Antiques

To furnish the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland with a tea set, Josiah, a young potter studying chemistry, Wedgwood’s marriage in 1765 to Sarah Wedgwood, his third-cousin with a sizable dowry, funded production of his cream-ware research, a new variety of fine glazed earthenware that became WEDGWOOD® tableware. Wedgwood partnered with Thomas Bentley in 1769; in 1780 when Bentley died Wedgwood asked Erasmus Darwin, an English physician, for help. And his daughter Susannah Wedgwood’s marriage to Erasmus’s son Robert Darwin funded his grandson Charles, who married first-cousin Emma Wedgwood, Darwin’s trip to the Galápagos Islands with money from the pottery business!