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The Knowledge About his...

vEarly life vWork vMarriage and children vSome Pics v" Am I Not A Man And A Brother? vThank You !!!... v

Early life
Born in Burslem, Staffordshire, England, the twelfth and last child of Thomas Wedgwood and Mary Wedgwood Josiah was raised within a family of English Dissenters. By the age of nine, he was proving himself to be a skilled potter. He survived a childhood bout of smallpox to serve as an apprentice potter under his eldest brother Thomas Wedgwood IV. Smallpox left Josiah with a permanently weakened knee, which made him unable to work the foot pedal of a potter's wheel. As a result, he concentrated from an early age on designing pottery rather than making it. In his early twenties, Wedgwood began working with the most renowned English pottery-maker of his day, Thomas Whieldon, who eventually became his business partner in 1754. He began experimenting with a wide variety of pottery techniques, an experimentation that coincided with the burgeoning of the nearby industrial city of Manchester. Inspired, Wedgwood leased the Ivy Works in his home town of Burslem. Over the course of the next decade, his experimentation (and a considerable injection of capital from his marriage to a richlyendowed distant cousin) transformed the sleepy artisan works into the first true pottery factory.

Work
Josiah worked in pottery, and his work was of very high quality. If he saw in his workshop an offending vessel that failed to meet with his standards, he would smash it with his stick, exclaiming, "This will not do for Josiah Wedgwood!. He was also keenly interested in the scientific advances of his day and it was this interest that underpinned his adoption of its approach and methods to revolutionize the quality of his pottery. His unique glazes began to distinguish his wares from anything else on the market. He was perhaps the most famous potter of all time.

Marriage and children

Wedgwood married Sarah Wedgwood (1734 1815), his third cousin, in January 1764. They had seven children: Susannah Wedgwood (17651817) (married Robert Darwin, parents of the English naturalist Charles Darwin) John Wedgwood (17661844) Josiah Wedgwood II (17691843) (father of Emma Darwin, cousin and wife of the English naturalist Charles Darwin) Thomas Wedgwood (17711805) (no children) Catherine Wedgwood (17741823) (no children) Sarah Wedgwood (17761856) (no children, very active in the slavery abolition movement)

Pictures...

"Am I Not A Man And A Brother?

Wedgwood was a prominent slavery abolitionist. His friendship with Thomas Clarkson abolitionist campaigner and the first historian of the British abolition movement aroused his interest in slavery. Wedgwood mass produced cameos depicting the seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade and had them widely distributed, which thereby became a popular and celebrated image. The Wedgwood medallion was the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art. The actual design of the cameo was probably done by either William Hackwood or Henry Webber who were modellers in his Stoke-on-Trent factory. From 1787 until his death in 1795, Wedgwood actively participated in the abolition of slavery cause, and his Slave Medallion, which brought public attention to abolition. Wedgwood reproduced the design in a cameo with the black figure against a white background and donated hundreds of these to the society for distribution. Thomas Clarkson wrote; "ladies wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honourable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom".

THANK YOU