Word: wedgwoods
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...Wedgwood's business expanded so quickly that within ten years he had built a new factory (cost: more than £3,000), opened a London showroom, and started work on a whole village for his workers, to be named Etruria. As a prominent businessman, Wedgwood repeatedly urged Parliament to build new highways and canals to aid commerce. As a man who remembered his own lack of education he contributed toward two free schools for the poor...
From such various activities, it is easy to see that Josiah Wedgwood not only gets what he wants but that his wants are conceived on a very grand scale. They have served to make him one of the richest manufacturers in England and an exemplar of the modern type of merchant. Yet he was born to relative poverty 46 years ago, the 13th and youngest child of a potter in Staffordshire. His schooling ended at the age of eight, when his father died, and he had to go to work as an apprentice in a pottery run by an older...
Unable to continue at the potter's wheel, Wedgwood turned to other aspects of the trade, trying out different mixtures of colored clays and various glazes. His brother disapproved of his constant experimenting and refused to make him a partner, so Wedgwood tried two other partnerships, then started a small business of his own. He had ideas for basic improvements that now seem obvious: standardized sizes, for example, so that plates could more easily be stored in piles. And instead of letting one craftsman toil over each plate, Wedgwood introduced a division of labor for faster production. He also...
Still experimenting, Wedgwood is now concentrating mainly on a new product that he calls Jasper Ware because it is almost as shiny as jasper. Wedgwood was the first to discover that clay containing barium compounds can be more highly polished than any other and can be beautifully colored by various metallic oxides. To exploit the classical revival started by the recent excavations in Pompeii, Wedgwood is embossing his Jasper Ware with bas-relief of Greek and Roman figures...
...Although Wedgwood has many American customers, the war has halted such trade. Wedgwood is undismayed, however. He is sympathetic to the American cause (he protests against "the absurdity, folly and wickedness of our whole proceedings with America"). Ever the businessman, Wedgwood fully expects to have a new and improved line of tableware ready to sell in America as soon as the war is over...