Wedgwood: The First Tycoon [Hardcover]

Brian Dolan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 2004

With its familiar white classical figures against a pale-blue background, Wedgwood has been one of the most recognizable brand names in the world for more than two hundred years—the epitome of quality and luxury—and the Enlightenment’s most remarkable success story.

Born into a family of struggling potters, Josiah Wedgwood amassed a fortune that, at his death in 1795, was valued at the equivalent of $3.4 billion in today’s dollars and helmed an empire that stretched from England to Russia to the United States. As a member of the famous Lunar Society, whose members included James Watt, Joseph Priestley, and Erasmus Darwin, he combined rationality with bold experimentation, revolutionizing the business model of his time with a series of innovations that have continued to this day:
• Organizing skilled labor in one of the world’s earliest factories
• Encouraging employee loyalty by offering long-term contracts that included health insurance and pension plans
• Changing the very notion of shopping by utilizing showrooms and traveling salesmen

The story of how phenomenal wealth affected the lives of a family and of the turbulent political climate that threatened their very livelihood, this vivid and compelling portrait of a pioneer of commercial culture is sure to be a hit with loyal collectors and the business market alike.

Editorial Reviews

From 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.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

Before his death, in 1795, Josiah Wedgwood managed to get his pottery into the hands of the Queen of England, the Empress of Russia, and the Emperor of China; two centuries later, he is still cited as a model tycoon by no less an authority than Donald Trump. Dolan successfully conveys the reach both of Wedgwood's ambition and of his influence. His company was recognizably modern, employing colorful catalogues, preprinted order forms, corporate espionage, and celebrity endorsements. Dolan also argues that Wedgwood's business was inseparable from his involvement in the philosophical and scientific ferment of his time. Although Etruria, his factory complex, had its Dickensian side (workers died from "potter's rot," a form of silicosis), it was meant to be a model community, with housing, health insurance, and retirement schemes. Wedgwood was among the best chemists of the day, and he responded to market threats by returning to the laboratory in search of innovations.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult; 1ST edition (October 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670033464
• ISBN-13: 978-0670033461
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #558,342 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Innovative Commercial Master, December 13, 2004

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wedgwood: The First Tycoon (Hardcover)

There was a time when consumers had no brand names to go by, and now we have plenty of them. What was the first one? A good case could be made for the name Wedgwood, the fine pottery that has come for over two hundred years from the factory founded by Josiah Wedgwood in the pottery towns of Staffordshire, England. Not only has the name continued, but it has been from the beginning synonymous with fine taste. Its finest wares were bought for their elegance by aristocrats, and then there were other pottery creations that lesser mortals could buy as their betters set the trends for taste. Josiah Wedgwood knew all about the importance of a name, and about the need to catch the public taste and predict the next fashion. In _Wedgwood: The First Tycoon_ (Viking), Brian Dolan has given us a compelling account of a commercial success story that has many resonances with modern business practices on the cutting edge of technology, while taking into account a wider view of the social aspects of commerce in the eighteenth century.

It is in many ways a rags to riches tale. Wedgwood's family had been Staffordshire potters for generations, but the potting works had been allowed to languish by Wedgwood's grandfather and father, who had no idea what innovation was. He was determined to do things differently, and he had absorbed the idea that progress and profits could be made scientifically. He was a Dissenter, a non-Anglican who favored rational inquiry rather than biblical interpretation as be the best manner of understanding the way the world works. He loved experimenting all his life. "Labor I will not call it," he said of his time-consuming and exacting experiments. He instead called it "entertainment," and he entertained himself into some of the most technically advanced potting techniques of the time. His innovations allowed calculated business gambles, which generally paid off. He was astute in predicting or making tastes; when Pompeian styles became vogue, Wedgwood was at the fore with the invention of "colored jasper", his medium for reproducing ancient pots.

Wedgwood was dedicated to self improvement and to improvement of his society, and knew that business was a means to accomplish both. In pursuit of better business, he caused better roads and then a canal to be built as part of his social schemes. He provided training, housing, education, health care, and even retirement plans for those who worked for him. He was a tough boss, fuming against "dilatory, drunken, Idle, worthless workmen." When he strolled through the workshop, he might spy 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 troubled by others stealing his ideas; there are tales here of commercial chicanery and theft that are the same as newspapers might report today. He valued fair competition; of another manufacturer, Matthew Boulton, he wrote, "He will not be a mere sniveling Copyist like the antagonists I have hitherto had," but rather a spur to better wares. Wedgwood had enormous confidence; having become Potter to Her Majesty, he wrote that he wanted to become "Vase maker General to the Universe." He largely succeeded, harnessing the technological, social, and commercial forces of his time. Dolan's admiring but full portrait shows that many of Wedgwood's values of style, research, innovation, and marketing were new with him but have continued to our own age.

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Different Potter, October 18, 2004

By 

Donald B. Siano (Westfield, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wedgwood: The First Tycoon (Hardcover)

My mother and some of my siblings worked in a pottery factory, and in my youth I went there many times and caught some glimpses of how things were done. This factory employed hundreds of workers. doing some awful, monotonous, carpal tunnel-generating routines. They made only the most basic stuff, quickly and cheaply. Nothing produced was of much beauty, but it was the town's most important employer, and many workers gave their lives over to it.

Wedgewood pottery has always intrigued me--how the devil do they produce such incredibly beautiful stuff, so different from what I saw there? How are the finer pieces made with such reproducibility and perfection? There is a fine story here and Dolan has told it well.

When Josiah Wedgewood was born in 1730, the youngest of twelve children, into the home of a potter in the Britain's Midlands. His humble beginnings, rising through the ranks, finally, at the age of 29, led him to establish his own small pottery business. Wedgewood was determined to achieve greater success and made a key decision--that he would continuously improve the processes used and invent new and wonderful things. He established a routine of constant experimentation and recorded all of his results meticulously into a laboratory notebook. He was constantly looking for new combinations of materials and firing methods to get new glazes and improved results. He looked for reliable, reproducible processes that could be introduced into his small factory. And he inspired his men to improve right along with the processes by paying careful attention to their working conditions, their safety, and their security. His men loved him, and he succeeded to become the foremost manufacturer of his day.

Wedgewood's paid very careful attention to the fashions of the day, and strived to keep abreast. This required an approach that was constantly changing--resting on one's laurels and yesterday's success would only lead to failure. He produced much that was top of the line, and learned to market to the trend setters and royalty, then moving the product into the growing middle class.

The setting in which he struggled was the early industrial revolution, where change was accelerating in Britain through a confluence of forces that are only poorly understood even today. Giants seemed to stalk the earth, and Wedgewood came to know many of them. He knew James Watt, and his metal-working partner Mathew Boulton, who at one point even tried to compete with him. This was the era of canal-building, and Wedgewood played a big role in this too.

Much of this story is contained, though in much less detail, in _The Lunar Men_ by Jenny Uglow, which I would also recommend. Curiously, though, Wedgewood is counted as one of the five central members of the Lunar Society (encompassing a whole column in the index), this is mentioned only once by Dolan.

The author has done an outstanding job in this book and it is well written. The sixteen pages of glossy photos contribute a lot to the book too. The story told here is an inspiring one, and will certainly encourage the reader to learn more about this astounding era.