Pottery workers, ‘the Ladies’, and ‘the Middling Class of people’: production and marketing of ‘Etruscan and Grecian vases’ at Wedgwood c.1760–1820^*

Abstract

Collections of Greek vases, and their reproductions in the form of luxury publications and vessels displayed atop bookshelves in libraries, were the domain of male elites in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Less well explored is the consumption of creative reproductions of Greek vases by elite and ‘middling’ women, and the participation of women across the social spectrum in the production of ceramics inspired by Greek vases. This article uses the Wedgwood archive to tell such stories. The subjects range from aristocratic designers through paintresses to women doing the hard labour of wedging. It argues for the importance of recognizing these engagements with Greek vases as part of the history of the reception of Greek vases in Britain. It explores the way that gender and class constrained the kind of contact women had with these materials, and it puts forward an interpretation of these engagements as independent embodied knowledge of Greek vases.

Historically there has been a remarkable dearth of female scholars of Greek vases in university positions in Britain: after Jane Harrison (1850–1928) the next figure appears to be Donna Kurtz (b.1943).¹ A similar picture of minimal female presence emerges in other important aspects of the history of Greek vases specifically: collecting, drawing, publishing, and most aspects of the emerging art market. Nonetheless, female engagements with Greek vases can be found if one broadens the range of kinds of encounters. In this spirit, my article explores the role of women in ceramic reproductions and creative adaptations of Greek vases at the Wedgwood pottery c.1760–1820. It contributes to a self-reflective movement within Classics towards a broader range of subjects, authors, readers, and viewers, especially those historically marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, or disability.

In the field of classically inspired ceramics there is a growing body of work on the commissioning and consumption of artefacts by the social elite, predominantly focused on men;² but there is further scope to consider production and marketing, particularly in relation to women. Such an approach necessarily broadens the social spectrum under scrutiny, and at the lower socio-economic end we are dealing with the intersectionality of gender and social status. Wedgwood is an ideal case study of the reception of Greek vases for two reasons. First, the Wedgwood pottery produced a plethora of pieces which alluded to Greek vases in their shape or decoration (black and red colour scheme, specific or generic iconography). Second, it is one of the few potteries with a large archive, unusually rich for the period under consideration.³ Where the archival material does not offer information about women, my methodology is to apply a phenomenological approach and search out sensory experiences. A central aim of this article is to highlight the way that both gender and social status had a determining effect on encounters with reproductions of Greek vases, and by extension, with classical culture.

PRODUCTION

(a) Sarah Wedgwood (1734–1815), and Evidence for Josiah Wedgwood’s Views on Women

Sarah Wedgwood, wife and third cousin of Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95), founder of the pottery, is an important figure in this analysis (henceforward Sarah Wedgwood is referred to as SW and Josiah Wedgwood as JW in order to distinguish them). While JW was the son of a potter, SW’s father was a prosperous cheese-merchant from Cheshire, placing her in the middling social orders.⁴ Scholars have noted SW’s importance for the business both in the contribution of her considerable dowry and in her close relationship with JW.⁵ But the precise nature and implications of her activities have not been fully explored. Evidence for her involvement can be gleaned from the surviving correspondence: a few letters written by SW herself, and far more written by JW to SW and to his business partner Thomas Bentley. He refers in loving terms to SW, whom he calls Sally, most frequently mentioning her in connection to poor health and pregnancies—SW had eight children and also suffered at least one miscarriage. The effect of these near constant physiological changes, not to mention the upbringing of the children and death of two of them in childhood, would have affected her participation in the business. It is probably no coincidence that SW’s involvement in JW’s experimentation with glazes occurred at the outset of their marriage before they had had children. He wrote to his brother that SW was his ‘chief helpmate’, learning his secret code in which he made notes.⁶ Two years later he wrote:⁷

I speak from experience in Female taste, without which I should have made but a poor figure amongst my Potts, not one of which of any consequence, is finished without the Approbation of my Sarah.

This could be interpreted as SW giving a final stamp of approval to the finished product. But there is evidence for much more detailed involvement: her spinning wheel is moved into the lumber room to facilitate her presence in the manufactory (1765);⁸ she is said to have pointed out faults with sugar dishes, mentioning that they were not antique (1769);⁹ and she is clearly involved in the experimental phase of the design of some teapots (1777):¹⁰

Mrs Wedgwood has tried our new teapots of which we send you one, & gives them her sanction, as the best and pleasantest in the hand she ever used …—but I would not wish you to shew it at present—We are making some with out the parapet which I think is in the way—I wish Mrs Bentley would be so good to use This pot & favour me with her corrections that we may bring them out as perfect as may be.

There is clear evidence, then, that SW and her husband discussed the products as a matter of course, and this would have included classically inspired pieces. Scholars have noted that SW acted as JW’s scribe when his health prevented him from writing letters; this in itself suggests a serious degree of acquaintance with the business. But, in fact, in two instances she makes it explicit that her husband has asked her to write the letters because he had to leave the house—in other words, she was not being dictated to. These refer to manufacturing and trade matters, including lists of goods, mention of the drying out of a Triton sculpture, and specifying the time at which to light the kiln in the pottery.¹¹

These, then, are some facts extracted from the letters which suggest SW’s deep level of engagement and collaboration in the business. To this can be added evidence for SW as an independent-minded individual, for example in her actively taking up the case of a destitute woman with three children whose husband was in a debtors’ prison, and in her attending the House of Commons to listen to a debate when she was staying in London.¹² Yet a mixed picture of SW’s self-perception emerges from her correspondence. She considered herself a keen critic of painting;¹³ and yet the idea that vases were the domain of her husband and ‘lace and ribband’ were hers emerges in a letter to Bentley.¹⁴

SW’s approach to classically inspired ceramics must have been influenced by her exposure to actual ancient Greek vases at the Wedgwood manufactory, and to illustrations of Greek vases in publications owned by JW such as those of the Comte de Caylus and William Hamilton / d'Hancarville.¹⁵ There is also some evidence of JW communicating with SW about his success in getting access to collections of Greek vases in London, which may have extended orally to more in-depth discussions about them.¹⁶ Collecting and publishing vases was the domain of male connoisseurs, excluding women perhaps not least because of homoerotic and ‘pagan’ iconography which formed such a focus for the Society of Dilettanti.¹⁷ Awareness of this, and, as we will see, the fact that in general at the time wares marketed to women were not classical, would have influenced SW’s approach to new Wedgwood designs and their production.

A mixed picture emerges of JW’s attitude to women in the context of his family. As we have seen, SW was closely involved in the business and JW placed a high value on her judgement; yet this value concerns accessing female taste specifically, and perhaps exclusively. This ambivalence is also evident in his support of the idea of female education on the one hand (for example, he urged Bentley to publish his pamphlet on the subject),¹⁸ but on the other hand in his letters he refers mostly to his three sons’ education and to the business of finding a Latin tutor for them, and less to the education of his four daughters.¹⁹ Such a complex approach to female participation in ceramic production can also be teased out of JW’s commissions of paintings: in the family portrait by George Stubbs (1724–1806), and one discussed with Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97), and in two mythological paintings by the latter. Correspondence suggests his detailed personal involvement in these commissions.²⁰ In the family portrait by Stubbs (1780), SW and her husband sit on a garden bench on the right, while their children are arrayed on the left and centre of the painting, some on horseback (fig. 1).²¹ The depiction of SW in three-quarter view looking towards the children and gesticulating to them signals her primary role in the domestic domain. By contrast, JW is shown turning his head dynamically and looking out frontally at the viewer. His involvement with ceramic manufacturing, as well as with his family, is indicated by the placement of a vase next to him on a table. Despite SW’s role in glaze experimentation, it is his three sons that JW wanted Joseph Wright to depict in this capacity in another commissioned portrait.²² These paintings suggest that for JW at least, and possibly also for SW, her involvement in the ceramic business was not conceived of as part of SW’s public, or even private, image.

It is also worth considering JW’s two mythological commissions by Joseph Wright for what they convey about his attitude to women and craftsmanship: Corinthian Maid (1782–84) (fig. 2) and Penelope Unravelling her Web (1783–84) (fig. 3).²³ His choice of these myths suggests an openness and even a particular interest in female engagement with craft—painting and pottery in one case, weaving in the other. In the Corinthian Maid the story of Dibutades and the invention of painting, told by Pliny, is manipulated effectively to create the story of the invention of pottery, through the close association of painting with Greek pottery.²⁴ Pots and even a kiln are depicted on either side of the (nameless) daughter who first thinks to trace the shadow of her lover. The familial relations of both the ‘Corinthian maid’ and Penelope are crucial in the myths, and are visually asserted in the commissioned paintings: the daughter of Dibutades leaning over her fiancé to capture his image in outline painting; and Penelope keeping watch over her sleeping son Telemachus, while a statue of her husband Odysseus towers above her. Their craft activities are carried out in the name of familial loyalty and particularly erotic love. Moreover, although the titles and compositions give the women visual prominence, at the same time, their bodies are highly eroticized through clinging drapery and the exposure of décolletage (Penelope) and entire arm, shoulder, and back (the ‘Corinthian maid'). In the course of the painting of the Corinthian Maid, JW expressed his critical interest in the way that Wright had depicted her body: though she was truly Grecian, the drapery was too clinging for the eyes of female viewers, and her posterior needed ‘a shove up’.²⁵

(b) ‘Celebrity’ Female Designers from the Social Elite

Three women from the social elite produced designs for Wedgwood: Lady Elizabeth Templetown (1747–1823), Lady Diana Beauclerk (1734–1808), and Miss Emma Crewe (1780–1850) (daughter of John Crewe, first baron Crewe).²⁶ The social status of these ‘celebrity’ designers was an important factor in their relationship with JW. His letters to Lady Templetown and Lady Beauclerk are highly deferential in tone;²⁷ it is also surely not a coincidence that these are the only three female designers named in the 1787 catalogue. The women’s names and titles are used in product descriptions, e.g. ‘238 An offering to peace; from a design of lady Templetoun’s’; ‘241 Group of three boys, from designs of lady Diana Beauclerk’s’; ‘247 Domestic employment; from a design of Miss Crew’s’.²⁸ The elite identity of these female designers therefore appears to have been part of JW’s marketing strategy; and as they are the only identifiable female designers, it is likely that their social status was a prerequisite for their employment in this capacity. By contrast, some of the male named artists came from humble backgrounds, for example John Flaxman (whose father made plaster casts in Covent Garden) and George Stubbs (whose father was a tanner in Liverpool). The catalogue entries confer some recognition of the professional work by these women, though on the ceramics themselves only ‘W & B’ (Wedgwood and Bentley) appeared, in line with a policy applied to designers of both genders.²⁹

The art practice of these three women was not carried out in the Wedgwood manufactory in Etruria, with its sensory overload of noise, smell, and the sight of characteristic bottle ovens, but in elite homes. The embodied experience of creating designs would have taken place in the calm domestic environment thought to suit elite women, and presumably in the clothing which fashioned the ideal female. While the process of design involved viewing and haptic interaction with the implements of drawing and cutting, a highly acceptable female elite pastime, the senses of smell, hearing, and taste would also have been stimulated according to the usual female domestic customs, thereby bolstering the idea that the activity was little more than elite playfulness and certainly not ‘professional’ or commercial. The portrait of Lady Diana Beauclerk painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1763–65 (fig. 4) reflects such a perception of female aristocratic engagement with culture, characterized by leisure and eroticism: she wears a white dress which clings to the contours of her body and reveals a low décolletage; her head, turned delicately to the side, is adorned with a flowered tiara, and she holds a portfolio and porte-crayon.³⁰ While it has been argued that the chronology of the portrait does not allow the large silhouetted jug in the background to refer to Lady Beauclerk’s collaboration with JW,³¹ it suggests the diffusion of ceramics and perhaps her particular predilection for them.

JW mentions these female designers in the 1787 catalogue in relation to the group of objects called ‘Bas-reliefs, Medallions, Tablets, &c.’; his discourse is revealing:³²

It is still receiving continual additions, not only from artists, in our own and other countries, but likewise from the amateurs and patrons of the arts.

I have lately been enabled to enrich it with some charming groups, which lady Diana Beauclerc and lady Templetoun, whose exquisite taste is universally acknowledged, have honoured me with the liberty of copying from their designs.

The term ‘amateur’ was used at the time for men and women from the socio-economic elite with knowledge and love of the arts; if this involved actual practice it was not deemed professional, as production of art to make money was for lower levels of society.³³ JW here implies that the arrangement with these aristocratic women was not commercial; his use of the terms ‘charming’ and ‘exquisite taste’, which were strongly associated with elite women, serve to underline the relevance of both class and gender to the production of these wares. While design of iconography was at the pinnacle of ceramic production, it is unlikely that these designers had any control of the production process given that their designs in cut-paper were taken out of their hands and translated by male modellers onto vessels far away in the Potteries. In the case of Lady Templetown, her detailed cut-paper work was made into a book of etchings by P. W. Tomkins (1759–1840), and also made into sprig moulds for ceramic surface decoration by one of the most skilful modellers in Etruria, William Hackwood (c.1757–1839, employed at Wedgwood 1769–1832) (figs 5 and 6). In addition to the designers' absence from the production process, iconographic design itself remained surface decoration in contrast to the more active and sensory modelling of the three-dimensional vessel (activities not open to women).

As far as subject matter is concerned, it is striking that in the 1787 catalogue, which is overwhelmingly dominated by classical subjects, the nineteen products of these three female designers are not classical in theme, with one exception—Lady Beauclerk’s item 244, ‘Bacchanalian tablet of the six preceding articles, under arbours, with panthers’ skins in festoons, &c.’.³⁴ This is noteworthy because the subject of cupids was prominent in Lady Beauclerk’s work, and Emma Crewe elsewhere used classical subject matter for a drawing which was transformed into an etching by S. Alken in 1791 entitled ‘Flora at play with Cupid’.³⁵ So whereas John Flaxman and other male designers were commissioned to create a plethora of classical subjects and reinterpretations of Hamilton’s publication on Greek vases in three dimensions, the female designers were almost entirely confined to contemporary Romantic subjects and those of domesticity and children, generally thought to appeal to female customers.³⁶ This neatly parallels JW’s reliance on SW’s judgement when it came to ‘female taste’. With the exception of Lady Beauclerk’s Bacchanalian tablet, which combines classical imagery with a ‘sentimental style’, there is no evidence, then, for the inclusion of the few celebrity female designers in the production of classically inspired ceramics at Wedgwood.

Nevertheless, elements of style and even iconography of their ‘sentimental’ designs patently do draw on generic classical models, for example the naturalistic style of figures and drapery, and the iconography of cupids, tripods, vessels, and women holding the spindle and distaff in the mode of females on ancient Greek vases. In a further twist to the story, Lady Templetown’s popular ‘Domestic employment’ design was heavily drawn on by Jean-Jacques Godet in his silver tea set made in Germany in 1804–15 perhaps for the Prussian royal family, the subject of which was classical—Neptune, Tritons, and Cupid (fig. 7).³⁷ Here, then, there is evidence for the influence of Lady Templetown on a work of classical theme and style, paradoxically through her Wedgwood ‘sentimental’ designs.

(c) Women Working in the Manufactory

Approximately one third of workers in the Wedgwood manufactory were female according to the ‘Common Place Book’ (c.1785) held in the Wedgwood archive. In terms of absolute numbers this translated into just over eighty women in 1790, involved, amongst other things, in the production of imitations of Greek vases.³⁸ The Wedgwood Rent account book for the period 1796–1811 indicates that 10 per cent of tenanted workers’ cottages—that is twenty homes—were headed by females. Sixteen of the women are identified as widows, while the other four are presumably either single or separated.³⁹ This suggests that, though rarely, there was the possibility of a financially independent female existence when employed at Wedgwood. The wage books themselves reveal that women were paid substantially less than men doing the same jobs: unskilled women a third of men’s rates and skilled women a half or two thirds.⁴⁰ For example, in June 1790 the colour grinders are paid as follows: ‘Barker, John 8/; Barker, Ann 4/; Stanway, Martha 4/; Salt, Tho.– cobalt grinder—7/’.⁴¹ This is entirely in line with the gender pay gap in all industries at the time.⁴²

The allocation of roles within the manufactory, and indeed the Potteries in general, was highly gendered: many were exclusively carried out by either men or women, with men occupying the higher-status roles.⁴³ In particular, men alone threw and fired pots, and could occupy the position of director of design. Activities which entailed meticulous repetitive work were often carried out exclusively by women, for example burnishing pots and copying border designs, including ‘Etruscan’ (fig. 8). Some types of employment were open to both sexes, though in these, women typically worked in teams under a male lead, for example paintresses working under a senior male designer.⁴⁴ At the same time, women were allowed to do some of the hardest labour at the initial potting stages, including carrying clay and wedging. Better-paid, skilled positions of paintresses tended to be taken up by women from better-off backgrounds, although later, from 1842, art schools in the Potteries and in London also trained poorer talented girls through scholarships and apprenticeships.⁴⁵ Perhaps related to the lack of advancement opportunities is the fact that, according to a detailed study for the mid-nineteenth century, women working in the Staffordshire Potteries tended to be unmarried, and most left the workforce on marriage.⁴⁶ Indicative of the discrepancy in pay, status, and possibility of advancement is the contrast between Fanny Lownds, ‘a painter of pins’, paid 1 s per week, and, at the top of the scale, the well-known modeller William Hackwood, paid 42 s per week, and his annual rent of £10 waived.⁴⁷

In his ‘Common Place book’ JW lists the painters he employed in December 1787: eight men, and one woman, ‘Ann Keeling—a very good hand—works by piece, not hired’, and no female apprentices. This perhaps suggests a low opinion of female skills in painting; yet the case of the paintress Catherine Willcox complicates the picture. She was the daughter of Thomas Frye, a mezzotint engraver working in the Liverpool porcelain factories, and was married to Ralph Willcox, himself also a painter and employed by JW.⁴⁸ When they were hired in 1769 Ralph requested that they should both be paid 25 s per week;⁴⁹ there is evidence that Catherine received 18 s a week when working on the ‘Frog’ service of Catherine the Great.⁵⁰ In 1774 JW wrote to Bentley that Mrs Willcox should be painting figures from Mr Hamilton’s book rather than borders;⁵¹ he also wonders what has happened to Bentley’s plans to train and employ girls.⁵² This letter shows that JW recognized the skill of some of his female employees, and specifically thought that Mrs Willcox should be allowed to paint classical figures.

In the absence of female voices recounting the experience of working in the production of ceramics in this period, I will explore types of sensory engagements, particularly haptic, in relation to the clay and fired vessels and the embodied experience of production in the light of the monetary value attached to the varied kinds of female labour. The lifting, carrying, and wedging of clay involved hard physical labour of the whole body and tactile contact with the raw material. The embodied experience of this kind of work involved wearing dirty work clothes which visibly marked out the women as manual workers from the lower social orders. Their handling of the clay was at the behest of male workers, and did not significantly intervene in the material itself; it was preparatory to throwing by male potters, that is, to the transformation by hand of the lump of clay into a three-dimensional vessel form. The haptic engagement with the material may have offered some sense of active participation in the production process, but this was surely limited. The low valorization of this female embodied experience was enacted in the minimal pay (both absolutely and relatively to male workers), the subordinate position to male workers, and broader social mores that suggested that dirty, hard physical labour demeaned women.

The work of paintresses was experienced as of higher value both directly through wages and indirectly through the clothes that these women could afford. A vestimentary code of valorization was experienced on the body in higher-quality and cleaner clothes. Paintresses were expected to use their own paintbrushes; the use of these on the fired vessels was a material status symbol. The skilled, detailed paint work was carried out by means of these mediating tools. Although the women would have handled the vessels modelled by men, their main mode of interaction was through specialized tools, following set patterns developed by designers and art directors. Occasionally, as we have seen, designs originated in the work of elite women beyond the manufactory; but overwhelmingly paintresses realized the designs and aesthetic visions of their male superiors through their paintbrushes and ultimately through their hands.

The particular way that JW and Bentley styled their pottery on ancient models inevitably had implications for gender. The Wedgwood company presented itself as reviving the ancient ceramic art; this was expressed in the very name of ‘Etruria’ and in the inscription of the first day vase, ‘Artes Etruriae Renascuntur’ (‘the Arts of Etruria are Reborn’). As Greek (and indeed Etruscan) culture and craft traditions were male-dominated, this discourse may have added a further layer of exclusion of female workers; or conversely, the real presence of female workers may have suggested a modern and more inclusive reinterpretation of classical vase-making.

How might the experiences of female workers in the manufactory have compared with female engagements with real ancient Greek vases in the British Museum in London and in elite domestic contexts across Britain? There is evidence for the presence of men and women from the lower social orders in the British Museum, with Joseph Planta (1744–1827), chief Librarian, for example, commenting on the unruly behaviour of ‘our popular Visitors’ in 1814;⁵³ yet the vases were increasingly inaccessible, behind glass, with minimal labelling.⁵⁴ Moreover, the guide to the museum, first published in 1808 and sold in two forms at 2 and 1 s, provided only minimal information on the vase collection—merely a brief paragraph referring to several cases of Greek vases and mentioning their painting and forms.⁵⁵ This contrasts with more detailed information given on sculptures, coins, and terracotta plaques, amplified by the publication of further catalogues devoted to these types of objects.⁵⁶ The available printed matter on Greek vases, then, would not have helped the ‘popular Visitors’ with little classical education to engage with these antiquities.

Turning to elite domestic contexts, a parallel can be drawn between the detailed visual and haptic contact in the Wedgwood manufactory and close-up viewing of deeply gendered classical iconography and tactile contact by female servants dusting Greek vases on display. Both these vase-related tasks were paid labour. However, the pottery workers actively created a new product, while the servants only cleaned an existing object. But perhaps the biggest contrast can be drawn between female workers from the lower social orders in the Wedgwood manufactory and elite women related to collectors of Greek vases. The former aimed to complete a specific manufacturing task and ultimately to produce the finished product for sale; while the latter, when invited into a male-dominated library where vases were typically displayed,⁵⁷ were circumscribed in any engagement with antiquities by their lack of classical education relative to their male relatives and the necessity of performing their elite female identity as desirable companions or daughters.

Such systemic impediments to female engagement with ancient Greek vases on display suggest that the production of imitation Greek vases by non-elite women was one of the most important routes of female access to Greek vase forms and iconography. The degree and nature of their engagement with the cultural cachet, shapes, and iconographies of these objects are less easy to pin down. While many women from the middle and upper orders of society would have had access to classical culture through popular mythologies and illustrated editions of the Odyssey and Ovid’s poetry in translation,⁵⁸ at the other end of the social spectrum a lack of formal education would have meant that knowledge was not extensive (many girls started working in the Potteries at age ten). But these women would have developed a deep familiarity with the shapes and iconographies of Greek vessels through embodied experiential contact over hours of professional paid labour. In particular this would have included the painting of non-figural motifs inspired by Greek vases onto a variety of shapes, both ancient replicas such as the vase on the cover of this themed issue, and modern shapes such as plates and teacups (figs 9 and 10). Even if not allowed to paint or model Greek-inspired figures or whole vessels, such as the figures on the cover vase, or the rhyton depicted in the centre of the plate (fig. 9), they would have worked in proximity to male co-workers engaged in these tasks. A relative or even absolute lack of familiarity with ancient Greek vases would have rendered these new productions more innovative, modern, and, perhaps, British to the eyes of female workers. Such detailed, creative, embodied engagement with Greek vases clearly differed from that of male co-workers and connoisseurs. Broadening our understanding of what counts as engagement with Greek vases allows us to place such non-elite female physical labour into an increasingly inclusive narrative. Such engagement is worth considering in its own right, and also because it physically underpinned a much more extensive, multi-class engagement with Wedgwood imitations of Greek vases in middle- and upper-class houses across Britain.

MARKETING

The consumption of creative ceramic imitations of Greek vases in this period needs to be understood against the backdrop of the development of the concept of taste and the establishment of shopping as a cultural practice in the eighteenth century.⁵⁹ Taste was to be appropriate both in terms of gender and social status.⁶⁰ One aspect of this is that neoclassicism, with its clean lines and associations with scholarship and culture, was by and large considered more suitable for men, and chinoiserie, with its intricacy and exoticism, more suitable for women.⁶¹ Despite increasing consumption of products, there was also a discourse of condemnation of luxury, which was considered socially and even politically dangerous.⁶² Some women from the emerging middle classes and from the elite were certainly involved in shopping decisions. Although the domestic sphere was by no means considered an entirely female domain,⁶³ tea-drinking in particular was thought of as a female activity and tea implements were more likely to be chosen by women.⁶⁴ At the lower end of the social scale, not only was there less purchasing power and leisure to enjoy products, there was also a pattern of living in rented accommodation which came with items such as tea kettles, looking glasses and soft furnishings (which were consequently not chosen by tenants).⁶⁵

JW had female patrons and customers at the very top of the social scale: Queen Charlotte and Empress Catherine the Great of Russia, for whom the famous ‘Frog’ service was created in part by paintresses in Etruria in 1773/4.⁶⁶ He also had support and patronage amongst the aristocracy:⁶⁷ for example, Lady Jane Cathcart, sister of William Hamilton, supported him through introductions and even through advice on gaining access to the market in Russia.⁶⁸ There are precedents for both royal and aristocratic patronage of ceramics in Europe in Queen Mary’s patronage of Delftware in the later seventeenth century, and in Madame de Pompadour’s patronage of Sèvres porcelain in the mid-eighteenth century.⁶⁹ But once JW had achieved success with royalty and the aristocracy he increasingly aimed at what he called ‘the Middling Class of People’ in order to increase his profits and to spread good (neoclassical) taste, in keeping with the ideas of arbiters of taste such as William Hamilton (1730–1803) and Thomas Hope (1769–1831).⁷⁰

(a) The London Showroom

In order to reach ‘the Middling Class’ JW opened a showroom in London, on Great Newport Street in 1767 and subsequently in Greek Street in 1772.⁷¹ For a producer to sell directly to the customer in this way and not through a middleman was an innovation, and competed directly with ‘chinamen’ selling cheap imports.⁷² Whereas there is occasional evidence for men buying dinner services (for example, a certain Abraham Grimes of Coton Hall, Warwickshire is recorded as purchasing ‘Wedgwood earthenware’ as well as new gadgets),⁷³ in his statements about his London showroom JW clearly had a female clientele in mind. He wanted to find rooms large enough to

enable me to shew various Table and desert services, completely set out on two ranges of Tables, six or eight at least; such services are absolutely necessary to be shewn in order to do the needful with the Ladys in the neatest, genteelest and best method. The same, or indeed a much greater variety of setts of Vases should decorate the Walls & both these articles may, every few days, be so altered, revers’d & transform’d as to render the whole a new scene, even to the same Company, every time they shall bring their friends to visit us.⁷⁴

His innovative marketing methods seem to have involved the creation of a faux domestic ambience in order to convey the utility and aesthetic effect of his products. The calculated emphasis on a changing display suggests that he considered visual entertainment necessary for attracting female customers. His showroom realized his vision of a space where ‘business and amusement can be made to go hand in hand’.⁷⁵ He planned to produce illustrated catalogues for the showroom:

as they will be looked over by our customers here, & they will often get us orders & be pretty amusement for the Ladies when they are waiting which is often the case as there are sometimes four or five different companys … & I need not tell you that it will be in our interest to amuse, & divert & please, and astonish, nay & even ravish the Ladies.⁷⁶

His plan explicitly focuses on female customers and was expressed in terms of seduction. At the same time the mention of the female shopping parties suggests other points of view, and the performance of gender identity in predominantly female company.

(b) Sale Catalogues

The Wedgwood catalogue, published and reissued 1773–87, repeatedly emphasized the moderate expense of the products, no doubt in pursuit of the ‘Middling Class’.⁷⁷ Females feature in the catalogue in four capacities: designers (discussed above); owners of antiquities used as models;⁷⁸ potential buyers; and iconographic subjects, including from the classical world. They are mentioned far less frequently than men, and the discourse often silences or marginalizes them as subjects: for instance, some section titles indicate exclusively male subjects, e.g. ‘Kings of England’, ‘Princes’ even where they include females;⁷⁹ and ‘Heads of Illustrious Moderns’ has ten subheadings denoting area of activity, e.g. ‘Painters’, populated exclusively by men apart from a handful of princesses, and the eleventh subheading is ‘Ladies’, thereby confining women’s activity solely to the performance of their gender.⁸⁰

The gendered marketing strategy adopted with regard to cameos and intaglios is worth looking at in detail:

The Cameos are employed for various ornamental purposes. They are set in gold and steel mountings, for rings, lockets, bracelets, snuff boxes, watch keys and chains, and a number of other trinkets; as also for buttons, which had lately been much worn by the nobility in different parts of Europe.

They are used likewise for inlaying in cabinets, writing tables, book cases, &c. for which they form a most beautiful enrichment, at a moderate expence;...

The ladies may display their taste a thousand ways in the application of these cameos; and thus lead artists to a better stile in ornamenting their works. There are specimens of this kind already, that do no less honour to the heart, than to the taste, of the noble lady who chose this delicate way of patronizing and supporting an infant art;—and which can only exist and be improved by the aid of such generous protection.⁸¹

The first line of persuasion is to describe the potential function of cameos in terms of female personal adornment and domestic decoration. The particular way that ‘ladies’ choose to combine and wear them on their bodies is identified as the way for them to show their ‘taste’. The second line of persuasion is to present the decision to buy as the decision to patronize a new art. Patronage of the arts was traditionally a male preserve; the text transforms shopping for small-scale ceramics into the practice of art criticism and perspicacious support of worthy artists, and it clearly taps into the new possibilities for female self-expression through purchasing power. A comparison with the argument put forward to male readers is illuminating:

so that gentlemen may have a great variety of seals or cameos, at a small expence; or have an opportunity of making perfect and durable copies of the choicest gems.⁸²

Men are enticed to buy the same objects as either functional seals or as items in a fully-fledged collection in imitation of the gem cabinets of the ‘nobility’. Although seals function in conjunction with the body (the hand) to make the impression, the man’s body is not implicated in this marketing strategy. While for men there is ownership along aristocratic, connoisseurial lines, for women there is body modification and, through that, the display of ‘taste’ and art patronage.

Unlike the overtly gendered marketing strategy for cameos and intaglios, an altogether different approach is taken with vases. They are first mentioned in a section on ‘Busts, Small Statues, Boys, Animals, &c.’;⁸³ JW uses ‘antique Etruscan vases’ as a model for the value of his own ceramic products, drawing a parallel with the way that Wedgwood ceramic imitations will be the sole remnants of classical art in a future period when real antiquities will have been destroyed:

… for when all Pictures are faded or rotten, when Bronzes are rusted away, and all the excellent Works in Marble dissolved, then these Copies, like the antique Etruscan Vases, will probably remain, and transmit the Works of Genius, and the Portraits of illustrious Men, to the most distant Times.⁸⁴

Etruscan vases are the ideal example of value accruing to copies through the loss of the originals. Elsewhere, in relation to commissioned cameo portraits and the diffusion of good taste and citing the example of the ‘Venus de Medicis’, he argues that copies instruct ‘the public eye’, celebrate the original, and encourage people to want to see the original.⁸⁵ By implication, his imitation vases would elevate the originals and spur people to search out ancient vases, on display at the time in the British Museum. Towards the end of the catalogue there are two sections specifically on Greek vases and the new products derived from them.⁸⁶ Here JW discusses at some length the lost techniques of ancient vase manufacture, ‘supposed, by the ingenious Author of the Dissertation on Sir William Hamilton’s Museum, to have been lost in Pliny’s Time’,⁸⁷ and the methods he has developed to imitate their effects. He specifies the sources he has used in his imitations, both the most famous publications on ancient vases and real vases that he has inspected.⁸⁸ He lists no less than thirty-four illustrious European collectors of vases (sovereigns and aristocrats, two of whom are female) as evidence of the importance of these artefacts.⁸⁹ And their specific value lies not least in the fact that

it is probable many of the figures and groupes upon them, preserve to us sketches or copies of the most celebrated Grecian paintings; so that few monuments of antiquity better deserve the attention of the antiquary, of the connoisseur, and the artist, than the painted Etruscan and Grecian vases.⁹⁰

The commercial catalogue, then, includes an art historical discussion about copies and lost Greek painting the like of which can be found in the publications of J. J. Winckelmann or Hamilton / d'Hancarville. The discussion of Wedgwood products in terms of art history, scholarship, collecting, with reference to classical philology (Pliny), that is, to areas not fully open to the participation of women, let alone of the ‘Middling Class of People’, can be read either as in practice appealing to male buyers and marginalizing women, or as offering an aspirational, didactic discourse to both men and women.

CONCLUSION

Through this case study of the Wedgwood pottery c.1760–1820, ceramic production has emerged as the chief arena in which women from the lower social orders were able to engage with Greek vases. Despite constraints in their employment and lower pay than men, this kind of interaction with imitations of Greek vases was on a professional paid basis, and involved detailed visual and haptic engagement. These elements of professionalism and close-up sensory engagement can also be found in the experiences of female servants caring for collections of ancient Greek vases in elite houses, and also handling Wedgwood products which drew on Greek vases, such as tea sets and jewellery. Female workers engaged with the objects at the behest of their employers for a specific end related to the object alone.

This type of experience can be contrasted with the consumption of Wedgwood and indeed ancient Greek vases by elite women, which, despite apparent self-determination, was constrained by self-fashioning in a gendered society. The physical interaction with Wedgwood products inspired by Greek vases, in the context of clothing and furniture drawn from Greek vase iconography (e.g. Thomas Hope’s clothing designs, klismos-style chairs) was enacted in the presence of the elite male and female gaze. This was the ‘end product’: the elite female body fashioned and framed within classically inspired materiality. Such constrained interaction with classical culture reflected the prevailing social framework of female disempowerment. But at the same time, the intimate sensory interaction on the person undoubtedly offered a pathway for female engagement with the classical world through her body. While ornamental vases were experienced through sight, dinner services and tea services were experienced haptically, and even through the sense of taste (fig. 10). Cameos, as we have seen, adorned the bodies of women and rested intimately on their skin in the form of bracelets and earrings (fig. 11). Scent bottles stimulated the sense of smell, as well as the sense of vision through their classical iconography (fig. 12).⁹¹ Working-class burnishers and paintresses in Etruria imitated ancient potters and painters; elite women too, in their homes across the country, on occasion imitated ancient painters when using china-painting sets with instructions for making gifts;⁹² but predominantly they imitated the painted women themselves. Both these modes of experience were through the body rather than the articulated scholarly word; they claim a place in the developing and increasingly inclusive story of the reception of Greek vases.

Footnotes

BIBLIOGRAPHY