The Wedgwood First Day’s Vase on display at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, England, UK
Known as the First Day’s Vase, it is one of six near-identical pieces (of which only 4 survive) created on the first day, 13 June 1769, of Josiah Wedgwood's new Etruria factory. Thomas Bentley, a Liverpool merchant and business partner of Wedgwood in the production of ‘ornamental wares,’ provided the motive power to the potter’s wheel on which Wedgwood threw the six vases. With Bentley turning the hand-cranked wheel that powered the throwing wheel where Wedgwood sat, the two men were working in perfect harmony. The surviving vases are the only pieces of pottery that can be said, with confidence, to have been made by the man himself with his own hands. The black basalt body coupled with the red encaustic decoration, combine to produce a strikingly contemporary 18th Century neo-classical design piece.
Size: 1897px × 3499px
Location: Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs, England, UK
Photo credit: © John Keates / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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