Josiah Wedgwood, a printing enthusiast

A little story from the border of the history of typography and ceramics. When John Baskerville (1706-75) first showed the world his fonts in 1757, they aroused admiration. The books he published were admired. The only problem was that for the conservative British, Baskerville's typeface was too modern. They preferred the conservative work of William Caslon and his son, William Caslon II. So when Baskerville died in 1775, the font he created fell out of use. A few years later, his widow Sarah Baskerville sold a complete set of them to France, where they were bought by Pierre Beaumarchais. Thanks to them, Beaumarchais published a complete set of Voltaire's writings, the so-called Kehl edition.

Meanwhile, in Britain after 1775, the number of books published in the Baskerville font can be literally counted on the fingers of one hand. It was not until the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries that its modernization, created by William Martin and used in books printed by William Bulmer, gained wider popularity.

Interestingly, one of the few authors who decided to reach for Baskerville was the famous Josiah Wedgwood (1730-95), the founder of the famous pottery factory. In 1783, the publisher and printer John Smith of Newcastle published two Wedgwood books: An address on the late riots to the young inhabitans of the Pottery , and then An address to the workmen in the pottery. The first of these concerned the social unrest in Etruria (where the pottery factory was located). Wedgwood then decided to call in the army to disperse the crowd. The second of the works was an attempt to strengthen the loyalty of the workers so that the secrets of pottery made from jasper would not pass to the competition.

In short, the producer of beautiful things took care to ensure that his two books were printed in a font that is still considered one of the best ever created. In short, the master of beautiful things took care of his image.