By Sarah J. Hall, Executive Director, Washington County Museum of Fine Arts

Wedgwood (English, founded 1759)
Pearlware Plate with painted decoration, c. 1865
Glazed stoneware
Gift of Louis & Shirley G. Hecht,
9” diameter

Are you getting out the china this week to set your Thanksgiving table? This lovely Wedgwood pearlware plate (one of a pair) is currently on display in our Fulton Gallery. The pink is vibrant and rich, with delicate hand-painted neoclassical decoration enlivening the surface. A gold border around the outer edge adds a refined touch. Thanks to Wedgwood’s clear marking system, we know it dates to around 1865.

That pop of pink is especially powerful because the hand-painted decorative floral border and central design in yellow, black, and gilt has greenish tones that are complementary to the pink and create a vibrancy to the fairly restrained decoration.

I started off this piece asking about your china, a simple question that’s loaded with history. For centuries, the allure of expensive, imported porcelain from China had such power that we adopted the name china as a generic term to refer to porcelain. This plate, for example, is not china, though it is pretending to be. It took Europeans until 1709 to discover the formula for porcelain—a harder, more translucent, and pure white type of ceramic substantially less porous than earthenware.

By the time this plate came along, a full century into production at the famed Staffordshire pottery firm founded by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, there were numerous porcelain manufacturers in England, But Wedgwood, throughout the founder’s lifetime and for much of its history, specialized in producing earthenware and stoneware—using transferware and other innovations to create high-quality, attractive products that were considerably less expensive than porcelain. Wedgwood had a fairly rapid rise, and his wares were popular and exported throughout Europe, and into Russia and the Americas.

Pearlware was introduced by Wedgwood in 1779. It had a whiter body than the firm’s earlier cream-colored and light cream earthenware. That lighter body was meant to be more porcelain-like, but interestingly most of the pearlware produced by Wedgwood was heavily decorated, and so less of the body was visible.

Wedgwood was always concerned about satisfying the public’s need for fashionable objects both useful and decorative—and he tried to anticipate trends as well as keep pace with them. His most enduring legacy is the jasperware he produced in a variety of colors (including Wedgwood blue) and neoclassical forms—it is a “dry body” stoneware—meaning t it was unglazed. We have examples of Wedgwood jasperware on display in the same case as this plate.

The rich pink glaze is derived from a solution of gold salts and tin called Purple of Cassius—depending on the proportions in the mixture the results can range from pink and purple to maroon.

It’s also worth noting that this little plate is one example of Wedgwood’s complex, enduring, and impactful legacy. His innovations ranging from product development to scientific innovations, to corporate organizational and production strategies were all hugely influential. Wedgwood was a product of the enlightenment, and as such his efforts had an underlying sense of moral responsibility—producing good products and artistry and making them available to a wider populace and improving quality of life. His support of abolition resulted in Wedgwood producing an anti-slavery medallion with the words, “Am I not a man and a brother?”

Happy Thanksgiving—may your table be beautiful and abundant—only multiplied by those you gather around it.

This considerably earlier French, Sèvres porcelain plate c. 1825 is a terrific comparison example to our English Wedgwood. We can really see how our plate is emulating porcelain, as well as the taste and style associated with luxury.