Josiah Wedgewood

Josiah Wedgwood, English art potter, *12.07.1730 Burslem, †03.01.1795 Etruria; father of Thomas Wedgwood and grandfather of Charles Darwin; invented the basalt-coloured stoneware and the artistically high-quality Jasperware (English stoneware with barium sulphate content).

Wedgwood is considered a revolutionary in the history of porcelain and ceramics. He experimented a lot with different types of clay and developed the so-called "creamware", also known as "Queen's ware", basalt-coloured stoneware and jasperware, which are still well-known types today. Josiah Wedgwood was not only a genius in the field of porcelain, however, but also an ace in marketing strategies. The "money-back guarantee", "take-3-number-2-offers", free delivery, advertising campaigns with celebrities and illustrated catalogues can all be attributed to Josiah Wedgwood. So he was an excellent businessman.

The industry has him to thank for the establishment of many ceramics factories in the Staffordshire region, which are still well-known today. The brands Steelite, Royal Denby, Churchill and many other well-known English brands owe their existence to the creative power of J. Wedgwood.

In the 1950s and 1970s, Staffordshire factories produced the well-known ceramics with the blue and pink hunting motifs in huge quantities, mostly under the uniform name "Staffordshire".  Already at the end of the 1960s, the British were giving the porcelain industry a big headache because they sold their fine ceramics - mainly in department stores - as "porcelain" at that time.

The Wedgwood company was thirsty for porcelain, which eventually led to it taking over the bankrupt factories and brands of Phillip Rosenthal in Germany in 1997. At the end of 2009, however, the Waterford Wedgewood conglomerate also came to an end and the empire collapsed.