31–40 of 41 posts
Interesting they didn't mention that Charles Darwin was his grandson. The pottery business funded Darwin's voyage on the Beagle.
Nice article, but I find it strange that not once was the gorilla in the room mentioned- China. Wedgwood was working in a world that had been re-shaped by Chinese export porcelain, one of the first examples of a truly global product and marketing "brand". Chinese porcelain was of extremely high quality (some of it unrivaled even today), technologically advanced, culturally complex, and cherished by the European nobil…
>European potters like Wedgwood were desperately trying to re-create the purity and beauty of the Chinese product. Oh, how the pottery turntable turns. >Chinese manufacturers like Huawei were desperately trying to re-create the purity and beauty of the American product.
Regarding those phones you speak of, they might have been designed in Silicon Valley but 'anyone' can design a phone, making one is a lot harder. It is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration really. We would be kind of stuck at the making bit without the hard work and ingenuity of folks in China. Apple and co went there to get products made not just because of cheaper labour but because China can do such things.
The more one learns about China the more one rejects Trumpist 'they steal our IP' arguments and the more one respects Chinese history, culture and hard working attitudes. Nope, China is not perfect and not for everyone, they have a lot of problems but they also have a quite aggressive Western media that always wants to do them down with so much whataboutism, e.g. 'human rights' which is so rich considering that the US locks up so many millions of people.
Nice article, but I find it strange that not once was the gorilla in the room mentioned- China. Wedgwood was working in a world that had been re-shaped by Chinese export porcelain, one of the first examples of a truly global product and marketing "brand". Chinese porcelain was of extremely high quality (some of it unrivaled even today), technologically advanced, culturally complex, and cherished by the European nobil…
Fascinating!
> By the time Josiah died in 1795, he’d amassed a fortune of £600k pounds (more than US $100m today), and was the 4th richest man in all of England. I found this to be an interesting point about how much the wealth of society has increased since those times. $100m today would not put you anywhere even remotely close to the top of that list.
Converting historical currency to modern values becomes increasingly meaningless the longer the time span, and 1795 is a sufficiently different world to today with a different basket of goods that I don't think that's a valuable comparison.
"he's been largely forgotten by time" Perhaps he himself is not well known, but the eponymous company he started in 1759 was the watchword for high-end ceramics for more than two centuries and is still sold to this day. Towards the end of the 20th century, consumer tastes changed and the company faced stiff competition from cheaper imports. Wedgwood merged with another luxury goods company Waterford Crystal in 1987,…
Really I think this is just standard America-centric writing - Josiah Wedgewood isn't well-known in the US, so the writer assumes his prior ignorance to be universal. Kinda the same way that many Americans think the telephone and television were invented here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Converting historical currency to modern values becomes increasingly meaningless the longer the time span, and 1795 is a sufficiently different world to today with a different basket of goods that I don't think that's a valuable comparison.
By the same formula 100k in todays' money would be $600. Is that realistic?
Interesting they didn't mention that Charles Darwin was his grandson. The pottery business funded Darwin's voyage on the Beagle.
I’m from Stoke-on-Trent. The Wedgwood factory is about a 30 minute walk from where I grew up. There’s a big statue of him outside our railway station. This is the first I’m hearing that Darwin was his grandson. I’m amazed that I didn’t know, and so far no-one I’ve asked knew either. Crazy.
This article reads a bit too triumphal for my tastes. Factory towns and globalized industrialization have a dark side. Certainly this story can’t all be roses?
Even in modern day industrial towns and gigafactories, a lot of the criticism is coming from external forces; the workers are often happy to have a job and make any money at all.
Nice article, but I find it strange that not once was the gorilla in the room mentioned- China. Wedgwood was working in a world that had been re-shaped by Chinese export porcelain, one of the first examples of a truly global product and marketing "brand". Chinese porcelain was of extremely high quality (some of it unrivaled even today), technologically advanced, culturally complex, and cherished by the European nobil…
Care to elaborate?
Interesting they didn't mention that Charles Darwin was his grandson. The pottery business funded Darwin's voyage on the Beagle.
Josiah Wedgwood and Charles Darwin's paternal grandfather Erasmus Darwin were both members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which also included the chemist and liberal theologian Joseph Priestly, James Watt of steam-engine fame, and Watt's patron and partner Matthew Bolton, who was as much a technological entrepreneur as Wedgwood.