Josiah Wedgwood's Pottery - Case Study Example

As an entrepreneur Wedgwood imagined a new system of organization in his new modern factory Etruria. In place of the age-old system of journeymen and apprentices, which he himself had been a part of Wedgwood sought to establish a system of specialization. Before specialization, journeymen were expected to be proficient in all branches of the trade, but with Wedgwood’s system of specialization, each laborer needed to be efficient in only one branch. Dissolving the old system was one of his greatest challenges. Wedgwood believed in specialization because he thought it helped set new levels of accuracy. Before, a workman’s day was more or less his own, to organize as he pleased. It was difficult, for example, to get employees to work on what they called “Saint Monday” a day they traditionally had off. Although he was not alone in wanting to improve production, he was the most inflexible. Meteyard notes that early on, during his Ivy House days, Wedgwood regarded the human side of industry as a bother to his creative genius, noting that: At first he [Wedgwood] met with much sullen opposition, often amounting to an insubordination that necessitated im­mediate dismissal: but by firmness, patience, and great kind­ness he succeeded, in a comparatively short time, in bringing his manufactory into efficient order (qtd in Burton, 31-32). Wedgwood hoped that the increased efficiency of his Etruria factory would allow him to expand his business through export outside his county’s boundaries. For the first time in the 1730’s Staffordshire potters had begun to export outside their county lines, finding new markets throughout England. But increased exportation could be profitable only with the establishment of a countrywide transportation and distribution network (Clark, 42). It was for this reason that Wedgwood became an active lobbyist for the improvement of transportation in The Potteries. The roads were notoriously bad in Staffordshire, not unlike the rest of England. Modernizing and improving the roads meant turning them into turnpikes, or toll highways. Wedgwood wanted local turnpikes to connect to major London highways. To achieve his transportation objectives, Wedgwood formed a group of committee trustees to assist with investing not only with road improvements but also with canal constructions as well, because the latter was more efficient form of transport. Eventually, Wedgwood triumphed and the canal was built in the path of his new estate. The Trent and Mersey Canal was to become the main artery of the Grand Trunk Canal, which would have an extension leading to London. Wedgwood’s transportation improvement goals became a reality. Wedgwood understood that in order for his wares to become more desirable they would need to be more than perfectly produced. They needed a boost in status. Wedgwood felt they needed to transcend the universal opinion that all earthenware was inferior to porcelain. This was key if his creamware was to gain popularity, and most importantly, fetch the high porcelain prices he hoped for. To achieve this, Wedgwood took a unique approach: he actively sought out royal patronage. Before Wedgwood, Staffordshire potters had used their social status and money to promote their wares, but Wedgwood used his skill and the high quality of his wares to promote its social status, and his. Wedgwood’s set of “tea things” for Queen Charlotte was a success and just the boost in status his wares needed. For England, unlike on the Continent, this was the first royal commission of local ceramics, and it was a major endorsement. Wedgwood was offered the commission either, as he expressed in a letter to his brother “... because nobody else would undertake it...” or perhaps because the first potter had failed (Reilly, I, 200). Whichever was the case, Wedgwood had the foresight to predict that the commission would bring him the powerful selling tool of prestige. Although Wedgwood was confident that he should take the commission, he was concerned about whether he could successfully execute it. Of particular concern for Wedgwood was the gilding. Wedgwood consulted other potters, and eventually perfected a gilding method using powdered gold. Wedgwood’s end product was a success and the Queen was so pleased that she agreed to rename Wedgwood’s creamware “Queensware.” In addition, he was also given permission to use the title “Potter to the Queen.” Wedgwood’s Queensware marked a major leap in English earthenware’s ascension from a peasant ware to high-class tableware, because if it was good enough for the Queen, it was good enough for anyone. From the critical perspective, the ambition Wedgwood demonstrated in pursuing and accepting such a time consuming and practically low-profit but prestige commission shows the extent of his desire to continue to bring royal esteem and association to his product. Some see this as an early example of “brand marketing.” Other earthenware manufacturers had sales strategies but none were as comprehensive and complex as that of Wedgwood’s. His competitors were quick to imitate him, so Wedgwood realized that he could not rely on new ideas and the merit of his wares’ production alone to keep his business growing. He needed to perfect another aspect of the trade: advertising. To reign supreme in an emerging consumer society, marketing his wares would have to become as important as the manufacture of his wares. His basic sales strategy was to sell high-quality, fashionable goods at high prices. Wedgwood used his royal endorsements to raise the status of his wares, and to advertise them. He was “brand marketing” his name and this was unheard of the in the eighteenth century. Most contemporary potters did not mark their wares, and those who did used a symbol. By 1772, each piece of Wedgwood was stamped with Wedgwood’s name, not a symbol, so that every piece was its own advertisement. After Queensware, Wedgwood suggested that his flowerpots should be named after the Duchess of Devonshire. Wedgwood also understood the power of print advertisement and Wedgwood advertised in London, as well as provincial newspapers. After 1771, he often arranged for articles that included his works to be printed. Then in 1774, he published a Queensware catalogue. Wedgwood decided not to join the cutthroat pricing game of his competitors, but instead chose to use higher pricing to distinguish his wares from the rest. Charging higher prices for his newly released products, for example, made them seem more worthy of their higher price. From the 1760’s on, Wedgwood’s creamware was a substantially higher priced than the competition (Koehn, 41). Once Wedgwood noticed that the popularity of a certain product was declining, he would reproduce it cheaply, assuring that it would fall out of fashion with the elite. Then the market would be ready for the latest design. For example, at first he charged high prices for his vases, so that they would be esteemed. But then as demand waned, Wedgwood was faced with a surplus of vases which threatened to put him in real financial difficulty. His solution was to lower the prices of his vases, in order to make them appealing to the middle class: The great people have had their Vases in their Palaces long enough for them to be seen and admired by the Middling Class of people, which class we know are vastly, and I had almost said infinitely, superior in numbers to the great…(Young, 18). In addition, Wedgwood often gave his consumers the false sense that there was a scarcity of ingredients for some of his more popular wares, writing: “They want nothing but age and scarcity to make them worth any price you could ask for them” (Young, 18). If the discontinued design came back into fashion, Wedgwood would reintroduce it. Besides esteem and pricing, Wedgwood developed other strategies to help his business become more profitable. For example, Wedgwood was one of the first to adopt the practice of “inertia selling.” He first attempted this technique in 1771 when he sent unsolicited packages of his pottery to 1,000 members of German aristocracy and nobility, which included an invoice. The recipients could return the goods to Wedgwood at no cost to themselves, or pay for them Wedgwood also offered free shipping anywhere in England, and compensation for damage in transport. He was also the first to offer the customer’s money back if his product was not “agreeable to their wishes” a century before American John Wannamaker, who is usually given the credit for this in the United States. B. Wedgwood and His Product Innovations From the critical perspective, Wedgwood earned his entrepreneurial success to his ability and even passion to invent and innovate. Due to his ability to be innovative, Wedgwood was able to develop and produce an earthenware body of high enough quality and esteem to compete with porcelain. Moreover, if assessed critically Wedgwood’s success was not in the invention of new ceramic bodies, but improving through innovation existing wares with the introduction of scientific experimentation. During his early partnership with Whieldon, Wedgwood discovered his love for scientific experimentation. During this period Wedgwood also came to realize the industry’s shortcomings and the desperate need for improvement. Although enjoying an initial period of success, the industry was at a crossroads. By this time only a few salt-glazed stoneware teapots, including ones with mottled patterns that Whieldon and Wedgwood produced during their partnership, were considered suitable for the table. Their rough stoneware plate and server counterparts were still rejected. By starting applying science to the mass potting industry, Wedgwood was doing something no one had ever attempted before (Burton, 25). Wedgwood kept careful records of his experiments. In 1759 on the first page of his Experiment Book he wrote that the purposes of his experiments were for the: …improvement of our many of earthen ware… White stoneware was the principle Article of our Manufacture; but this had been made a long time, & the prices were so low that the Potters could not afford to make it as good in any respect…& with respect to elegance of form that was as subject very little attended to (Clark, 40). From the critical perspective, during Whieldon-Wedgwood partnership, in an industry with closely guarded secrets, Whieldon was surprisingly generous, allowing Wedgwood to experiment without the obligation of divulging his results. Wedgwood even recorded his experiments in code. Wedgwood was not satisfied to continue working like his predecessors who had been “…content to work on a hit-or-miss, try a pinch of this, try a spoonful of that basis” (Burton, 25). In contrast Wedgwood was meticulous, approaching his experiments with precision. He made exact measurements, and recorded every trial in his Experiment Book. But Wedgwood’s new scientific experiments took time, and consumer tastes were changing. By the time Wedgwood had completed his improvement of Whieldon’s agateware, the market had tired of it. So next Wedgwood focused his attention on improving lead glazes. According to an entry in his Experiment Book: …These considerations induced me to try some more solid improvements as well as in the Body as the Glazes the Colours & the Forms, of the articles of our manufacture (Clark, 44). The lead glazes Wedgwood was trying to improve upon were not as forgiving as salt-glazed stoneware’s “orange peel”' finish. Although it was tolerated in part because it disguised blemishes and imperfections, lead glazing however, showed every missed patch or uneven application. Its constitution and application had to be precise in order to reduce loss. Wedgwood most likely worked on a clear lead glaze while with Whieldon, but his most important accomplishment during this time was that he listed as number seven in his Experiment Book - “A green glaze, to be laid on commonwhite biscuit ware-very good.” Whieldon liked the glaze so much that he used it on his own vegetable and fruit shaped rococo style creamwares (Stanley, 73). Some of the wares that came from Whieldon’s factory at this time may have been made by Wedgwood’s hand. When Wedgwood opened his Ivy House Works in 1759, a new ware known as “creamware” was becoming the favored Staffordshire porcelain competitor. Although, we know that Wedgwood concentrated his experimenting efforts at this time toward perfecting the creamware body, it is unclear if creamware was one of the first products he made at Ivy Works. It seems unlikely that while Wedgwood was perfecting creamware, he would neglect to manufacture saltglazed stoneware, which still attracted a stable following and a steady income (Koehn, 30). After all, for the first few years, Wedgwood paid a quarter of the rent in goods. Wedgwood was still learning about the industry, and as part of that education he took repair jobs on high-class porcelain, including Meissen, Sevres, and Chinese porcelain. He also spent this time making replacement goods. Although not an overwhelmingly glamorous occupation, it was in the direction of his long-term goals, because it allowed him the opportunity to study his competitors in detail. With those studies and four more years of experiments, Wedgwood successfully created a refined creamware that was both thinner and stronger. At this point, Wedgwood stopped making saltglazed stoneware at Ivy House. Although Wedgwood’s new creamware was produced without the guesswork and uncertainties that still faced his competitors, it was not the original invention that Meteyard and others have suggested it was. Wedgwood’s creamware became popular because it was a consistent and uniform version of previous wares. And for that reason, Wedgwood’s creamware, and not any of his competitor’s creamware, became the ancestor to the earthenware tablewares of today. Encouraged by his success with creamware, Wedgwood welcomed the opportunity to conduct a new series of experiments that would eventually lead to his creation of jasperware, an earthenware body meant to mimic the look of intaglios and gems. The colored bodies of gems were becoming popular because the appeal they had to the increasingly influential female taste. It is this ware jasperware that most often comes to mind when the word “Wedgwood” is mentioned. But jasperware took years for Wedgwood to complete because he was too busy with other projects to find time to perfect this ceramic body. When Wedgwood eventually found time to devote to this endeavor, he experienced significant difficulties. Even after he felt he had the body of the ware finished, he still had major problems in the firing. It would blister, crack, craze, and result in a wide variation of textures and colors. Wedgwood vented his frustrations on this matter to Bentley: If I had more time & more heads I could do something-but as it is I must be content to do as well as I can. A Man who is in the midst of a course of experiments should not be at home to anything or anybody else but that cannot be my case…I am almost crazy (Burton, 30). Seventy-five percent of the jasperware that was fired was a loss and Wedgwood had doubts if it would ever be part of his regular business. Because the cost of cobalt, the key ingredient in making the jasper blue color he started dipping a white jasper body into a liquid blue clay slip. Wedgwood also more carefully controlled the temperatures in his jasper kilns to reduce blistering. In total, Wedgwood recorded over 5,000 jasper experiments. It was not until 1777 that Wedgwood was able to produce jasper vases, and he did not consider his jasper body to be perfected for many years. With his product perfected and his business growing, Wedgwood meant to produce his wares in an efficient, modern manufactory of his own design, Etruria. Wedgwood’s new ideas for manufacturing and production were broad in scope. First, Wedgwood was to have the latest technology. And so instead of using remodeled corn mills to grind flint, in 1782 Wedgwood was the first to introduce the steam engine to grind flint and colors. That same year, he introduced his pyrometer invention. This device allowed Wedgwood to measure kiln temperature, allowing him to regulate it and greatly reduce loss. Before this, potters could measure the temperature of their kilns based on only the color changes in the clay, which was far from exact. Wedgwood’s pyrometer was a gauge with a tapering slot that measured the degree of shrinkage of clay during firing, which, in turn, allowed the temperature to be determined. He also installed an engine-turning lathe that he made specifically for earthenwares. He may have also introduced the power of the water wheel in 1790. REFERENCES Burton, W. 1969 reprinted. Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery. New York: Funk and Wagnall Clark, G. 1995. The Potter’s Art: A Complete History of Pottery in Britain. London: Phaidon Press Ltd. Koehn, N. F. 2001. Brand New: How Entrepreneurs Earned Customer Respect for Wedgwood to Dell. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press Reilly, R. 1989. Wedgwood, Vol. I. New York: Stockton Press Stanley, L. T. 1963. Collecting Staffordshire Pottery. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc. Young, H. 1995. The Genius of Wedgwood. Catalogue to Exhibition held at Victoria and Albert Museum, 9 June - 17 September, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, Ltd. Read More