Wedgwood: The First Tycoon

Wendy Smith

Dolan legitimately admires Wedgwood's achievements as a merchandiser and manufacturer but also acknowledges that the Industrial Revolution looked rather different to his labor force than it did to him. In our own time, remade with equal comprehensiveness by globalization, that's an important caveat to keep in mind.
— The Washington Post

Publishers Weekly

Although Wedgwood china now claims an international reputation for luxury and quality, it wasn't always so, as Dolan's first-rate biography elegantly demonstrates. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) spent his childhood and youth in a family of struggling potters. From them he not only learned the tools of his future trade but developed a keen sense of ambition that he would use to move beyond his family's struggles to build his own successful business. Dolan presents an inventive youth who performed experiment after experiment in search of new and attractive forms of pottery. One of Wedgwood's earliest achievements was his green ware, vases and other pottery designed in the shape of vegetables. Eventually, he joined forces with Thomas Bentley, and the two, Dolan shows, took the pottery world by storm, selling their wares to both British and foreign royalty, including Catherine the Great. As the business developed, Wedgwood built a factory, and transformed the process of shopping for pottery by holding workshops and demonstrations for customers, an early version of the showroom. Despite illness and the deaths of family members, Dolan's Wedgewood worked ardently to improve his products and increase his sales and wealth. This magisterial biography provides an intimate portrait of Wedgwood the entrepreneur as well as a magnificent glimpse of life in 18th-century British society. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An elegant biography, abundant in historical and cultural detail, of the 18th-century pottery magnate. Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95) played a crucial role in the evolution of English manufacture as it made its way out of feudalism into the industrial age. He was a son of the Enlightenment, aware that he would get the high-quality products he sought only from artisans who got a fair shake in terms of wages and benefits from an employer who recognized their skills and craftsmanship. Wedgwood was willing to provide those benefits, including education for his employees' children, decent housing, medical benefits (in an industry notorious for poisonous materials that induced health problems), and pensions-all revolutionary notions in those days, as was his belief that his workers understood the value of money. He tinkered tirelessly with qualities of his clay, conducted chemical research to eliminate lead from glazes, and investigated the different kinds of firings being developed around the world, just as he experimented with the idea of a production line. He also cultivated his scant but profitable connections with the aristocracy and the royal household. Wedgwood had to compete on a playing field that included Spode and Sevres, but his willingness to accept unique commissions won him customers from American colonists to Russian royalty. He worked to standardize products for consistency and availability, with such success that Wedgwood blue jasper ware has been popular for 225 years. Such work, Dolan (Ladies of the Grand Tour, 2001, etc.) reminds readers in a nicely phrased appreciation, "represents elite taste without social prejudice. The name carries the status of an old master, but isaccessible to those without aristocratic wealth." This shrewd portrait of a remarkable life also renders with vivid particularity the time and place in which Wedgwood worked his magicA slice of serious history that's also pretty as a picture. Agent: Kathleen Anderson/Anderson Grinberg