Wedgwood Blue Jasperware "Josiah Wedgwood Pin Dish"

Josiah Wedgwood Pin Dish and is 3 inches diameter at the base. Marked WEDGWOOD and MADE IN ENGLAND, in good condition with no visible signed of damage or wear.

Wedgwood strictly Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, is a British pottery firm, originally founded in 1759 by Josiah Wedgwood, which in 1987 merged with Waterford Crystal, creating Waterford Wedgwood, the Ireland-based luxury brands group. The company still exists as a subsidiary within the group, with its own board of directors and management team. Wedgwood is also used as a general term to describe the company’s main products.

Josiah Wedgwood worked with an established potter, Thomas Whieldon, until 1759, when relatives leased him the Ivy House in Burslem to allow him to start his own pottery business. The launch of the business was helped by his marriage to a remote cousin, Sarah (also Wedgwood), and her sizeable dowry.

In 1765, Wedgwood created a new earthenware form which impressed the then English Queen, who gave permission to call it “Queen’s Ware”; this new form sold extremely well across Europe. Then, in 1766, Wedgwood bought Etruria, a large Staffordshire house, as both home and factory site. Wedgwood developed a number of further industrial innovations for his company, notably a way of measuring kiln temperatures accurately and new ware types Black Basalt and Jasper Ware (the first color was the Poland Blue and for its innovation Josiah Wedgwood experimented with more than three-thousand samples). As a reward for his contributions, Josiah Wedgwood was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1783. Today, the Wedgwood Prestige collection provides customers with the opportunity to purchase replicas of some of the original designs, as well as modern neo-classical style jasper ware.

A word or two must be said on the designs on Jasper Ware. The main themes on the Jasper ware have all been taken from ancient mythologies: Roman, Greek or Egyptian. The initial decision to have antiquity designs was probably that as Britain entered an age of great industrialization, the demand for luxurious goods subsequently exploded. Meanwhile, the archeological fever caught the imagination of many artists. Nothing could have been more suitable to satisfy this huge business demand than to produce replicas of artifacts.

Antique Porcelain & Pottery