THE RADICAL father of English pottery
ON THE HistoryExtra PODCAST
On 26 September 1792, Earl Macartney set sail from Portsmouth aboard HMS Lion, accompanied by the East Indiaman Hindostan. After stalling in squally weather off Torbay, they skirted Brittany before sailing south to Madeira, round the Cape of Good Hope and then east to the Chinese port city of Tientsin (Tianjin). Counted among the passengers were nearly 100 of Georgian Britain’s finest brains – natural philosophers, instrument makers and draughtsmen – and, as importantly, some 600 crates of artefacts and objects carefully chosen to showcase the advanced thinking and industrial might of Great Britain.
Macartney’s mission was to convince the Chinese to open up their huge markets to imports from Britain – “to excite at Peking a taste for many articles of English workmanship hitherto unknown there”. So he laid before the “Celestial Court” a vast array of textiles and trade goods. Most remarkably, he took china to China, in the form of six Wedgwood vases. In the official register of Goods Purchased for the Embassy to China, “Wedgwood Jasperware” valued at £169.17.0 stands as perhaps the most outrageous testament to an unwavering British belief in its design and manufacturing prowess.
It was an inspired choice. What Josiah Wedgwood – the father of English pottery – had achieved was of global significance.
