Did you know ?

1. ….. that, in the early days, Josiah Wedgwood I worked closely with his wife Sarah, whom he called Sally. He wrote to his partner, Thomas Bentley: "I speak from experience in Female taste, without which I should have made but a poor figure amongst my Potts, not one of which, of any consequence, is finished without the Approbation of my Sally".

2. ….that during the early years of the 19th century, the Wedgwood firm supplied porcelain pastes for the production of artificial teeth to Joseph Fox, an eminent dentist of Argyll Street, London, and also to Nicholas Dubois de Chemant, a French dentist.

3. ….. that Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805), the third surviving son of Josiah I, is often described as being ‘the first photographer’. In 1802, he published an article in the ‘Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain’ entitled ‘An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of making Profiles by the agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver invented by T. Wedgwood Esq. With observations by Humphrey Davy’.

4. ….that Josiah Wedgwood never left England to travel abroad and that it was his sons John, Josiah and Thomas who eventually undertook the so-called ‘Grand Tour’ so fashionable during the 18th and early 19th centuries.

5. ….. that the first shell shaped ware produced by Wedgwood in the 18th century was directly inspired by those in Wedgwood’s own collection, as he was an enthusiastic conchologist.

6. ….. that Josiah Wedgwood I’s so-called ‘Useful’ partner (overseeing the production of tableware items) was his cousin Thomas Wedgwood, while Thomas Bentley was his Ornamental Ware production partner.

7. ….. that Josiah Wedgwood I had his right leg amputated (midway between the thigh and knee) on 28 May 1768. Surgical opinion suggests that smallpox suffered as a boy left him with an infection known as ‘Brodie’s abscess’, which eventually disabled the joint completely. With no anaesthetics and no anti-septics, the risks of such an operation were considerable. But Josiah I made a rapid recovery and had a wooden leg made by Mr Addison of Long Acre, who made ‘lay figures for artists’. In later years, the artificial limbs were produced by a local cabinet maker.