Wedgwood jasperware jewelry is the pale blue and white ware you recognise on sight: a matte, unglazed stoneware plaque with small white classical figures standing out in relief, mounted as a brooch, a pendant, a pair of earrings or a ring. Josiah Wedgwood developed the body in Staffordshire in the 1770s after thousands of trials, and it has drifted in and out of jewelry ever since. It is also one of the most misunderstood things that crosses my desk, so here is what you are actually holding.
The piece in the photographs is one of mine: a silver-mounted oval with a draped classical figure and a winged cupid, convertible between brooch and pendant. I am using her throughout because her back answers most of the questions people send me.
What is jasperware?
Jasperware is a fine, dense, unglazed stoneware. Because it is unglazed it is matte and faintly chalky to look at, and it feels cool and smooth rather than glassy. The white figures are not carved. They are pressed in small moulds as separate pieces, laid onto the coloured body by hand and fired with it - a technique called sprigging. That is why the white is perfectly even in colour and slightly soft at the edges, and why the same cupid turns up on thousands of pieces.
The subjects are almost always neoclassical: muses, dancing hours, cupids, sacrifices, figures lifted from Greek and Roman models. The sculptor John Flaxman supplied many of the designs from 1775 onwards, which is why the good ones have real grace to them and the late copies so often do not.
One thing to clear up straight away: Wedgwood named the body after the mineral jasper because of its hardness. It contains no jasper and has nothing to do with the stone.
Your Wedgwood brooch was probably not made by Wedgwood
This is the single most useful thing I can tell you. Wedgwood made the plaque. Somebody else almost always made the jewel.
Wedgwood sold cameos and medallions loose, by catalogue, and the mounting was done by jewellers and metalworkers elsewhere. Matthew Boulton's Soho works in Birmingham produced the famous cut steel mounts, and Wedgwood also supplied mounters such as Green & Vale in Birmingham and Vernon & Hasselwood in Wolverhampton. Wedgwood himself sold only small quantities of ready-mounted jasper.
Two practical consequences follow, and both of them trip people up constantly:
- A hallmark on a silver mount dates the mount, not the plaque. A Georgian medallion sitting in a Birmingham-hallmarked frame from 1972 is an ordinary, honest object. The frame tells you nothing about the ceramic inside it.
- The Wedgwood mark is impressed on the back of the plaque, so a closed-back mount hides it completely. An unmarked brooch is not proof of a fake. It is usually just proof of a bezel.
Solid or dip, and why it dates her
Early jasper was coloured all the way through the body. From 1777 Wedgwood also used a cheaper method, jasper dip, where a white body is given a thin coloured wash on the surface only - cobalt was expensive, and dipping used far less of it.
Look at the edge of the plaque, or the back where it meets the mount. If you see white underneath the colour, she is dip. If the colour runs right through the thickness, she is solid. That one observation narrows the date considerably, because the production history has gaps in it:
- Solid jasper was made until production largely stopped around 1829.
- Production resumed in 1844, but in dipped ware only.
- Solid jasper did not return until 1860.
So a solid-coloured piece is either Georgian or 1860 onwards. She is almost never from the 1830s, 40s or 50s.
How to date Wedgwood jasperware by its marks
The marks are impressed into the clay, not printed, so they are shallow and easy to miss. Good raking light and a loupe.
The back of my own piece, and about as clear as these marks ever get: WEDGWOOD, MADE IN ENGLAND, and the year impressed in full as 1954. Two lines of the table below, confirmed on one plaque.
| Mark on the back | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| WEDGWOOD & BENTLEY, or W&B | The partnership with Thomas Bentley, which ended at his death in 1780. The most desirable mark you can find on a small plaque |
| WEDGWOOD impressed alone | From 1780 onwards, and the standard mark for roughly a century |
| Three impressed letters | A date code used from 1860. The last of the three letters is the year |
| WEDGWOOD ENGLAND | After 1891, when American import law began requiring a country of origin |
| WEDGWOOD MADE IN ENGLAND | Generally from 1908, and standard through most of the twentieth century |
| Two digits with the letters | From 1929 the year is given as digits rather than a code letter |
| WEDGEWOOD, with an E after the G | Not Josiah Wedgwood's firm. The name has never been spelled that way |
Read mine against that table and she places herself: MADE IN ENGLAND puts her after 1908, and the year given as four digits rather than a letter code puts her after 1929. She does not need either clue, of course, because somebody at Etruria stamped 1954 straight into the clay. Most are not that generous.
One more trap: WEDGWOOD & CO is a different Staffordshire pottery altogether, Enoch Wedgwood of Tunstall. Related by surname, not by jasperware.
Jasperware, jasper and cameo are three different things
These three words get used interchangeably in listings, and they mean entirely different objects.
| What it is | How to recognise it | |
|---|---|---|
| Jasperware | Unglazed stoneware with white relief pressed in a mould and applied by hand | Matte and cool, the white perfectly even, relief edges slightly rounded, sometimes a faint mould seam |
| Jasper | An opaque mineral, a form of chalcedony, usually red, brown or green | A polished stone, often banded or mottled. Nothing applied to it |
| Cameo | A design carved in relief from shell or layered hardstone | Carving marks under magnification, and natural colour layers that shift across the figure |
A jasperware brooch is often sold as a cameo, and in the loose sense of "a figure in relief" that is fair enough. But if you are buying one, know which you are paying for. I have written separately about how to tell a real carved cameo from a moulded one.
How to spot a copy
Not everything blue and white is Wedgwood, and not everything that is not Wedgwood is a fake.
- Honest rivals. Adams, Dudson, Copeland and a number of German and Japanese factories made their own blue and white jasper-style ware. These are legitimate pieces, simply not Wedgwood, and they usually carry their own mark or none at all.
- Resin and plastic copies. These give themselves away in the hand. Jasperware has weight and stays cool; resin is light and warms quickly to your skin. Look for a mould line around the rim, tiny bubbles in the surface, and white relief that sits flat and slightly glossy instead of matte and faintly translucent at its thinnest edges.
- Remounted plaques. A genuine old plaque in a modern mount is common and perfectly legitimate, but it should be priced as what it is. Machine-made findings, a lobster clasp or a crisply cast safety catch tell you the jewel around the ceramic is recent. My reproduction checklist covers the findings in more detail.
- Check the silver separately. Most jasperware jewelry is mounted in silver, and the mount is where the hallmarks are. If there are none, test the metal before you assume sterling.
How to live with jasperware
Unglazed means porous, and porous means she drinks whatever you put on her.
Never soak a jasperware piece, never put her in an ultrasonic cleaner, and please do not use soap. The matte surface holds it, and it dries to a white bloom in every crevice of the relief - which is exactly where you cannot reach it. A soft dry brush is usually enough. If she really needs it, a barely damp cloth and dry her at once.
Keep her away from perfume, hairspray and foundation. The relief catches all three.
Two things that look like damage and are not: on a dip piece the colour wears through at the high points after a century of handling and shows white underneath, which is honest age. And small losses to the rim, hidden under the bezel, are so common that I check the edge of every plaque before I buy. Run a fingernail round the rim under the mount. The ceramic chips where metal would only bend. There is more on cleaning in my general guide.
A small piece of eighteenth century ambition
What I like about jasperware is the scale of the idea behind such a small object. Wedgwood set out to put classical sculpture into the hands of ordinary people, and he did it by inventing a material and a production method from scratch. The thing on your lapel is a piece of that, whether it left Etruria in 1790 or in 1954.
If you are wondering how to actually wear her, I have a short guide to brooches, and for the wider period the style belongs to, Georgian jewelry is the place to start.
Frequently asked questions
How can I tell if my Wedgwood jasperware is real?
Check weight and temperature first - real jasperware is heavy for its size and stays cool. Then look for an impressed WEDGWOOD mark on the back of the plaque, remembering that a closed mount hides it. Resin copies are light, warm quickly and often show a mould seam or surface bubbles.
Is jasperware the same as jasper?
No. Jasperware is an unglazed stoneware made by Wedgwood from the 1770s. Jasper is an opaque mineral, a form of chalcedony. Wedgwood borrowed the name for the hardness of the body, nothing more.
What is the difference between jasperware and a cameo?
A cameo is carved in relief from shell or layered hardstone. Jasperware relief is pressed in a mould and applied to the body before firing. Carved cameos show tool marks and natural colour variation; jasperware shows perfectly even white and softly rounded edges.
How old is my Wedgwood brooch?
Read the impressed mark on the plaque. WEDGWOOD alone is 1780 onwards, WEDGWOOD ENGLAND is after 1891, and MADE IN ENGLAND is generally 1908 onwards. Three impressed letters are a date code used from 1860, where the last letter gives the year.
Why is there no mark on my Wedgwood jewelry?
Because the mark is impressed on the back of the plaque and the setting covers it. This is normal on bezel-set brooches and pendants, and it is not in itself a sign that the piece is wrong.
Can I clean Wedgwood jasperware?
Only gently. The body is unglazed and porous, so no soaking, no ultrasonic cleaner and no soap. Use a soft dry brush, or a barely damp cloth followed by immediate drying.
Warmly, Line Evelin Munkholm
