Josiah Wedgwood’s Goodwill Marketing

Abstract

In the eighteenth century, the most famous porcelain and ceramic manufacturers on the Continent owed their success and existence to extended systems of patronage. Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemburg, who had founded his own manufacture in Ludwigsburg, “declared that a porcelain factory was ‘an indispensable accompaniment of splendour and magnificence’ and that no prince of his rank should be without one.”¹ Monarchs and noblemen throughout the Continent embraced the mania for porcelain or “white gold,” and they founded or heavily subsidized factories that could supply the popular demand for fine ceramic wares. The famous Sèvres (formerly Vincennes) factory, for example, enjoyed the exclusive patronage of Louis XV, via the influence of Madame de Pompadour. Such patronage included the benefits of large capital investment, protection from competition, both domestic and foreign, reduced taxation, and the imprimatur of the aristocracy upon wares for sale. British potteries enjoyed no such privileges and were viewed at the beginning of the eighteenth century as producing comparatively primitive wares in relation to the products of their Continental counterparts. As I intend to show, Josiah Wedgwood overcame the absence of a formal system of patronage by developing models of production and marketing that relied heavily on the reciprocal expectations of gift exchange.