Wedgwood Ware (Shire Library)

Josiah Wedgwood I was born into a family of potters and became the finest marketing man of his era. His pioneering spirit built up the most important English pottery business of the eighteenth century so that the name Wedgwood became a generic word for fine earthenware. He is justly famous for perfecting the Black Basalt and Jasper stoneware bodies and for producing many designs based on the antique artefacts excavated at Pompeii and Herculaneum. This book also reviews and illustrates the firm's products through the nineteenth century, the designs of Lessore, Dresser, Crane and Barnard, the resurgence after 1904 when John Goodwin became art director, and the subsequent restablishment of the firm's essential greatness.