In my previous post on Agrarian doubts about Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, I had noted that one of the new members of the industrialist class was a nonconformist potter by the name of Josiah Wedgwood. Wedgwood was an experimenter, entrepreneur, and abolitionist whose industrious way of life lead to a revolution in the production of crockery the world over.
One of his earliest triumphs was Queensware, named after his royal client Queen Charlotte. The Queen’s initial tea service was modest – about a dozen cups, six fruit baskets with stands, six hand candlesticks, and six melon preserve pots. For his service, Josiah was named Potter to Her Majesty and allowed to advertise his Cream-coloured earthenware as Queen’s Ware. For obvious reasons, the nobility had followed in suit, substantially increasing his orders for this creamware.
As Josiah himself noted in the Fall of 1767:
“The demand for this sd. Creamcolour, Alias Queens Ware, alias, Ivory still increases – It is really amazing how rapidly the use of it has spread allmost over the whole Globe, & how universally it is liked.- How much of this general use, & estimation, is owing to the mode of its introduction – & how much to its real utility & beauty?”
By 1775, Queensware would be imitated all across Europe, with earthenware no longer being referred to as “Common Pewter” but rather as “Common Wedgwood.”
As the Frenchman Faujas de Saint Fond remarked upon the quality of the earthenware:
“Its excellent workmanship, its solidarity, the advantage which it possesses of standing the action of the fire, its fine glaze, impervious to acid, the beauty, convenience and variety of its forms and its moderate price have created a commerce so active and so universal, that in travelling from Paris to St Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the furthest points of Sweden, from Dunkirk to the southern extremity of France, one is served at every inn from English earthenware. The same fine articles adorn the tables of Spain, Portugal, & Italy, and it provides the cargoes of ships to the East Indies, the West Indies and America.”
Echo House 