Through the efforts of potters such as
Thomas Whieldon, Josiah Wedgwood, Josiah Spode and many others less
well known, between 1750 and 1800 the local pottery industry had
undergone a tremendous revolution. In 1762 when Wedgwood was just
beginning his career as a major manufacturer, there were 150
potteries in the district employing over 7,000 people. By 1800, the
figures for both had doubled. The improvement in trade was matched by
technical developments and the use of new resources which improved
the quality of the products produced. Thus the salt-glazed wares of
one decade had been displaced in turn by creamwares and porcelains
and by the turn of the century by bone china. All in all it had been
quite an achievement in so short a time, As the words of the Wedgwood
Memorial had it, these enterprising potters had 'converted a rude and
inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art and an important
branch of national commerce.'
It was an improvement noted by none
other than that great observer of her age, the novelist Jane Austen.
Jane never visited the Potteries and had only a vague notion of its
location (she thought it was near Birmingham and may have been
confusing the district with the Black Country). She was, however,
part of the genteel social set that these new, finer, highly
decorative wares were aimed at, for whom buying the latest thing in
pottery became something of a craze.
In her letters Jane writes of visiting
the Wedgwood showrooms in London and in one gleeful missive to her
sister Cassandra in June 1811, she writes 'I
had the pleasure of receiving, unpacking, and approving our Wedgwood
ware' and anticipates the
arrival of a new Wedgwood breakfast set for their mother, 'I
hope it will come by the waggon to-morrow; it is certainly what we
want, and I long to know what it is like'.
A
decade earlier, though, her enthusiasm for Staffordshire pottery found a release
in one of her early novels. Though not published until after her
death, Jane Austen's Gothic conceit, Northanger
Abbey,
was revised and finished between 1801 and 1804. In chapter 22, there
is a short witty passage that may be the first literary appreciation
of the Staffordshire Potteries and their rising status amongst the
ceramic capitals of the world.
'The
elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine’s notice
when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the
general’s choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste,
confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the
manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical
palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire,
as from that of Dresden or Seve. But this was quite an old set,
purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much improved since that
time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last in town, and had
he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, might have been
tempted to order a new set.'
Though the line about a
breakfast set made two years earlier being 'quite old' is a touch of
Austen wit, it nevertheless reflects the real situation at that time,
when local manufacturers were working day in, day out to keep their
wealthy clients happy with newer and more exciting goods.
Reference: Letters of
Jane Austen (1884); Northanger Abbey (1817)