Josiah Wedgwood, was a celebrated potter, born at Burslem, in Staffordshire, in 1730. He received little education, and went to work in his brother's factory at the age of eleven. An incurable lameness, the result of small-pox, which subsequently compelled him to have his right leg amputated, forced him to give up the potter's wheel. He removed for a time to Stoke, where he entered into partnership with persons in his own trade, and where his talent for ornamental pottery was first displayed.

Returning in 1759 to Burslem, he set up a small manufactory of his own, in which he made a variety of fancy articles. His business improving, he turned his attention to white stoneware, and to the cream-coloured ware for which he became famous; and he succeeded in producing a superior kind of semi-vitrified pottery, without much superficial glaze, and capable of taking on the most brilliant and delicate colours produced by fused metallic oxides and ochres; so named after the inventor. it is much used for ornamental ware, such as vases, owing to its hardness the works of art produced in it almost indestructible. His reproduction of the Portland Vase is famous. He also executed paintings on pottery without the artificial gloss so detrimental to the effect of superior work.

His improvements in pottery created the great trade of the Staffordshire Potteries. He died in 1795.