiah Wedgewood.

Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and x-MP for Stoke Central, talked us through the life and innovations of Wedgewood based on the biography he has recently published. I’d missed seeing Hunt talk at Charleston Farmhouse so I was delighted to get another opportunity to hear him. In fact the friend who went to the Charleston talk bought me a signed copy of the book as a Christmas present.

Hunt talked us though many of Wedgewood’s innovations from cream ware through to Jasperware in ceramics, his new marketing techniques, his development of canals and his introduction of a production line to the ceramic industry. He also looked at his radical politics from support for the American and French revolutions but more importantly his campaigning for abolition of the slave-trade in particular popularising the “Am I Not a Man and Brother” image designed by William Hackwood.

He also spoke about the current state of the ceramics industry in Stoke and problems the company of Wedgewood ran into in 2009. Having been to Stoke and the World of Wedgewood at the end of last year the whole talk was fascinating.

 

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