Below is our running blog from our website that we have transferred here to Blogspot. We'll be putting short references to our BLOG on the website so if you are at our site and want to read further, you can just click the hotlinks there to come here! It should make it all easier to use - we welcome your comments!
May 9 - Our good friends & Wedgwood experts, leaders of the Wedgwood Society of Washington DC, Al & Adele Barnett have recently returned from a trip up to Toronto to see the Royal Ontario Museum's 250th Anniversary Exhibition.
They also paid a visit to the Corning Museum of Glass in New York and of course came away enthralled with the glass Portland Vase held there. The photo shows side by side a Wedgwood Jasper Portland Vase & the cameo glass version.
The big black plaque by which Al & Adele stand is the VERY famous black basalt plaque made for Beeshy's Department Store.
Peter Kaellgren, Ph.D., Curator of Decorative Arts at the Royal Ontario Museum, treated Al & Adele to a great day of visiting and viewing at the ROM. Thanks to A & A for sharing their adventures with us!
May 7 - Somehow we didn't get the video of the balloon ceremony and interview with Lord Wedgwood at Barlaston on May Day, but thanks to Adele Barnett of WSWDC, we have it now! GO HERE to see the short video about the celebration of the Wedgwood Company's 250th birthday at the factory.
May 6, 2009 The Wedgwood Museum has reached the SHORT LIST of 4 MUSEUMS vying for the large monetary award and recognition should it win the ART FUND PRIZE. Please GO HERE and click Comments at the top to vote. The vote will be announced June 18th. Public opinion is one facet of the vote, there is also a panel of judges, so we need to make our opinion count!
May 1, 2009 - Today is the day! Wedgwood & Sons is 250 years old today. Take out your best Wedgwood teacup and drink a toast to Josiah and his family and friends - great talent, great business acumen, great ideas, great service to the local area in which they found themselves and great heritage! Hail to the blue & white!
25 April - a friend just brought us the March 2 issue of Antique Week which sports a gorgeous large color photo of a Water Lily pattern dinner plate in blue & white. This is a great pattern, named with Darwin in mind of course, and this particular plate recently sold for a respectable $110 at an Ohio auction of a flow blue collector who had other, non-flow, items in her collection. Speaking of Darwin, the Royal Mint has produced a 2 pound coin to celebrate this year's anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth. The coin and the packaging sport a bewhiskered Darwin face to face with a chimp...the coin celebrates the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection". Of course, we Wedgwoodians care about Darwin mostly because he married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839. They had 10 children and lived at Down House in Kent. He is buried in Westminster Abby. The coin and its brochure make a nice addition to a Wedgwood "ephemera" collection.
May/June 2009 issue of Victoria Magazine - one cover story is about Wedgwood, nice photos but watch out for some inaccuracies in the text, not particularly well written. There are also colorful articles about blue & white china, bridal gowns, floral china & white linens too!
24 April 2009 - after a busy 11 day trip to Washington DC and southern Virginia we're back and anticipating the college graduation season - be sure to check http://www.collegeplates.com/ for the ideal gift for your graduate.
Additionally, we have learned of a new book which would probably interest many Wedgwood scholars, that being a volume about Joseph Priestley called "The Invention of Air" by Steven Johnson, published by Riverhead Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. New York, 2008, www.riverheadbooks.com. It has been highly recommended to us by a UK scholar.
1 April 2009 - no April Fool's joke! Thanks to the Wedgwood Society of Washington DC (see our links for more info) here is a link to a paper we don't monitor -check it out here. It appears from commentary we have seen that many people are very concerned about Indonesian production of English bone china! In the USA Wedgwood will have to be marked with the real country of origin by law, no scraping by with bogus or incomplete backstamps! BE SURE TO READ BELOW AND GO VOTE FOR THE WEDGWOOD MUSEUM IN THE ART FUND COMPETITION - VOTING IS STILL IN PROGRESS!!!
From today's Kovels Komments, an on-line newsletter, comes this over-simplified and pithy comment: "Waterford Wedgwood Assets Sold Most Waterford Wedgwood assets have been bought out of receivership by KPS Capital Partners of New York. They are not buying the Irish production facilities, so jobs will be lost. Some manufacturing will be transferred to Indonesia, Germany, and Slovakia. But this does mean production of the famous brands will continue. And higher-end Wedgwood products will still be made in England." Wonder what the definition here of "higher-end" might be? This is definitely a short version of a much more complicated situation!
26 March 2009: Thanks to Adele Barnett I was reminded I haven't been checking the internet for the latest Wedgwood news! GO HERE to read today's update on the sale of Waterford Wedgwood right from the UK newspaper.
1 March 2009: JUST IN, the March issue of 'The Magazine ANTIQUES' arrived on our doorstep yesterday. The cover sports the W word, and inside we find a great article by Birmingham Museum of Arts Curator and Wedgwood fan, Anne Forschler-Tarrasch. The article is well-written and lavishly illustrated, making the issue well worth the price to non-subscribers. Articles about mid-century American studio artists, early Massachusetts furniture and two ads showing other Wedgwood items fill out the issue. It should be on news-stands soon, I believe subscribers receive theirs a bit early. ENJOY!
WEDGWOOD IN THE NEWS FOR AWARD CONSIDERATION - The BBC announces the Long List of entries for the Art Fund Prize and Wedgwood is among the contenders. The BBC article sports two external links of interest and a great photo. Go here to the article. Be sure to navigate to the Wedgwood Museum website via this article's link (or the link on our site). I have noticed that the new Wedgwood Museum is keeping its website well-updated, changing from time to time. Currently, the pictures and categories are very well executed. Thanks to Carol McLeod of Canada for this one and to Adele Barnett for an earlier announcement. Seems there is lots going on in the Wedgwood world these days, a good excuse for us all to keep in touch with one another. Cheers!
So perhaps a rest from the hustle and bustle of the bestirred Wedgwood world is in order. Check out the Jan/Feb issue of 'Tea Time Magazine' for some beautiful photos of a famous Wedgwood bone china pattern, NOT made in Indonesia! Also to be found are some pictures of presentations of food and dishes, AND scrumptious recipes for tea parties. 'The Magazine ANTIQUES' for January, 2009, has a great article featuring the Birmingham Museum of Art and the 19th century mantel which is now in the Museum's collection. And don't forget the Buten Collection has joined the Birmingham Museum's other extensive Wedgwood holdings to become the largest repository of Wedgwood in the USA! For my genealogy pals, be sure to see the article on the famous painting 'The Baptism of Pocahontas'; it is a well-written, well-illustrated and interesting article.
Check out our Website LINKS for the website of Wedgwood 250th Anniversary Celebration and a January Wedgwood press release on the same subject. Let's hope that the miserable economic state of Wedgwood and the world in general doesn't spoil our plans for a fun and interesting celebration of the 250th anniversary of Josiah Wedgwood & Sons! Stay tuned to our website links and blog for the latest information!
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