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At the V&A Wedgwood Collection in Staffordshire, the story of the ceramics brand is told through some 175,000 objects. Housed on the same site as the Wedgwood factory in Barlaston, the museum holds myriad cups and saucers, teapots and trinkets, oil paintings of founder Josiah Wedgwood and trays upon trays of his ceramic trials and errors. He made more than 5,000 samples while coming up with his famous Jasperware stoneware, each meticulously numbered; the corresponding notes were written in secret code.
“Jasper is unique in its matte texture and its finish – and there’s an incredible nostalgia to it,” says Wedgwood’s creative director Emma Glynn. The clay, named after jasper stone for its hardness, was perfected in late 1774 and unveiled to the public the following year as a series of dusty “Wedgwood blue” ceramics decorated with Grecian and Roman scenes in bas-relief. The pieces tapped into the neoclassical fever that was tearing through Georgian England, prompted by excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, and have remained the brand’s best known creations ever since.
This year, Wedgwood is commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jasperware with a series of relaunches they’re calling the “Icons”: designs picked from the archive and “given a bold new look for the modern day”, says Glynn. They include a lidded Borghese vase depicting the Roman god Bacchus and a more subdued version of the classic amphora-shaped Portland vase, which features relief designs in the same sand-coloured flaxen shade as the background.
Jasperware is a niche of industrial ceramic history that has long attracted superfans. In the 19th century, for instance, Victorian collector Felix Joseph clocked up some 1,400 pieces, from buttons to perfume bottles, which are now in the hands of the Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery. “For people who love neoclassical things, there’s little better than Wedgwood Jasper,” says Bill Rau, owner of New Orleans antiques dealer MS Rau. The anniversary serves to remind collectors of the richness of the back catalogue.
For many, the original Portland vase remains the pinnacle of Josiah Wedgwood’s prowess. When Sotheby’s New York offered a late-18th-century version as part of the Starr Collection in 2019, it fetched $35,000 over a $5,000 to $7,000 estimate. First editions from the original batch, identifiable by the slight translucency of the relief and the smoothness of the surface, command a premium; a blue version at MS Rau is priced at $168,500.
But Wedgwood’s wide-ranging output has resulted in a wealth of collectable options. “They made things that were an inch and a half wide and they made powerful urns 30in high,” says Rau. There are bas-relief portrait medallions depicting famous figures (a c1775 medallion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is $3,450 at MS Rau) and more idiosyncratic wares, such as a late-18th-century vase resembling a pair of ruined classical columns (an example of which sold last year at Christie’s for £5,292).
“The array is amazing,” says Maine‑based Adele Barnett, the dynamic former president of both the Boston and Washington, DC, Wedgwood Societies, now in her 80s. As a collector, she homed in on Jasper in “all shades of blue and all periods”, amassing a total of 3,200 pieces. “After a while, you get sick of seeing people dressed in togas, so I started to focus on things like this 18th-century engine-turned coffee set,” she says, holding up a graphically striped design. Of the wall-mounted plaques Barnett has displayed in her home, her most treasured are by Lady Templeton, who worked for Wedgwood in the 18th century and primarily made “a category of design called ‘domestic employment’, featuring mothers and children”. A c1787 sage-green “peace offering” medallion is €3,800 at Schoppmann Art and Antiques.
It’s not all about the famous blue, though. Wedgwood-produced Jasperware comes in around 30 different colours, including sage green and, rarest of all, crimson (a 20th-century crimson pitcher decorated with trailing grapevines and classical figures is $3,850 at MS Rau). There are tri-colour designs too. But it was lilac Jasperware that piqued the interest of Connecticut-based collector-turned-dealer Ellen Rubell. She has since scaled back her 375 examples to a precious few, including a large urn and a petite “rum” kettle.
On the whole, the earlier the piece, the more highly prized. “In the 18th and 19th centuries, the carving, the detail and the overall quality was far better than it was throughout the 20th century,” believes Rau.
Jasperware is not standing still. JW Anderson has teased a collaboration with Wedgwood in Jasperware later this year. In the hands of jewellery brand Ferian, for example, Wedgwood cameos from the 1950s to the ’80s are remounted as rings and pendants. The V&A Wedgwood Collection, meanwhile, will mark the anniversary with an exhibition that features both historical wares and modern manifestations by “people taking an iconic material and doing something really creative with it”, says chief curator Catrin Jones. The display includes a towering collaboration with Magdalene Odundo.
A further addition to the celebrations was the launch of “Jasper 250”, a generative AI tool that enabled people to create their own Jasperware fantasies and enter them into a design competition. The winning creation by Chase Archer has just been announced, will be 3D-printed and then acquired as part of the V&A Wedgwood Collection. For Glynn, it’s all about “reaching new audiences that don’t even know who Wedgwood is yet”. Josiah, ever the innovator, would surely approve.
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