Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd.
Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. (later Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. ) was an English manufacturer of art ceramics in Staffordshire , England. The company was particularly well-known for the ceramic types creamware , basaltware and jasperware, invented or further developed by company founder Josiah Wedgwood . Objects of these ceramic styles are therefore sometimes also referred to as Wedgwoodware today (see products ).
Surname
The name giver and founder of the company was Josiah Wedgwood , who helped the company to worldwide fame with his inventions and improvements in the field of ceramic production during his lifetime and laid the foundation stone for the fact that the name Wedgwood is synonymous with handcrafted and artistically high-quality ceramic objects.
history
Josiah Wedgwood came from a family of potters and worked in the family's workshops from an early age. In 1759 he started his own business by renting a pottery from his cousins in Burslem, Staffordshire (now part of Stoke-on-Trent ). Due to his inventions and further developments in the field of ceramic production, the company grew very quickly. In 1769 production was relocated to a location outside of Burslem, on what is now the south-western edge of Stoke-on-Trent. This new factory, along with the associated housing for the workers, was named Etruria , following the " Etrurian " style copied by Wedgwood ceramics . Josiah Wedgwood's sons joined the company in 1790. In 1895, 100 years after Josiah Wedgwood's death, the company became a Limited Company (Ltd.).
In 1940 another factory was moved to Barlaston, just south of Stoke-on-Trent, because the manufacturing facilities in Etruria were out of date and the buildings there were seriously damaged by subsidence. The Barlaston plant is still in operation today. In 1966, after Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. had taken over several other ceramic and porcelain manufacturers, the company was restructured and renamed Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. renamed. This company now acted as a holding company for the various corporate divisions. The chairman of the young holding was also a Josiah Wedgwood, namely the great-great-great-grandson of the company founder. The name Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. was retained for that subcontractor of the holding company, where the production and sale of traditional Wedgwood products still took place.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. other ceramic and porcelain manufacturers such as Adams & Sons (Potters) Ltd. , Coalport China Ltd. and Johnson Bros. and finally, in 1980, Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd. founded by a distant relative of Josiah Wedgwood and therefore named after him .
In 1986 Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. by the Irish glass manufacturer Waterford Crystal Ltd. accepted. In 1989, Waterford Wedgwood plc was created . After the complete takeover of Royal Doulton plc by 2005 and some subsequent turbulence (including bankruptcy in 2009 and subsequent takeover by a US private equity company ), the consortium now operates under the name WWRD United Kingdom Limited . For cost reasons, most of the ceramic production had been relocated to Tangerang near Jakarta , the capital of Indonesia , by 2004, which was accompanied by the loss of around 1,500 jobs in the English parent companies. Today only high quality goods are made in Staffordshire.
Products
Probably the company's most famous products are items that can be assigned to the Jasperware invented by the company founder and to the ceramic types basaltware and creamware , which he further developed . These include not only vases, jars and dishes, but also jewelry and even buttons and buckles for clothes. In 1762 Josiah Wedgwood succeeded in changing the so-called creamware , a cream-colored ceramic type produced in England in the 18th century, so that it now had a bluish-white color. He called these goods, refined according to the taste of the times, pearlware , and the delivery of this tableware to the English Queen also marketed it as Queens Ware . Products also known under the brand name Wedgwood are vases, candle holders or even busts made from the basalt ware manufactured by Wedgwood from the late 1760s (from approx. 1768) and Jasperware (from approx. 1775). These ceramic shapes were also successfully marketed by Josiah Wedgwood as a further development of the earthenware produced in Staffordshire, England in the 18th century as Egyptian Black . Josiah Wedgwood and his successors set high quality standards for all of his products, so that the name Wedgwood still stands for high-quality ceramic and porcelain products.
In addition to this typical Wedgwood ware , Josiah Wedgwood & Sons also made other ceramic items and later also real porcelain. Especially after the takeover of various, sometimes competing companies, the product range was expanded again and again, but the Wedgwood brand name was only used for high-quality products. To ensure this, the brand name of the 1980 Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. acquired Enoch Wedgwood (Tunstall) Ltd. changed to Unicorn Tableware . Accordingly, there were many products that, although the Josiah Wedgwood Ltd. -Group can be attributed, but are not considered Wedgwood products in the true sense.
literature
- Alison Kelly: The Story of Wedgwood. In collaboration with Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. Revised edition, Faber & Faber, London 1975, ISBN 978-0-571-10392-8 .
- Henry Allen Wedgwood: People of the Potteries. Reprinted from articles in the Staffordshire Sentinel and Staffordshire Times from the 1870s, with an introduction by John Thomas. Adams & Dart, Bath (Somerset) 1970, ISBN 978-0-239-00055-2 .
Web links
- Wedgwood on the WWRD United Kingdom Limited website
- The Wedgwood Museum , comprehensive website with lots of information on the company's history
- 250 Years of History Image gallery on the company history on theguardian.com
Individual evidence
- ^ Waterford Wedgwood bought by US equity firm KPS Capital . In: The Irish Times , February 27, 2009.
- ^ Waterford Wedgwood shifts to Asia to save company . In: The Jakarta Post , December 31, 2008. Archived from the original on December 8, 2012 Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed December 18, 2013.
- ^ High hopes for Wedgwood in Jakarta . In: BBC News , January 19, 2009. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
- ↑ Pearlware: Origins and Types (Part 1) , convenient information about Pearlware on thepotteries.org.
