Josiah Wedgwood

Contemporary Review, April, 2005

Josiah Wedgwood: Entrepreneur to the Enlightenment. Brian Dolan. Harper Collins. [pounds sterling]25.00. xii 480 pages. ISBN 0-00-713901-2. The great Wedgwood company was a product of Josiah Wedgwood who had been born into a Burslem pottery family. Despite several physical disabilities he transformed the pottery into one of the world's most famous 'brands'.

How he did this is the story told here. His skill lay in his innovations and in raising the standards of those who worked for him. He was an enlightened employer, a fore-runner of men such as Salt, Cadbury and Lever in the nineteenth century. He stood for 'elite taste without social prejudice'. Mr Dolan also shows how Wedgwood's dissenting beliefs and associations with 'enlightened' thinkers made him a noteworthy figure without reference to his pottery. The author has used a wide range of manuscript sources to 'flesh out' Wedgwood's story and gives us a well balanced account of a remarkable man. He confused 'Jacobite' with 'Jacobin' on one occasion and sadly he uses the 'vulgar Americanism' of referring to clergymen as 'Reverend Willets' and 'Reverend Stringer' and not 'the Rev William Willets' or 'the Rev Mr Willets' but both oversights can be corrected in the paperback edition. (R.G.C.)