Bulb Pot

Wedgwood Manufactory · c. 1785

Medium

Stoneware (basaltware) with encaustic decoration

Original size

12.1 × 9.3 × 9.3 cm (4 3/4 × 3 5/8 × 3 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

This elegant bulb pot from Wedgwood's celebrated basaltware line embodies the late eighteenth century's fascination with classical antiquity rendered in refined domestic form. Josiah Wedgwood developed his black basalt body in the 1760s as a deliberate homage to ancient Etruscan and Greek pottery, which he and his contemporaries often called "Etruscan ware." The encaustic decoration technique — applying iron-oxide pigments in terracotta reds and whites directly onto the unglazed matte surface — allowed Wedgwood's painters to produce vessels that closely echoed the red-figure and black-figure traditions of antiquity. The result is a piece that feels simultaneously archaeological and supremely refined, suited to the Georgian drawing rooms for which it was made. Wedgwood famously named his Staffordshire factory "Etruria" in 1769, marking its opening by personally throwing a set of encaustic-decorated vases in front of witnesses — a rare moment of theatre from one of history's shrewdest industrialists. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates this interplay of deep black ground and warm classical figures onto canvas with careful attention to the original's composed geometry and the luminous quality of those iron-pigment lines against the matte basalt ground.