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.