Background to the Museum

The origins of the modern Wedgwood Museum can be traced to Josiah himself.  In 1774 he wrote:

‘I have often wish'd I had saved a single specimen of all the new articles I have made, & would now give twenty times the original value for such a collection. For ten years past I have omitted doing this, because I did not begin it ten years sooner. I am now, from thinking, and talking a little more upon this subject ... resolv'd to make a beginning.'

The Wedgwood Museum was finally organised into an official museum in 1906. In 1962, the Museum was made into what the original Wedgwood Museum Trustees always considered to be a Trust specifically to prevent it being used as a realisable asset by any future predator. When the family owned the firm Wedgwood managers and family donated important pieces to be held by the museum so that they could be shared with the public. After 1966, when the firm went public, the museum was always kept separate, contained, it was always thought, within a legal Trust, and the family and managers always firmly had the intention that it would never be part of the public company and would be held within the Museum in Barlaston for all future generations to see.

Whatever financial difficulties were encountered by Waterford they could not – even when they  went insolvent in 2009 - sell the collection. Wedgwood scholars, art historians and enthusiasts around the world were safe in the knowledge that the Museum was protected by the force of law and could not be lost.

The Museum gained Charitable Trust status in 1998 in order secure funding for the ambitious plan to create a new building to house the collection. The Heritage Lottery Fund contributed £5.86 million, and a similar amount came from other granting bodies, businesses and individuals. This resulted in a magnificent new museum which opened to the public in 2008, and won the Arts Fund Prize in 2009. 


The museum is exceptionally well designed, the collections provide a continuous record of the history of the Wedgwood firm through two and a half centuries, and its unique place in British manufacturing, social, industrial and cultural history – still associated at Barlaston with Wedgwood’s ongoing production. In other words, much of its historical value lies in its integrity as a collection, and in its location – all of which would be lost if the pottery, archives, paintings and other unique objects were sold off and dispersed. This would be a national tragedy with serious implications for other Trusts, Charities and their benefactors throughout England.

Recently Jeremy Hunt MP, the Culture Secretary said, when discussing the recent donations by Charles Saatchi - 

“Philanthropy is central to our vision of a thriving cultural sector and this is an outstanding example of how Britain can benefit from individual acts of social responsibility”. 

When members of the Wedgwood family donated large parts of their personal collections to the Museum Trust over the course of the last two centuries, this was done as an act of social philanthropy, in the belief that the collection would be preserved for all future generations. It would be a tragedy if the unforeseen consequence of the new government legislation causes the sale of this historic collection.

Supporters of the Museum from all around the world, and members of the family who have invested so much in it, appeal for common sense to prevail.


 

 

BACK to the homepage.