Josiah Wedgwood in the context of "Slave Trade Act 1807"

Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade. It was part of a wider abolitionism movement in Western Europe and the Americas. It spanned over a century and involved a wide range of activists, politicians, religious groups, and former slaves.

The trade of slaves was abolished throughout the British Empire by 1937, with Nigeria and Bahrain being the last British territories to abolish slavery.

Jasperware, or jasper ware, is a type of pottery first developed by Josiah Wedgwood in the 1770s. Usually described as stoneware, it has an unglazed matte "biscuit" finish and is produced in a number of different colours, of which the most common and best known is a pale blue that has become known as "Wedgwood blue". Relief decorations in contrasting colours (typically in white but also in other colours) are characteristic of jasperware, giving a cameo effect. The reliefs are produced in moulds and applied to the ware as sprigs.

After several years of experiments, Wedgwood began to sell jasperware in the late 1770s, at first as small objects, but from the 1780s adding large vases. It was extremely popular, and after a few years many other potters devised their own versions. Wedgwood continues to make it into the 21st century. The decoration was initially in the fashionable Neoclassical style, which was often used in the following centuries, but it could be made to suit other styles. Wedgwood turned to leading artists outside the usual world of Staffordshire pottery for designs. High-quality portraits, mostly in profile, of leading personalities of the day were a popular type of object, matching the fashion for paper-cut silhouettes. The wares have been made into a great variety of decorative objects, but not typically as tableware or teaware. Three-dimensional figures are normally found only as part of a larger piece, and are typically in white. Teawares are usually glazed on the inside.

Thomas Bentley (1731–1780) was an English manufacturer of pottery, known for his partnership with Josiah Wedgwood.

The Wedgwood scale (°W) is an obsolete temperature scale, which was used to measure temperatures above the boiling point of mercury of 356 °C (673 °F). The scale and associated measurement technique were proposed by the English potter Josiah Wedgwood in the 18th century. The measurement was based on the shrinking of clay when heated above red heat, and the shrinking was evaluated by comparing heated and unheated clay cylinders. It was the first standardised pyrometric device. The scale began with 0 °W being equivalent to 1,077.5 °F (580.8 °C) and had 240 steps of 130 °F (72 °C) each. The origin and the sizing of the steps were later both found to be inaccurate.

The Midlands Enlightenment, also known as the West Midlands Enlightenment or the Birmingham Enlightenment, was a scientific, economic, political, cultural and legal manifestation of the Age of Enlightenment that developed in Birmingham and the wider English Midlands during the second half of the eighteenth century.

At the core of the movement were the members of the Lunar Society of Birmingham, who included Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Joseph Priestley, Josiah Wedgwood, James Keir and Thomas Day. Other notable figures included the author Anna Seward, the painter Joseph Wright of Derby, the American colonist, botanist and poet Susanna Wright, the lexicographer Samuel Johnson, the typographer John Baskerville, the poet and landscape gardener William Shenstone and the architects James Wyatt and Samuel Wyatt.

The Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion was an abolitionist symbol produced and distributed by British potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood in 1787 as a seal for the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The medallion depicts a kneeling black man in chains with his hands raised to the heavens; it is inscribed with the phrase "Am I not a man and a brother?"

The figure was likely designed and modelled by Henry Webber and William Hackwood with Wedgwood's involvement. The medallion was produced as a jasperware cameo by Wedgwood's factory—the Etruria Works— and widely distributed in Britain and the United States. These cameos were worn as pendants, inlaid in snuff boxes, and used to adorn bracelets and hair pins, rapidly becoming fashionable symbols of the British abolition movement. The medallion helped to further the abolitionist cause and is today accepted as "the most recognizable piece of antislavery paraphernalia the movement ever produced."

John Flaxman RA (6 July 1755 – 7 December 1826) was an English sculptor and draughtsman who was a leading figure in British and European Neoclassicism. Early in his career, he worked as a modeller for Josiah Wedgwood's pottery. He spent several years in Rome, where he produced his first book illustrations. He was a prolific maker of funerary monuments.

Wedgwood is an English fine china, porcelain and luxury accessories manufacturer that was founded on 1 May 1759 by the potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood and was first incorporated in 1895 as Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Ltd. It was rapidly successful and was soon one of the largest manufacturers of Staffordshire pottery, "a firm that has done more to spread the knowledge and enhance the reputation of British ceramic art than any other manufacturer", exporting across Europe as far as Russia, and to the Americas. It was especially successful at producing fine earthenware and stoneware that, though considerably less expensive, were accepted as equivalent in quality to porcelain (which Wedgwood made only later).

Wedgwood is especially associated with "dry-bodied" (unglazed) stoneware Jasperware in contrasting colours, in particular in "Wedgwood blue" and white, always the most popular colours, though there are several others. Jasperware has been made continuously by the firm since 1775, and also much imitated. In the 18th century, however, it was table china in the refined earthenware creamware that represented most of the sales and profits.