The Industrial Revolution: 1750s to 1850s
The Industrial Revolution heralded mass production. This industrialization was characterized by factory owners commissioning specialists to supply drawings and instructions that could be interpreted and manufactured by semiskilled or unskilled factory workers, producing goods in large numbers far more economically than the previous craft methods. As the production process became increasingly complex, and the business of making became ever more divorced from the role of determining a product’s form, a profession known as “product designer” emerged whose primary role was to give form to these mass-produced items.
The mid-eighteenth century saw a number of significant industrial developments. For instance, in 1752 Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) discovered electricity and, by 1765, James Watt (1736–1819) had developed the steam engine, which enabled the rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale. Without some notable earlier inventions, however, including the spinning jenny and the flying shuttle, some of the later achievements such as Watt’s steam engine might never have been possible. Industrial mass production heralded the production of all sorts of consumer goods and modern transportation systems. The division of labour enabled factory owners to produce goods cheaply, eventually resulting in the workforce being paid low wages and regularly working long hours in horrendous and often dangerous conditions. Inevitably the drive for more and more goods at lower prices led to bitter poverty, poor living conditions, and a miserable life for the working classes.
Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) spent most of his life in the Wedgwood family’s pottery business, which was based in Staffordshire. He was responsible for revolutionizing pottery-manufacturing techniques in order to increase production and sell to a wider market during an era largely characterized by handwork. Faster production led to wider availability and increased affordability. Wedgwood transformed the pottery industry and established a mass-manufacturing production system, where he exploited advertisement by royal association that elevated his pottery’s status. Wedgwood’s approach to manufacturing split areas of labor into a production-line concept, which distinguished design from manufacture and production. Jasperware vase, twentieth century (right).
In the process of transition from handwork to industrial production, the planning of an object began to be separated from work by either hand or machine. Pattern books and portfolios were widely distributed in the mid-eighteenth century in order to solicit and secure orders. Furniture, for example, was produced in advance and offered for sale as finished pieces in larger magazines and sales catalogs. The first known pattern books of the early industrial era in Britain came from Thomas Sheraton (1751–1806) and Thomas Chippendale (1718–79), both of whom were to have a major influence throughout Europe. Design had, therefore, acquired significance not only for production but also for sales. Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) founded his pottery factory in 1769 in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, Britain, to serve not only the aristocracy but to feed a wider market among the middle classes with more everyday pottery.