Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation TV - Who Really Discovered America? TV - Jacob Bronowski TV - Adolf Hitler - James Fox TV - Grayson Perry - Bible’s Buried Secrets TV - David Dimbleby - Jeremy Black TV - James Burke TV - Mark Williams TV - A N Wilson - Jeremiah 18:3-6 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow -
Athens’ first great artistic legacy – the vase. Empires Special: The Greeks: Crucible of Civilisation: Revolution, PBS 2000
Ecuador 3044 B.C. 4536 years before Columbus ... They are starting to make pottery ... Where did they learn these sophisticated techniques? Who Really Discovered America? History 2010
Twenty-six similarities in technique and motif on pottery from Japan and Valdivia. ibid.
Nearly a thousand pieces for Catherine the Great of Russia ... His [Wedgwood] own pottery Creamware. Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 8/13: The Drive For Power, BBC 1973
What culture is there in a clay jug I ask you? Adolf Hitler
Josiah Wedgwood was a giant of the enlightenment ... Wedgwood was also a disciple of Winckelmann ... Wedgwood’s true genius was pottery. James Fox, A History of Art in Three Colours: White III, BBC 2012
I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility ... The shape has to be classical invisible: then you’ve got a base that people can understand. Grayson Perry
So has Eilat Mazar discovered the Palace of David? She adds up the evidence: the building is huge; it is located in a prominent place in the oldest part of Jerusalem; and the pottery according to Albright’s chronology dates to the 10th century B.C. – the time of David. Mazar believes she has indeed found the palace of David. But the strength of her case rests on the outcome of dating shards of pottery. Bible’s Buried Secrets 2/2
The potters used to suffer from terrible diseases – partly the lead in the glaze which gave them lung disease called potters rot. David Dimbleby: Seven Ages of Britain: Age of Money, BBC 2010
Josiah Wedgwood – he was brought up in a family of potters in north Staffordshire. Jeremy Black, Why the Industrial Revolution Happened Here, BBC 2013
Porcelain. People went potty about it. James Burke, Connections: Echoes of the Past, BBC 1994
Delph: and it’s really very nice. Delph was a seventeenth century import. ibid.
The Delph potters came up with an imitation so good only the Chinese could tell the difference. ibid.
By the eighteenth century Delph had pretty much cornered the whole European pottery market ... [Josiah] Wedgwood got his start in life ... Queensware he called it ... ‘If the queen uses it, so should you’. ibid.
Creamware: a very pleasant tea-drinking vessel. The man who first made this genteel crockery was a hero of the industrial revolution: engineer, scientist, marketing genius – Josiah Wedgwood turned cups and saucers into an international business empire. Mark Williams, Industrial Revelations s1e3: Clocking On, Discovery 2002
The Wedgwood factory near Stoke ... A production line: consistent quality on a massive scale. ibid.
This new product used powdered flint for colour and texture. And was made of white clay and stone from Cornwall and bore clay from Devon and Dorset. And Creamware was the speciality of Josiah Wedgwood. Master potter, inventor, and one of the great entrepreneurs of the industrial revolution. ibid.
You can’t put this lot straight into a kiln; you have to make a protective container known as a Sagger. And this job is known as Sagger-maker’s-bottom-knocking ... Leading to this – the Bottle Kiln. ibid.
In fifty years revolutionaries like Wedgwood transformed the trade of potter into an industry. Wedgwood’s manufactory innovations were so well executed and so durable that Cream, or rather Queensware, is still made today. ibid.
The Enlightenment ... All of those things in a single individual ... Wedgwood was a founding father of the industrial revolution with a relentless urge to change. A N Wilson, The Genius of Josiah Wedgwood, BBC 2013
The company went through a post-war renaissance. ibid.
America would become Wedgwood’s most important overseas market. ibid.
Josiah asked for permission to call his Creamware – Queensware. ibid.
Josiah’s science was self-taught. ibid.
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying,
O house of Israel, cannot I do with you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel. Jeremiah 18:3-6
Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:
So spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
For some must follow, and some command,
Though all are made of clay! Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Kéramos l1
What land is this? Yon pretty town
Is Delft, with all its wares displayed:
The pride, the market-place, the crown
And centre of the Potter’s trade. ibid. l66