VOCABULARY TERM: PORCELAIN

Porcelain. A clay-based material with a slick slurry giving it a glass-like composition, as a Wedgwood medallion. Porcelain portraits, similar to those in metal, were developed to their pinnacle by Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795), the famed potter of Staffordshire, England. A contemporary and friend of Matthew Boulton, the two innovators exchanged technical information as Boulton was building his Soho Mint. Wedgwood produced his portrait medallions with small bas- reliefs, either taken from existing medallic art or were created by a famed sculptor of the time, John Flaxman, or by William Hackwood, a staff craftsman of considerable talent.

Wedgwood porcelains were made in queen's ware, a glazed cream-colored earthenware, basalt, a vitreous black ceramic, or his own patented jaspar ware of green or blue colors. His firm's catalog illustrated the many decorative designs the firm offered, but the portraits were of popular interests including most prominent people of England, Europe (and a few Americans). His work was imitated by other ceramic firms but the Wedgwood firm still exists and produces some of these porcelain portraits. See ceramic.

The most familiar and popular numismatic items made of porcelain are the German coins and medals that were made from about 1920 to the present.

Reference:
NE40 {1984} Junge, p 272.

To read the complete entry on the Newman Numismatic Portal, see:
Porcelain (https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/dictionarydetail/516523)

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