0:00:02 > 0:00:08In the 18th century, Europe was undergoing a revolution without banners, barricades or bloodshed.
0:00:08 > 0:00:12It was called the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason.
0:00:12 > 0:00:17The revolutionaries weren't violent. They were a handful of thinkers and doers,
0:00:17 > 0:00:25artisans, merchants, scientists and, in one case, all of those things in a single individual.
0:00:27 > 0:00:31When I was a boy, growing up here in the Potteries,
0:00:31 > 0:00:36Josiah Wedgwood was regarded with awe as the first great artist/industrialist.
0:00:36 > 0:00:43Wedgwood was a founding father of the Industrial Revolution with a relentless urge to change -
0:00:43 > 0:00:47science, technology, transport, the welfare of mankind
0:00:47 > 0:00:54and the retail experience of society ladies. He did it all from a muddy village in the middle of nowhere.
0:00:54 > 0:01:00Achievements that might be better known if it wasn't for his magnificent ceramics.
0:01:00 > 0:01:06Josiah Wedgwood wasn't just a famous potter. He transformed Britain itself.
0:01:06 > 0:01:10I've a special relationship with Josiah. I'd a privileged upbringing,
0:01:10 > 0:01:13here in the Wedgwood factory.
0:01:13 > 0:01:16This was my childhood playground.
0:01:16 > 0:01:21In the '50s, my father Norman Wilson was Production Director.
0:01:21 > 0:01:27On Saturdays, he'd bring me to these works when he came to talk glazes and kiln technology.
0:01:27 > 0:01:32He was a potter. All my family were, for some ten generations,
0:01:32 > 0:01:35but I had a different destiny.
0:01:36 > 0:01:43As a boy, I knew Josiah Wedgwood to be a hero, like Stanley Matthews or Yuri Gagarin.
0:01:44 > 0:01:46As a writer, I find him fascinating.
0:01:46 > 0:01:52Why do I want to write about Wedgwood? He combined so many different qualities
0:01:52 > 0:01:58in one human being. And he believed in beauty. He wanted to make beautiful objects
0:01:58 > 0:02:03and to leave the world a more beautiful place, which he did. An extraordinary inventor.
0:02:03 > 0:02:08But he really had a completely new take on English society.
0:02:08 > 0:02:10That fascinates me.
0:02:10 > 0:02:16There's another reason. I was a witness to history when the company went through a post-war renaissance,
0:02:16 > 0:02:21but too young to appreciate it all. What linked my father and his colleagues
0:02:21 > 0:02:25to the great potter? Did Wilson and Wedgwood have something in common?
0:02:26 > 0:02:31I'm going to navigate my way through Josiah Wedgwood's story,
0:02:31 > 0:02:38via my own selection of five pivotal pots. I believe each will illustrate a turning point or theme,
0:02:38 > 0:02:45keys to understanding a remarkable life lived in one of the most exciting periods of our history.
0:02:57 > 0:03:04The Georgian era is still all about us in art, literature and grand architecture.
0:03:04 > 0:03:10It's as relevant today as it was then, made by people we feel familiar with.
0:03:13 > 0:03:19We think of the 18th century as all this - elegant squares, proportion, periwigs,
0:03:19 > 0:03:24brocaded coats, the Age of Reason, Hayden playing in the background.
0:03:24 > 0:03:26And it was.
0:03:26 > 0:03:32But in the early 18th century, in a small provincial village like Burslem where Josiah was born,
0:03:32 > 0:03:39in 1730, things would have been as undeveloped as they had been in 1530.
0:03:43 > 0:03:48In the 18th century, the village of Burslem was not the metropolis it is today.
0:03:48 > 0:03:54Unlike today, this town and the five others that make up Stoke-on-Trent were a centre of industry,
0:03:54 > 0:04:00the pottery industry. The Wedgwoods had operated pot works here for four generations.
0:04:02 > 0:04:07Josiah was born in the family pottery beside St John's church,
0:04:07 > 0:04:14known as the Churchyard Works. His father, Thomas, would be buried there just nine years later.
0:04:26 > 0:04:31Jos was the youngest of eight surviving children. Their world was built on clay.
0:04:31 > 0:04:38The pots that came from Burslem were, understandably, a variety of rich, dark colours
0:04:38 > 0:04:44or else a muddy green, made using lighter clay shipped in from Cornwall.
0:04:44 > 0:04:50For centuries, the British ate and drank from these very serviceable wares,
0:04:50 > 0:04:55but by the middle of the 18th century, a new kind of consumer was emerging,
0:04:55 > 0:04:58one who wanted something tasteful.
0:04:58 > 0:05:01Historian Jeremy Black:
0:05:01 > 0:05:07From the mid-18th century, you have the development of what they would have called at the time
0:05:07 > 0:05:10the middling orders. They didn't say middle class.
0:05:10 > 0:05:16Britain is becoming a much more prosperous country. People wish to display their taste.
0:05:16 > 0:05:23At the same time, sugar is coming into the country, coffee is coming in, chocolate is coming in.
0:05:23 > 0:05:27So the actual sociability is increasingly structured
0:05:27 > 0:05:33around drinking stimulating sort of beverages.
0:05:33 > 0:05:37So the man who is making nice tea sets and coffee sets is in business.
0:05:37 > 0:05:42The man who is making nice coffee sets, Josiah Wedgwood, is really in business.
0:05:42 > 0:05:45It is a active, urban,
0:05:45 > 0:05:51urbane life which requires a set of goods, a set of products,
0:05:51 > 0:05:53to actually help you feel elegant.
0:05:53 > 0:05:59Josiah knew few members of the middle classes, but he'd worked for potters
0:05:59 > 0:06:06who sold to dealers in London, Liverpool and Birmingham, then known as Brummagem.
0:06:07 > 0:06:14With a gammy leg and a restless, inquiring mind, Josiah Wedgwood felt ready in 1759
0:06:14 > 0:06:16to set up on his own.
0:06:17 > 0:06:22To all lovers of art, this should be a place of pilgrimage
0:06:22 > 0:06:28for it was here, when he was not yet 30, that Wedgwood moved into his beautiful ivy-clad cottage
0:06:28 > 0:06:31and started the so-called Ivy Works.
0:06:31 > 0:06:38Surrounding him on every bit of this hillside there would have been smoking kilns of other potteries,
0:06:38 > 0:06:43producing, on the whole, rather crude stuff, red and cream ware, coloured novelty ware.
0:06:43 > 0:06:49What was he to make? Well, Wedgwood was a businessman. He made what would sell.
0:06:50 > 0:06:53And what did sell, like hot cakes,
0:06:53 > 0:06:59was pottery that reminded the new urban money of the rustic idyll they'd left behind.
0:06:59 > 0:07:05The first pot in my voyage around Josiah Wedgwood represents the young businessman at 30,
0:07:05 > 0:07:09with a gift for making and marketing that set him apart.
0:07:09 > 0:07:14This pot is for serving tea, a fashionable drink,
0:07:14 > 0:07:17and it wasn't for the hovels of Stoke.
0:07:17 > 0:07:24It was destined for the tables of urban sophisticates who would be seduced
0:07:24 > 0:07:26by its lustrous, green glaze.
0:07:26 > 0:07:34At the Wedgwood Museum, curator Gaye Blake-Roberts has just a few of his glaze experiments on file.
0:07:34 > 0:07:39Wedgwood constantly ran trials, constantly worked on experiments.
0:07:39 > 0:07:44- These are just some of them.- Wow. He's trying out his bright greens.
0:07:44 > 0:07:47- Trying out his enamel colours. - What chemicals go into these?
0:07:47 > 0:07:50The green comes from copper oxide.
0:07:50 > 0:07:55My father was a potter and said, "You have to be a chemist as well."
0:07:55 > 0:08:00Wedgwood is the supreme example of that. He's a brilliant chemist.
0:08:00 > 0:08:05Yes. Without any chemical training. It was totally picked up by trial and error.
0:08:05 > 0:08:12When you actually look at something like those, you suddenly realise how dedicated he was.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16- Hundreds of experiments.- Hundreds and hundreds.- That's staggering.
0:08:16 > 0:08:21These went on to form the nucleus of the pots we think of as Wedgwood.
0:08:22 > 0:08:27Josiah devoted himself so assiduously to glazes
0:08:27 > 0:08:30because, as a potter, he had a major disadvantage.
0:08:30 > 0:08:36When he was 11, smallpox left Josiah with a nasty tumour behind his right knee.
0:08:36 > 0:08:41The foot-operated wheel of the day was very uncomfortable to him.
0:08:41 > 0:08:47He gravitated towards other aspects of the business - glazes, kiln technology, labour relations
0:08:47 > 0:08:52and marketing - things ripe for change.
0:08:55 > 0:08:59Questioning the way things were done in the pottery came naturally
0:08:59 > 0:09:03to a boy whose family dared to question the nature of God.
0:09:03 > 0:09:07They were Unitarians, dissident Christians.
0:09:08 > 0:09:12The Unitarianism is an important part of Josiah Wedgwood.
0:09:12 > 0:09:18He came here regularly and brought his family here when he had children.
0:09:18 > 0:09:24To be Unitarian was to question the status quo. You weren't part of the establishment.
0:09:24 > 0:09:29Yes, you believed in God, but beyond that you didn't subscribe to any orthodoxies.
0:09:29 > 0:09:35It meant that you passionately believed in free inquiry, in intellectual life,
0:09:35 > 0:09:39and he certainly believed in the education of both boys and girls.
0:09:39 > 0:09:47Underlying it also is this very strong sense of morality. He was, in many senses, a bit of a puritan.
0:09:57 > 0:10:02Historian Jenny Uglow has studied 18th-century society in depth.
0:10:02 > 0:10:09Today we take religious freedom for granted. How different are we from the Georgians?
0:10:13 > 0:10:17England is far more tolerant than we might think.
0:10:17 > 0:10:21You could, more or less, believe what you liked.
0:10:21 > 0:10:28There is a range of dissenting beliefs which goes to Millenarianism and the second coming.
0:10:28 > 0:10:32A lot of the discrimination in Britain
0:10:32 > 0:10:36is actually not about the nature of belief, it's not theological.
0:10:36 > 0:10:38It's about class.
0:10:38 > 0:10:43It's an idea that the dissenting folk are people to do with business, with trade,
0:10:43 > 0:10:50or they're the poor workers in the factories. If you wish to be a respectable member of society,
0:10:50 > 0:10:56- you are an Anglican. - It's a purely snob view.- There was a lot of snobbery with religion.
0:10:56 > 0:10:59Technically, there were enormous disadvantages.
0:10:59 > 0:11:05You couldn't go to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, you couldn't hold an official position,
0:11:05 > 0:11:08you couldn't be a magistrate or an MP.
0:11:08 > 0:11:11But this meant that the dissenters,
0:11:11 > 0:11:16many of whom were men and women of considerable initiative and go ahead,
0:11:16 > 0:11:19created their own culture.
0:11:19 > 0:11:23They were free to think their own way forward.
0:11:23 > 0:11:30As the 1760s began, in the Ivy Works Wedgwood, unlike some of his fellow potters in Stoke,
0:11:30 > 0:11:36was thinking differently about the muddiness of the local cream-coloured earthenware.
0:11:36 > 0:11:41A small businessman with few employees, still throwing pots, a bachelor of simple tastes,
0:11:41 > 0:11:46he devoted every spare moment to experimentation.
0:11:46 > 0:11:49Pivotal pot number two.
0:11:49 > 0:11:53This isn't any cream ware. This is Wedgwood cream ware.
0:11:53 > 0:12:00The clarity of colour, the result of some 5,000 glaze tests, this pot represents
0:12:00 > 0:12:05the kind of ware that will make him a household name around the world,
0:12:05 > 0:12:09but at 30 all that was yet to come.
0:12:09 > 0:12:14Brian Dolan is a California professor with a passion for the genius of Burslem.
0:12:14 > 0:12:19The cream ware that he produced was a much richer
0:12:19 > 0:12:23and much purer kind of colour and texture than anyone had seen before.
0:12:23 > 0:12:31In addition to that, he made sure that the saucers and the tops of the saucers fit tightly,
0:12:31 > 0:12:34that everything was proportioned correctly,
0:12:34 > 0:12:39which originally made him stand out from the others.
0:12:39 > 0:12:43Demand was high among the English for minimalist earthenwares
0:12:43 > 0:12:46that told the neighbours you had good taste
0:12:46 > 0:12:51and then a new kind of client emerged who was even more needy.
0:12:52 > 0:12:59It's 1760, Wedgwood is the right man in the right place at the right time.
0:12:59 > 0:13:05This is a period when Britain is becoming the great merchant nation of the world
0:13:05 > 0:13:09and when exports are booming as never before.
0:13:09 > 0:13:13And a key part of that market is America.
0:13:13 > 0:13:17This was a time when Americans were settling down, building cities,
0:13:17 > 0:13:21and they wanted to have houses which were as comfortable,
0:13:21 > 0:13:27as well-equipped, as well-designed as houses in Bath, in Bristol,
0:13:27 > 0:13:29in Stoke-on-Trent.
0:13:29 > 0:13:32They wanted nice furniture, nice china, pottery.
0:13:32 > 0:13:38And there wasn't a single pottery manufacturer in the whole of the thirteen colonies
0:13:38 > 0:13:43so Wedgwood could see the market opportunity of a lifetime.
0:13:45 > 0:13:50Britain is the greatest trading nation in the world by the late-18th century.
0:13:50 > 0:13:53It has reconfigured its geography.
0:13:53 > 0:13:57If you look in the medieval period, Britain traded with Europe,
0:13:57 > 0:14:03but the opening up of the Atlantic world, which had initially benefited Spain and Portugal most,
0:14:03 > 0:14:07created a set of commercial relationships in which the British,
0:14:07 > 0:14:13in part because they have the most liberal, capitalist system of commercial organisation,
0:14:13 > 0:14:17rather than a state-regulated one, are at the forefront of that.
0:14:18 > 0:14:24America would become Wedgwood's most important overseas market.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28As a Unitarian, he championed the settlers' right to self-rule
0:14:28 > 0:14:33and he traded with the Cherokee to obtain fine clays.
0:14:33 > 0:14:38His cream ware was in great demand, but he had to keep improving it.
0:14:38 > 0:14:41His quest was a glaze the colour of driven snow,
0:14:41 > 0:14:45something the competition hadn't even considered.
0:14:45 > 0:14:52Josiah felt that through more experimentation he could find that new something to dazzle everybody.
0:14:52 > 0:14:56He wanted equal colours, the whole appearance to be a brilliant white.
0:14:59 > 0:15:06Every variation in glaze and clay was tested and fired in his kilns, recorded in a secret code.
0:15:09 > 0:15:14What he finally discovers after toiling for months in the laboratory
0:15:14 > 0:15:21was just the right formula that he could bake at just the right temperature for just the right time
0:15:21 > 0:15:26in order to get what he calls "the good white glaze".
0:15:28 > 0:15:32The white glaze put Wedgwood on the map.
0:15:32 > 0:15:39As he began to become a household name, he spent more time in the capital cajoling dealers
0:15:39 > 0:15:45and observing the habits of London society, what he called "the virtuosi".
0:15:45 > 0:15:49He had an extraordinary affinity for what would appeal to people.
0:15:49 > 0:15:54He had a particular feeling for feminine tastes and what women wanted on their dining tables.
0:15:54 > 0:16:00His good white glaze, his cream ware, had become something that every family in England wanted.
0:16:00 > 0:16:07Indeed, his very surname, Wedgwood, had become synonymous with the finest ceramics.
0:16:09 > 0:16:13The message of his glaze was purity.
0:16:13 > 0:16:20Josiah guessed that the negative would be, too. His black basalt ware was specifically intended
0:16:20 > 0:16:25to make the white hands of his lady customers look softer, more delicate.
0:16:30 > 0:16:37At Liverpool University, Robin Hill and Andrew Popp teach Business History.
0:16:37 > 0:16:43They've examined the mechanics of what was the building of a Georgian superbrand.
0:16:43 > 0:16:46His nephew mistakenly took
0:16:46 > 0:16:50some other factory's pots for some Wedgwood pots
0:16:50 > 0:16:53and Wedgwood was aghast at this.
0:16:53 > 0:16:58It was acknowledged among potters that Wedgwood made the best pots,
0:16:58 > 0:17:04yet even someone intimate to the business sometimes mistook something else for Wedgwood.
0:17:04 > 0:17:09Wedgwood thought, "I need to distinguish what I make."
0:17:09 > 0:17:14Most branding now is literally a brand stamped on, for example, a piece of clothing.
0:17:14 > 0:17:19You can display the name. With pottery it's always hidden, underneath,
0:17:19 > 0:17:25- face down on the table. - It was about distinguishing it from the outside, the surface,
0:17:25 > 0:17:30so we have this commitment to an ever-whiter glaze, this perfectibility.
0:17:30 > 0:17:34And once you've got that in place, you can really run with it.
0:17:34 > 0:17:38He developed what we now call brand extension.
0:17:38 > 0:17:44You get a core and then find new ways of rolling it out - new products, new outlets.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52In the first decades of the century,
0:17:52 > 0:17:59the big house on Burslem's main thoroughfare was home to Josiah's cousins, Long John and Thomas.
0:17:59 > 0:18:03They were the famous Wedgwood potters then.
0:18:05 > 0:18:11In 1762, when he was 32 years old, Josiah Wedgwood stood here outside the big house
0:18:11 > 0:18:13on the pavement, looking in.
0:18:13 > 0:18:19He didn't know it, but he was about to become the greatest name in British pottery.
0:18:19 > 0:18:25Within four years he'd be the most celebrated designer in the world, the greatest arbiter of taste.
0:18:25 > 0:18:31And the catalyst for this was the two relationships he was about to form.
0:18:35 > 0:18:41Wedgwood was on his way to Liverpool on shipping business when he suffered a riding accident
0:18:41 > 0:18:47and was confined to bed there for a month. It was a hot spot for high rollers and deep thinkers.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51One of them was businessman Thomas Bentley.
0:18:53 > 0:18:59Josiah is this great manufacturer. Bentley was primarily a merchant, wasn't he?
0:18:59 > 0:19:03Bentley was actually in Liverpool working as an agent.
0:19:03 > 0:19:09He was actually very well-versed in the ins and outs of distribution to the New World,
0:19:09 > 0:19:16which was exactly what Josiah needed to find, as a partner for his business.
0:19:16 > 0:19:21Josiah was the worker, he was the skilled craftsman,
0:19:21 > 0:19:27he worked with his hands. Bentley, on the other hand, was the one who worked with his head.
0:19:27 > 0:19:34In Bentley, Wedgwood had found someone who wasn't just a business associate, but a soulmate.
0:19:34 > 0:19:40Bentley was a much more sophisticated person than Wedgwood. He came from a richer background.
0:19:40 > 0:19:46But something that Wedgwood responded to absolutely immediately in Bentley's character
0:19:46 > 0:19:53was this idea that if you made a lot of money in business, you go out and try to improve the human lot.
0:19:53 > 0:20:00Bentley had founded a public library, started the Society of Arts and built the Octagon Chapel,
0:20:00 > 0:20:05where he hoped to establish a rational religion.
0:20:05 > 0:20:10Through Bentley, Wedgwood now gained access to a new market - the gentry.
0:20:10 > 0:20:16The urbane businessman became the potter's man in the capital and, eventually, Wedgwood's partner.
0:20:17 > 0:20:24The second pivotal relationship would provide him with the finance fully to realise his ambitions.
0:20:25 > 0:20:31Wedgwood had been in love with his cousin Sarah, known as Sally, for several years,
0:20:31 > 0:20:38but her father Richard had prevented their union. Now the good white glaze made Josiah a better bet.
0:20:40 > 0:20:43Wedgwood to Thomas Bentley:
0:20:43 > 0:20:50"My dear sir, all matters are amicably settled betwixt my papa-elect and myself.
0:20:50 > 0:20:55"I yesterday prevailed upon my dear girl to name the day, the blissful day,
0:20:55 > 0:21:01"when she will reward my faithful services and take me to her arms, to her nuptial bed,
0:21:01 > 0:21:04"to pleasure that I am yet ignorant of.
0:21:04 > 0:21:08"We are to be married on Wednesday next."
0:21:08 > 0:21:14Sally came with cash, which gave her the whip hand. How unusual was this?
0:21:14 > 0:21:21Clever parents, or clever women quite often, made sure that they had some money.
0:21:21 > 0:21:25There was always a system of sort of contractual dealing
0:21:25 > 0:21:29and of protection, putting money in trust.
0:21:29 > 0:21:35In the 19th century, you have women really surrendering everything they possess to their husbands.
0:21:35 > 0:21:41Are you saying that in 18th-century Burslem, this wasn't the case?
0:21:41 > 0:21:46In the 18th century, they were very hard-headed, sensible, practical,
0:21:46 > 0:21:48especially the Wedgwood family.
0:21:48 > 0:21:52And marriages between cousins are extremely common.
0:21:52 > 0:21:56It's part of keeping the money, the business, in the family.
0:21:56 > 0:22:00Over time comes friendship and interest and understanding.
0:22:01 > 0:22:09Wedgwood had the connections, the money and a market-leading product to grow his brand.
0:22:09 > 0:22:12All he needed was a lucky break.
0:22:12 > 0:22:18In 1765, Wedgwood opened a letter from St James's Palace
0:22:18 > 0:22:23inviting him to take part in a competition with all the potters in Staffordshire
0:22:23 > 0:22:27to provide a tea service for Queen Charlotte.
0:22:27 > 0:22:33Now if Queen Charlotte bought his tea service, all the duchesses in England would want to buy one
0:22:33 > 0:22:39and if all the duchesses in England bought a Wedgwood tea service, the middle classes would want one.
0:22:39 > 0:22:45It took Josiah months of experimentation to find a way to make 22-carat gold
0:22:45 > 0:22:48stick to his good white glaze.
0:22:48 > 0:22:52He mixed it with honey and fired it at a very high temperature.
0:22:52 > 0:22:58He won the competition, of course, but sadly we can't enjoy its wonder today.
0:22:58 > 0:23:03- The Queen's service has disappeared. - It has?- Disappeared.
0:23:03 > 0:23:07- It's not somewhere in Buckingham Palace?- No.
0:23:07 > 0:23:12When we try to imagine the now lost Queen's service, it's a teapot like that?
0:23:12 > 0:23:18Very much of this shape, which is very typical of that period, with this wonderful crossed handle.
0:23:18 > 0:23:25- The Queen's service would be gold all over, with green flowers on it. - Gilded, not plain like that.- No.
0:23:25 > 0:23:32- But presumably washing it all the time was disastrous.- Washing and using it takes the gilding off.
0:23:32 > 0:23:38Summoned to the Palace, Josiah asked for permission to call his cream ware Queen's ware,
0:23:38 > 0:23:43the ultimate in celebrity endorsement.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48The Royal Family acted as, in a sense, a stylistic example.
0:23:48 > 0:23:54George III, he has a wife who is a figure of London society
0:23:54 > 0:23:59and who is important and most people knew. He has a large family.
0:23:59 > 0:24:04Most people who are socially and politically active will have met one or other royal prince.
0:24:04 > 0:24:10And there are these new royal palaces going up. There's the new work at Queen's House.
0:24:10 > 0:24:13We now call it Buckingham Palace.
0:24:13 > 0:24:18These are centres of activity. You would expect, if you were a figure of society, to go there.
0:24:18 > 0:24:25In fact, if you were reasonably well-dressed, you could meet the monarch with some ease at that time.
0:24:25 > 0:24:30Wedgwood was a household name in middle-class households.
0:24:30 > 0:24:33Queen's ware was an entree to the aristocracy.
0:24:36 > 0:24:40Once he'd sold to the Royal Family, Josiah Wedgwood was made.
0:24:40 > 0:24:47In the very month that it was known that the Queen of England was drinking her tea from Queen's ware,
0:24:47 > 0:24:51this hill in Burslem was crammed with coaches and carriages
0:24:51 > 0:24:58and I think Wedgwood's grander relations in the big house must have viewed that rather askance
0:24:58 > 0:25:03because those carriages and coaches were filled with the nobility of England.
0:25:03 > 0:25:06# We are Stoke, we are Stoke... #
0:25:06 > 0:25:11Wedgwood wasted no time in alerting the press to his privileged status,
0:25:11 > 0:25:15even if his new title was of his own devising.
0:25:16 > 0:25:21He was now in middle age and in his pomp, but, as usual, he couldn't rest.
0:25:21 > 0:25:27He was a celebrity designer, part of the fashion industry, defined by his favourite activity -
0:25:27 > 0:25:30constant change.
0:25:32 > 0:25:34My third ceramic landmark,
0:25:34 > 0:25:37his copy of a pre-Roman vase.
0:25:38 > 0:25:42This is Wedgwood, the creator of art objects,
0:25:42 > 0:25:46a manufacturer of useful wares branching out into the ornamental.
0:25:46 > 0:25:50Ever since the ruins of Pompeii were unearthed,
0:25:50 > 0:25:55all Europe had been gripped with a mania for anything neo-classical.
0:25:55 > 0:26:00Wedgwood saw this was about more than pots. It was about identity.
0:26:00 > 0:26:07We use the term neo-classical to describe British culture in the late-18th century.
0:26:07 > 0:26:12It helps to provide an explanation about why Wedgwood is operating
0:26:12 > 0:26:15in the kind of stylistic language he is using.
0:26:15 > 0:26:19What it captures, and Wedgwood profited from this,
0:26:19 > 0:26:23is that the British have taken over the role of the Ancient Romans.
0:26:23 > 0:26:31Real antiquities were in short supply, but Wedgwood's Etruscan wares were available in his shop.
0:26:31 > 0:26:38He never relocated to the capital, but in the 1760s, Thomas Bentley began to manage a showroom
0:26:38 > 0:26:44somewhere here on Great Newport Street. Later, they opened in Greek Street, Soho,
0:26:44 > 0:26:47in Mayfair and in Bath.
0:26:47 > 0:26:52Most places in London would have been a combination of some presentation of the goods,
0:26:52 > 0:26:59some stock which would be stored there and then, in the back, would be a place to work on it.
0:26:59 > 0:27:05Pretty crowded space for these small houses in London. Wedgwood decided that he should display his wares
0:27:05 > 0:27:09so that once inside it's laid out like they would do it at home.
0:27:09 > 0:27:13He made the selling space much bigger than an ordinary shop.
0:27:13 > 0:27:20- They could mill around inside. - And say, "My goodness, I want to have those plates."- Yeah.
0:27:20 > 0:27:27What Josiah did was to say, "What we really need to do here is create a space to stage the merchandise."
0:27:27 > 0:27:31These shops drew crowds that caused traffic jams.
0:27:31 > 0:27:37Wedgwood and Bentley pioneered the kind of retail experience we know today.
0:27:37 > 0:27:43Josiah wasn't just meeting the English grandees. The European nobility came.
0:27:43 > 0:27:50This gave him rather a good idea. He packaged up boxes of Wedgwood ware, inside he put an invoice
0:27:50 > 0:27:54and he sent them at random to several European great houses.
0:27:54 > 0:27:58"If you like this stuff, keep it and buy it. If you don't, send it back."
0:27:58 > 0:28:03He was taking a colossal risk, almost certain to lose most of it,
0:28:03 > 0:28:08but it showed his immense business bravado.
0:28:18 > 0:28:26The package that went to Saxony and the modest home of Prince Leopold III of Anhalt-Dessau,
0:28:26 > 0:28:32always known as Franz, succeeded in rekindling an interest first ignited on the Grand Tour.
0:28:32 > 0:28:37The Prince was an acquaintance of the antiquary Sir William Hamilton,
0:28:37 > 0:28:40ambassador and purveyor of original pieces.
0:28:40 > 0:28:44Wedgwood's replicas were seen by the Prince to be their equal.
0:28:44 > 0:28:47Modern-designed neo-classics.
0:28:49 > 0:28:53It's hard to think of anywhere in the world giving a better sense
0:28:53 > 0:28:59of why people went mad for Wedgwood in the 18th century. Here you see it as it's meant to be displayed,
0:28:59 > 0:29:02in a beautiful, 18th-century room, exactly as it was,
0:29:02 > 0:29:08and don't forget this was a young man's house, a young man who had seen these beautiful things in Rome,
0:29:08 > 0:29:14so what you have is an extraordinary vision of a German palace copying an English country house
0:29:14 > 0:29:20and in the middle of it this domesticated classicism, the essence of English taste.
0:29:20 > 0:29:23And Wedgwood everywhere.
0:29:23 > 0:29:26Fantastic.
0:29:29 > 0:29:33The lucky keeper of the collection is Uwe Quilitzsch.
0:29:33 > 0:29:36We must open the window shutters.
0:29:38 > 0:29:39Oh!
0:29:41 > 0:29:43Oh, my goodness, me.
0:29:43 > 0:29:46Yeah, the light come in...
0:29:47 > 0:29:51- Goodness!- ..and we are in the Age of Enlightenment.
0:29:51 > 0:29:56This is so extraordinary. Very English, only we're in Germany.
0:29:56 > 0:30:00The Prince was very inspired by British culture.
0:30:00 > 0:30:03I think the heart beat a little bit English.
0:30:03 > 0:30:07Look at these vases. All Wedgwood vases that he sent over, presumably?
0:30:07 > 0:30:12Yes. They come in the beginning of the 1770s.
0:30:12 > 0:30:18- This is fantastic. What happened to the lid? Did one get broken?- Yeah.
0:30:18 > 0:30:22He saw these vases which had been dug up in Herculaneum and Pompeii
0:30:22 > 0:30:27- and thought, "I could do that." - Neo-classical copies for aristocrats.
0:30:27 > 0:30:30They're just pure elegance.
0:30:37 > 0:30:42In England, Wedgwood was himself preparing to move into grand accommodation -
0:30:42 > 0:30:47a new, purpose-built live/work space.
0:30:47 > 0:30:50In 1769, the new building was ready for occupation.
0:30:50 > 0:30:55It was the most modern industrial space in the world.
0:30:55 > 0:30:59The works employed around 300 artisans.
0:30:59 > 0:31:03Processes were broken down to facilitate mass production.
0:31:03 > 0:31:07Staff became specialists in one area, but ignorant of others,
0:31:07 > 0:31:12so the chance of telling his secrets to competitors was reduced.
0:31:12 > 0:31:18Wedgwood demanded hard work, but his religious beliefs made him an enlightened employer.
0:31:18 > 0:31:21He built 76 workers' cottages near the factory.
0:31:21 > 0:31:27To combat the lung disease that killed potters, he considered a primitive form of air-conditioning.
0:31:27 > 0:31:30This was Unitarianism in action.
0:31:30 > 0:31:35Most factories were hellish and it wasn't much better in the fields.
0:31:35 > 0:31:42The kind of romanticisation that you saw in the opening of the Olympics was naive and ridiculous.
0:31:42 > 0:31:48It wasn't the case that rural work was in some way a benign set of activities
0:31:48 > 0:31:54which were swept away by harsh industrialists. Rural work also was pretty awful,
0:31:54 > 0:31:56arduous and very long hours.
0:31:56 > 0:32:02He called the new place Etruria after that part of Italy
0:32:02 > 0:32:08where the Etruscans had lived. In the 1920s, when King George V and Queen Mary visited the works,
0:32:08 > 0:32:13Queen Mary asked one of the workers, "Do you enjoy living in Stoke?"
0:32:13 > 0:32:19And he replied, "I don't live in Stoke, ma'am. We're all Etruscans here."
0:32:19 > 0:32:23On the day Wedgwood and Bentley opened the Etruria factory,
0:32:23 > 0:32:26June 13th, 1769,
0:32:26 > 0:32:30Wedgwood himself threw six celebratory Etruscan vases.
0:32:30 > 0:32:35The one on the left was Josiah's own souvenir of the auspicious day.
0:32:37 > 0:32:41Josiah was about to turn 40. He'd made it.
0:32:41 > 0:32:44And he did still make it.
0:32:44 > 0:32:49It's an obvious thing to say, but Josiah Wedgwood was first and foremost a potter.
0:32:49 > 0:32:55Even when he was a young apprentice, he threw better bowls and vases than anyone else had done in England.
0:32:55 > 0:32:59He was a fantastically brilliant craftsman.
0:32:59 > 0:33:03When he was working at Etruria as a distinguished old man,
0:33:03 > 0:33:09people would gather round and watch him throw a vase. It was a masterclass in how to be a potter.
0:33:09 > 0:33:16When he moved into Etruria as a grand old businessman, was he a suit, afraid to get his hands dirty?
0:33:16 > 0:33:18No.
0:33:22 > 0:33:29Edmund de Waal is a studio potter driven to spend as much time as possible behind the wheel.
0:33:29 > 0:33:36He's not a mass producer like Wedgwood, but does he feel a kinship with him?
0:33:36 > 0:33:40My take on Josiah is that he couldn't have done
0:33:40 > 0:33:46that incredible, catalytic invention of industrial pottery on that scale
0:33:46 > 0:33:53unless he absolutely knew in his fingertips what it was like to mix clay.
0:33:56 > 0:34:01What he seemed to be able to do was to deliver artistic perfection on an industrial scale.
0:34:01 > 0:34:05This cream ware is absolutely stellar. A fantastic teapot.
0:34:05 > 0:34:09This is about Englishness as well, it really is.
0:34:09 > 0:34:15Imagine if we were picking up a bit of Meissen and there would be quite a lot of gilding.
0:34:15 > 0:34:21And you would be being told very, very firmly how precious this was.
0:34:21 > 0:34:25And here you've got somewhere on a Staffordshire river,
0:34:25 > 0:34:30but also a bit of the Orient and a bit classical. Completely perfect
0:34:30 > 0:34:36about English fantasy about what the good life should be. And it's a blooming teapot!
0:34:36 > 0:34:40- It's fantastic.- It's beautifully fine.- But it's not too fine.- No.
0:34:40 > 0:34:45- It's robust, but it's finely made. - Yeah.- And all the same consistency.
0:34:45 > 0:34:49When you feel it, you can feel the person throwing it.
0:34:49 > 0:34:53You can feel a finger and a thumb in 1780 have held that.
0:34:53 > 0:34:57And making that part of the joy of the object.
0:34:57 > 0:35:05- So here, with this fantastic cup and saucer, you've got this ridiculous handle.- Glorious. I love it.
0:35:05 > 0:35:12- I love this.- That's a particularly wonderful cup.- You can see where the thumb pressed these two bits.
0:35:12 > 0:35:15It was nearly always the women.
0:35:15 > 0:35:21Although he went for perfection, he wasn't going for inhuman uniformity or anything like that.
0:35:21 > 0:35:28No, it's industrial, but what does industry mean? Real people working in one of those factories,
0:35:28 > 0:35:34so of course there's that sense of a breath of difference between what everyone does.
0:35:37 > 0:35:4313 years after the opening of Etruria, Josiah and Sally were gentry.
0:35:43 > 0:35:47They had money, influence, a great house and a large family.
0:35:47 > 0:35:52In the intervening decade, Thomas Bentley had died
0:35:52 > 0:35:59leaving Wedgwood bereft, but still determined to make improvements in everything he saw.
0:35:59 > 0:36:04At the age of 57, he was old by Georgian standards,
0:36:04 > 0:36:07but still felt he had work to do,
0:36:07 > 0:36:09championing the rights of man.
0:36:10 > 0:36:16Sending shipments to America required frequent trips to the port of Liverpool.
0:36:16 > 0:36:24Cotton, linen, wool, coal and, of course, earthenwares from Britain went out
0:36:24 > 0:36:28and all manner of exotic goods from the Far East and New West came in.
0:36:28 > 0:36:34Josiah was a merchant, but one with the belief that people mattered more than profit.
0:36:35 > 0:36:42The sight of slaves sickened him. His Unitarian convictions compelled him to act.
0:36:44 > 0:36:48The fourth of my Wedgwood landmarks isn't a pot.
0:36:48 > 0:36:55It's a ceramic masterstroke of marketing genius, designed to change attitudes by stealth.
0:36:55 > 0:36:59It's Wedgwood, the taste maker and moral crusader.
0:37:05 > 0:37:11Wedgwood wasn't just a man with a passion for making and selling things.
0:37:11 > 0:37:17He was also consumed with a passion for social justice. "Am I not a man and a brother?"
0:37:23 > 0:37:29The slave trade and slavery itself remains a powerful economic interest
0:37:29 > 0:37:34because obviously what you've got is very low-cost, controlled labour
0:37:34 > 0:37:41and that is producing goods like sugar in which there's then a high profit margin to owners and shippers.
0:37:41 > 0:37:44That is significant for British industrialisation.
0:37:44 > 0:37:48While Wedgwood would have irritated some people by his stance,
0:37:48 > 0:37:51others would have thought, "Absolutely. This is right."
0:37:51 > 0:37:57- He actually made thousands of much smaller medallions. - That's wonderful.
0:37:57 > 0:38:03He sent them to people like Benjamin Franklin for free distribution for anybody who'd support the cause.
0:38:03 > 0:38:09- They're the very earliest campaigning medal.- Did he give them away free in England?- Absolutely.
0:38:09 > 0:38:15- It was the way he could demonstrate his support.- Where would you have worn them?- On watch chains,
0:38:15 > 0:38:19- put into bracelets. - Or pinned as a brooch?- Brooch.
0:38:19 > 0:38:26- It's recorded that some wore them as hat pins.- Wonderful.- It is said in a letter by Benjamin Franklin
0:38:26 > 0:38:30that they've done far more for the cause than thousands of words
0:38:30 > 0:38:34because for the very first time people openly showed their support.
0:38:34 > 0:38:39The idea of using fashion to deliver a political message,
0:38:39 > 0:38:43pre-dating the t-shirt by two centuries, was Wedgwood's.
0:38:43 > 0:38:49But it wasn't just the message that was revolutionary. The medallions and a new wave of pots and plates
0:38:49 > 0:38:55were made of a completely new kind of pottery, invented by Josiah Wedgwood.
0:38:55 > 0:39:01Josiah had long ago given up the idea of imitating Chinese porcelain.
0:39:01 > 0:39:05Instead, he thought that this new invention of his was even better.
0:39:05 > 0:39:13And in 1775 he announced to the world the existence of this new ceramic material - jasper.
0:39:13 > 0:39:17Jasperware could absorb these very strong colours
0:39:17 > 0:39:21and the most popular colour of all was a certain shade of blue.
0:39:22 > 0:39:27Jasper was and is a fine-grained stoneware
0:39:27 > 0:39:33made from a mixture of clay and a sulphate form of the heavy metal barium.
0:39:33 > 0:39:39Wedgwood was so afraid of industrial espionage, he posted the formula to Bentley in two separate letters.
0:39:42 > 0:39:48For all his working life, Wedgwood was potter by day, inventor by night.
0:39:48 > 0:39:55In the pottery, he looked constantly for ways that the manufacturing might be improved.
0:39:55 > 0:40:01In an 18th-century pottery, the best-paid man was the kiln watcher.
0:40:01 > 0:40:05His job was to watch the oven and to judge, by instinct,
0:40:05 > 0:40:10whether the coal was hot enough and not too hot to fire the pots.
0:40:10 > 0:40:17Get it wrong and he'd destroy a whole oven full of pots. A very expensive business.
0:40:17 > 0:40:24Now Josiah Wedgwood came up with a solution. A very simple one, like so many of his brilliant ideas.
0:40:24 > 0:40:28A simple brass frame with a little lump of wet clay in it.
0:40:28 > 0:40:34When the clay contracted, it rolled down a channel and he knew the oven was the right temperature
0:40:34 > 0:40:36to fire his pots.
0:40:36 > 0:40:39He called it the pyrometer.
0:40:43 > 0:40:50Josiah's science was self-taught and his constant desire for invention self-motivated.
0:40:50 > 0:40:57In 1782, the simple lad who had left school at nine came here
0:40:57 > 0:41:01to address the Royal Society regarding his pyrometer
0:41:01 > 0:41:06and was elected to this, the world's first scientific institution.
0:41:06 > 0:41:10British society as a whole at that period
0:41:10 > 0:41:15was probably more engaged with science than it is today.
0:41:15 > 0:41:21Many people who were not of aristocratic background were interested in the world of science,
0:41:21 > 0:41:28and Wedgwood with his utilitarian concerns, but also his philosophical interest in trying to work out
0:41:28 > 0:41:33how things happened, was very much a man of science.
0:41:33 > 0:41:39Once a month, Wedgwood joined other free thinkers who dared to ask big questions.
0:41:40 > 0:41:46How common was it to have an intellectual society or a group or a club like this?
0:41:46 > 0:41:49It is a very sociable time
0:41:49 > 0:41:52and there are clubs for virtually everything,
0:41:52 > 0:41:58from glee singing to worm collecting. You'd probably find a club somewhere!
0:41:58 > 0:42:02At Soho House, the Birmingham home of a rival industrialist,
0:42:02 > 0:42:08Wedgwood and friends met at full moon. It was a sort of gents' discussion group.
0:42:08 > 0:42:15It was a local affair, but the locality was the Georgian equivalent of Silicon Valley.
0:42:15 > 0:42:18There's Matthew Boulton and James Watt,
0:42:18 > 0:42:23of the great Soho manufacturer and steam engine fame.
0:42:23 > 0:42:28Joseph Priestley, not only a great leader of radical dissent,
0:42:28 > 0:42:36but the discoverer of oxygen or, as he called it, dephlogisticated air and photosynthesis.
0:42:36 > 0:42:39They each had a specialism.
0:42:39 > 0:42:45They could turn to the other person, they could turn to the mathematician if their calculations didn't work.
0:42:45 > 0:42:52There's the extraordinary development of new ideas and the collision of interests and imagination.
0:42:52 > 0:42:57It's an extraordinary gathering and Josiah is one of the most extraordinary.
0:42:59 > 0:43:04It's so exciting to be in this room where so many geniuses met,
0:43:04 > 0:43:08where so many ideas were played off, one against the other,
0:43:08 > 0:43:12and you get the sense of them all feeding off one another, really.
0:43:12 > 0:43:19You get, for example, Joseph Priestley pioneering our modern perception of H20,
0:43:19 > 0:43:22the property of water itself.
0:43:22 > 0:43:27Wedgwood supplied his ceramic equipment to do those experiments.
0:43:27 > 0:43:31Then you get Matthew Boulton and Watt, pioneering the steam engine
0:43:31 > 0:43:35on the strength of their knowledge of what H20 was.
0:43:35 > 0:43:41Who's the first person to buy a steam engine? Josiah Wedgwood. The Industrial Revolution steams ahead
0:43:41 > 0:43:43on the ideas formed at this table.
0:43:43 > 0:43:49Dr Erasmus Darwin was a key player who became a close friend of the potter.
0:43:49 > 0:43:54An inventor, a poet, a physician, he suggested in 1768
0:43:54 > 0:43:58that Wedgwood would be better off without the gammy leg.
0:43:58 > 0:44:04Josiah had already allowed the experimental inoculation of his children, possibly killing one.
0:44:04 > 0:44:07Medicine was science.
0:44:07 > 0:44:1418th-century medicine is the one thing one would really avoid at all costs.
0:44:14 > 0:44:20- Josiah Wedgwood was not fortunate enough to avoid it.- No. The amputation of Josiah's leg
0:44:20 > 0:44:24is a grim moment.
0:44:25 > 0:44:28He was fantastically brave.
0:44:28 > 0:44:34We can't say with hindsight whether it was...what could have been done to help him,
0:44:34 > 0:44:40but it's very shocking and yet it's part of his image, stomping around with his wooden leg
0:44:40 > 0:44:44and using it to smash, you know, inferior pottery.
0:44:44 > 0:44:47- And it was his nickname, Old Wooden Leg.- Old Wooden Leg.
0:44:47 > 0:44:50In terms of the medical advances of the time,
0:44:50 > 0:44:55Erasmus Darwin, awful, liberal doser-out of laudanum,
0:44:55 > 0:44:59opium, you know. If it doesn't work and you feel a bit woozy, take more!
0:44:59 > 0:45:04There are terrible notes in his book about, "Poor Mrs So-and-so...!
0:45:04 > 0:45:08"Vomiting! Coma! Death!" You know.
0:45:10 > 0:45:15So it is... a rather frightening time.
0:45:26 > 0:45:31Mobility was an obsession with Wedgwood. The Lunar Men will certainly have heard
0:45:31 > 0:45:36of his desire to drag the transport system into the 19th century.
0:45:37 > 0:45:42Wedgwood was a modern man, a key figure in the creation of modern industry,
0:45:42 > 0:45:46but he knew there was one vital ingredient missing - transport.
0:45:46 > 0:45:51He lived in Burslem, one of the most inaccessible parts of England.
0:45:51 > 0:45:58It was on this sloping hill, full of rutted tracks made worse by amateur clay diggers
0:45:58 > 0:46:02gouging out potholes from the few existent lanes.
0:46:02 > 0:46:06He wanted to devise a smooth, efficient method
0:46:06 > 0:46:11of transporting pottery from the pot banks to the dining table.
0:46:11 > 0:46:16He didn't just want to reform the lanes of Burslem, but the entire transport system.
0:46:16 > 0:46:21He wanted canals and one in particular.
0:46:21 > 0:46:29Manchester, Birmingham and London had canals, but they were cut off from Stoke. That had to change.
0:46:29 > 0:46:34The most exciting project, really, of the age was the building
0:46:34 > 0:46:37of the Trent and Mersey Canal.
0:46:37 > 0:46:43If the alternative was putting things on the back of mules and going over muddy roads,
0:46:43 > 0:46:48or, if you were lucky, putting things in wagons that got stuck in ruts,
0:46:48 > 0:46:53the canals cut through this and enabled you to move bulk goods at low cost.
0:46:53 > 0:46:57And that's wonderful for ceramics, it's wonderful for coal,
0:46:57 > 0:47:03it's wonderful for many of the goods that are important to British industrialisation.
0:47:03 > 0:47:07Wedgwood formed committees, raised funds and cajoled backers.
0:47:07 > 0:47:11When work began, it was he who cut the first sod.
0:47:11 > 0:47:18He'd spent 11 years trying to persuade his fellow potters that the canal was great for business,
0:47:18 > 0:47:24though he was the only one who would eventually have the Trent and Mersey Canal passing
0:47:24 > 0:47:27right outside his new loading bay.
0:47:27 > 0:47:33As he approached his 60s, Josiah could look down from his pot works to his canal and feel
0:47:33 > 0:47:37a sense of accomplishment. Little did he know,
0:47:37 > 0:47:40he still had his best work ahead of him.
0:47:40 > 0:47:43The last in our potted history
0:47:43 > 0:47:49is his copy of the finest example of an ancient vase ever found.
0:47:50 > 0:47:53The original was made in 25BC
0:47:53 > 0:47:58and purchased by the Duchess of Portland in 1784.
0:47:59 > 0:48:05The Dukes of Portland were prodigiously rich, making the rest of the aristocracy like paupers.
0:48:05 > 0:48:12And the old Duchess of Portland placed it in her cabinet of curiosities. Then, presumably,
0:48:12 > 0:48:16it was the excitement which killed her. She died almost at once.
0:48:16 > 0:48:21And all her wonderful collection of loot was put up for sale in London.
0:48:21 > 0:48:26Her son, the Duke, was terrified - he, one of the richest men in Europe -
0:48:26 > 0:48:32that a manufacturer from North Staffordshire would be rich enough to outbid him at the auction.
0:48:32 > 0:48:38The Duke got the vase, but it was lent to Josiah so that he might copy it.
0:48:38 > 0:48:44All my landmark pots stand for a different facet of Wedgwood's personality.
0:48:44 > 0:48:49This one is tenacity, technical genius and stubborn refusal to give in.
0:48:49 > 0:48:53It is the most technically difficult thing he ever tried to do.
0:48:53 > 0:48:59Many went wrong in the kiln. They bubbled, they blistered, the ornamentation fell off.
0:48:59 > 0:49:04- What was going wrong?- The problem, I think, was that he was trying to copy something
0:49:04 > 0:49:09effectively made of glass, cameo glass, in a ceramic body.
0:49:09 > 0:49:16He was trying to make the same sort of translucency. With great triumph in October, 1789, he said,
0:49:16 > 0:49:20- "I've got a perfect one." - And did he put it on display?
0:49:20 > 0:49:24- It was on show in London by ticket only.- Wonderful.
0:49:35 > 0:49:37There we are.
0:49:37 > 0:49:40Josiah...in 1790...
0:49:41 > 0:49:46had more or less perfected his copy of the Portland vase.
0:49:46 > 0:49:49And by then he was a sick man.
0:49:49 > 0:49:54He was taking a lot of laudanum for pains in his face and in his leg.
0:49:54 > 0:50:00He managed to get 20 or 30 or so, we don't know exactly, which were truly exquisite and...
0:50:00 > 0:50:05Oh! I nearly dropped it! Don't worry. This is a Victorian copy.
0:50:05 > 0:50:10But he did make about 20 or 30 really perfect copies of the vase
0:50:10 > 0:50:16and this was one I bought in a junk shop. It probably cost 10 shillings.
0:50:16 > 0:50:20After he'd made the Portland vase, it became his hallmark
0:50:20 > 0:50:24and it was reproduced and reproduced.
0:50:26 > 0:50:31The power to transform mud into china was a given for all potters,
0:50:31 > 0:50:37but Wedgwood went further, taking pottery from utility to luxury.
0:50:39 > 0:50:45Wedgwood could see that what he'd done was produce a product that was much more than just utilitarian.
0:50:45 > 0:50:51This was art that you could eat off, drink from, serve your boiled potatoes from,
0:50:51 > 0:50:58but in owning a piece of Wedgwood ware, you become part of a larger movement, a movement of classicism.
0:50:58 > 0:51:02You'd really become part of the cognoscenti.
0:51:02 > 0:51:07Comparisons have been made with a modern design genius.
0:51:07 > 0:51:13What Steve Jobs did was to take an existing concept or product and just make it much better.
0:51:13 > 0:51:15That could also be said of Josiah.
0:51:15 > 0:51:20Even when it comes to imitating thousands of years old pieces
0:51:20 > 0:51:22he would actually take good ideas,
0:51:22 > 0:51:26but work his magic and his aesthetic qualities
0:51:26 > 0:51:29and make that the recipe for success.
0:51:31 > 0:51:36Today, the six towns that comprise the Potteries
0:51:36 > 0:51:41are home to call centres, fast food joints and shopping precincts.
0:51:41 > 0:51:47As it has in much of the Midlands, the kind of industry that made Britain famous has largely relocated
0:51:47 > 0:51:53to somewhere far away where labour is cheap and the climate warmer.
0:51:53 > 0:51:58The manufactory on what is now Festival Way,
0:51:58 > 0:52:01once the most advanced in the world, is gone.
0:52:01 > 0:52:04Only the house Josiah built remains.
0:52:04 > 0:52:08Etruria Hall, now a conference centre.
0:52:08 > 0:52:14One difference between us and the great Josiah is that everything he touched he left more beautiful.
0:52:14 > 0:52:20Everything we touch... Well, we don't have the knack. This place is now absolutely hideous
0:52:20 > 0:52:23and he would have been appalled at what we've done.
0:52:23 > 0:52:28But if he sat here with the business execs, he'd be realistic enough
0:52:28 > 0:52:31to realise trade has to go on.
0:52:33 > 0:52:37In the 1950s, the trade was going on.
0:52:37 > 0:52:44I grew up with the legacy of the first Josiah. My father and his colleagues wanted to recapture
0:52:44 > 0:52:46the spirit of the 18th century.
0:52:46 > 0:52:52They shared a belief in the power of design to make things better,
0:52:52 > 0:52:57that sitting on a sideboard, their pots could banish post-war gloom.
0:52:57 > 0:53:03They made their factory a well-oiled machine and, like Wedgwood, built ideal homes for the workforce.
0:53:08 > 0:53:10Those homes are still there,
0:53:10 > 0:53:15a five-minute walk from the factory. We lived just down the road.
0:53:17 > 0:53:21It's 50 years since I was last in the house I grew up in,
0:53:21 > 0:53:26smelling the cigarettes and hearing the laughter.
0:53:26 > 0:53:30Now this is absolutely as I remember it. It's extraordinary.
0:53:30 > 0:53:33And this was my bedroom.
0:53:33 > 0:53:40I can remember kneeling on the bed and looking out of the window and imagining witches in the trees.
0:53:40 > 0:53:44It doesn't evoke deep feelings, funnily enough.
0:53:44 > 0:53:50What I'm amazed by is the way that individual corners have created memories I didn't know I had,
0:53:50 > 0:53:54incidents I can remember. Thinking of my old father here,
0:53:54 > 0:53:58I can place him in various bits of the house,
0:53:58 > 0:54:03always surrounded with smoke, 60-a-day man, Senior Service, untipped, of course.
0:54:03 > 0:54:08This is where my father would sit drinking gin and French with old Josiah.
0:54:08 > 0:54:12My father talked about the Wedgwoods all the time.
0:54:12 > 0:54:16Him and Uncle Jos, as we called him, Josiah Wedgwood V,
0:54:16 > 0:54:21they built up the factory together. They'd been through some hair-raising times doing so
0:54:21 > 0:54:24and constantly talked about that.
0:54:24 > 0:54:30I think Josiah I was a genius and I think Norman Wilson was a man of prodigious talents
0:54:30 > 0:54:35and energy, but not a genius. They had things in common, no question.
0:54:35 > 0:54:41Norman was inspired by the first Josiah to build a new Wedgwood factory in a rural setting.
0:54:41 > 0:54:46He was like Josiah in that he was both a businessman and a designer
0:54:46 > 0:54:52and he had a passionately strong aesthetic sense and a horror of ugliness.
0:54:52 > 0:54:58And really believed that popular table ware, cups and saucers,
0:54:58 > 0:55:01teapots, should be as beautiful as possible.
0:55:01 > 0:55:08He hated jasper and all that blue and white stuff. That was C-R-A-P for Americans.
0:55:08 > 0:55:10The side of America he liked
0:55:10 > 0:55:16was that optimistic belief in a golden future and I think Josiah I had that.
0:55:16 > 0:55:20They were both sunny optimists, which I certainly am not myself.
0:55:20 > 0:55:26Much of the time my father would be sitting in a chair sketching out new designs.
0:55:26 > 0:55:32He used to get scrapbooks from Woolworth's and he did his drawing in fountain pen
0:55:32 > 0:55:37on these grey pages. Rather beautiful, actually.
0:55:37 > 0:55:42As you can see, the pots he designed were pared-down pieces
0:55:42 > 0:55:46for the decade when England swung like a pendulum.
0:55:46 > 0:55:49As did the company's fortunes.
0:55:49 > 0:55:54Josiah Wedgwood died worth the modern equivalent of half a billion pounds,
0:55:54 > 0:55:58but subsequent directors found the going tough.
0:55:58 > 0:56:01I was too young to appreciate the glory days.
0:56:01 > 0:56:06A few years later, I knew all about the demise of the potteries.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10The whole pottery industry had changed completely
0:56:10 > 0:56:15and wasn't agreeable to my father. He warned me and my brother off.
0:56:15 > 0:56:20He just said don't have anything to do with it. He was quite right, too.
0:56:20 > 0:56:24I actually got into an art school and he was very angry
0:56:24 > 0:56:30and made me withdraw. I was feeble. You should never obey your parents over things like that.
0:56:30 > 0:56:35Obey them when you're little, but when you're older, follow your star.
0:56:35 > 0:56:37And I was a coward about that.
0:56:37 > 0:56:43If I count back through my family, my father was probably a tenth-generation potter.
0:56:43 > 0:56:49I probably thought when I was a boy there was an inevitability about my doing the same,
0:56:49 > 0:56:53but destiny had a different idea.
0:56:53 > 0:56:57I'm fairly amateurish at it as you can probably see.
0:56:58 > 0:57:03I fancied the life of the potter, but the first Josiah's sons didn't.
0:57:07 > 0:57:12Josiah had educated his sons and he'd given them money - a lot.
0:57:12 > 0:57:17They'd become more or less landed gentry. This was a trouble in a way.
0:57:17 > 0:57:21They went into the business, but weren't really inclined for it
0:57:21 > 0:57:25and thought themselves a little too grand to be in trade.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29Nevertheless, there was genius in that DNA.
0:57:29 > 0:57:35When Suki, Wedgwood's favourite daughter, married Robert Darwin, the son of Dr Erasmus Darwin,
0:57:35 > 0:57:38what a gene pool that was.
0:57:38 > 0:57:40In 1809, they had a son.
0:57:40 > 0:57:46He inherited a great deal of the inquiring mind and spirit of Josiah Wedgwood.
0:57:46 > 0:57:51He also inherited a lot of money, which gave him leisure to research.
0:57:51 > 0:57:56And the name of that genius was Charles Darwin.
0:58:02 > 0:58:06The Age of Enlightenment brought huge changes to the world
0:58:06 > 0:58:10and Josiah was personally behind quite a lot of them,
0:58:10 > 0:58:16but I think the change that meant most to him was that the humble craft of the potter
0:58:16 > 0:58:19was now perceived to be a fine art.
0:58:20 > 0:58:22When they carved his epitaph,
0:58:22 > 0:58:30they said he converted a rude and inconsiderable manufactory into an elegant art.
0:58:49 > 0:58:52Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd