Wedgwood Dancing Hours teapot

Wedgwood Dancing Hours teapot in pale blue jasper, circa 1810.
Jasperware was the innovation of which the great potter, himself, was most proud.
Josiah Wedgwood was a rarity: a prominent and successful man who embraced radical causes.
He actively supported the American Revolution and campaigned against slavery. Wedgwood devoted the closing decades of the 1700s to the manufacture of attractive, serviceable, and above all inexpensive tea services. When the government abolished the onerous tea tax in 1784, sales of tea -- and Wedgwood's teapots -- boomed. Tea became what it is today -- the national drink of England. Many of old Josiah's teapots were durable enough to survive to this day.