Josiah Wedgwood (entrepreneur, 1730)

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Josiah Wedgwood (engraving after a painting by George Stubbs )

Josiah Wedgwood (born July 12, 1730 in Burslem , Staffordshire , † January 3, 1795 in Etruria , England ) was an English entrepreneur .

Life

Wedgwood was the youngest of 12 children. His family owned the Churchyard Pottery in England . After the death of his father he learned the pottery trade . He is credited with the industrialization of the pottery trade, and he was one of the first industrialists to use strategic marketing . The Wedgwood Porcelain Manufactory exists as part of the company consortium WWRD United Kingdom Ltd. til today.

Wedgwood was not only interested in improving the material clay , but also tried to improve the shape by leaning on the ancient models. He also created what is known as Jasperware , which depicts reliefs in two-tone layers, mostly white on blue, and made in the ancient way. An example of such pottery is the Portland vase .

After Josiah Wedgwood had great success with his pottery factories, the English architect Joseph Pickford (1734–1782) built the factory town of Etruria Works and the country house Etruria Hall in Staffordshire for him from 1767 to 1770, where he lived and worked until his death . In 1768 he invented the eponymous earthenware that Wedgwoodware , and in 1782 a pyrometer . For the pyrometer he also created a suitable temperature scale, the Wedgwood scale .

Josiah Wedgwood supported the abolitionists as an opponent of slavery . He was friends with the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson . To give this human movement application, Wedgwood turned the medallion "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?" ( Am I not a man and brother? ) Showing a black slave who is kneeling in chains and holding hands folded in large numbers. Josiah Wedgwood was the grandfather of Charles Darwin (1809-1882).

family

He married his cousin Sarah Wedgwood (1734-1815) in January 1764. The couple had several children:

  • Susannah (January 3, 1765; † 1817) ∞ Robert Darwin (May 30, 1766; † November 13, 1848)
  • John (April 2, 1766 - January 26, 1844) ∞ Louisa Jane Allen
  • Richard (1767–1768)
  • Josiah (April 3, 1769 - July 12, 1843) ∞ Elizabeth Allen (1764–1846), parents of Emma Darwin
  • Thomas (1771-1805)
  • Catherine (1774-1823)
  • Sarah (1776–1856), abolitionist activist
  • Mary Anne (1778–1786)

Web links

Commons : Josiah Wedgwood  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Josiah Wedgwood  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ British History - Abolition of the Slave Trade 1807 . BBC. Retrieved April 11, 2009: "The Wedgwood medallion was the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art."
personal data
SURNAME Wedgwood, Josiah
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1730
PLACE OF BIRTH Burslem , Staffordshire
DATE OF DEATH January 3, 1795
Place of death Etruria (England)