Wedgwood's Catalogue of Cameos, Intaglios, Medals, Bas-Reliefs, Busts, and Small Statues

This fascinating 1873 publication is a version of the catalogue produced by the Wedgwood company almost one hundred years earlier, in 1787. Its editor, the feminist writer Eliza Meteyard (1816-79), was a friend of the Wedgwood/Darwin families, and had published a two-volume biography of Josiah Wedgwood in 1865. She explains in her preface that the sixth (and last) such catalogue of Wedgwood's lifetime, 'having been long out of print ... is thus verbally reprinted, without other alteration than a few press corrections and the insertion of various illustrations from the Life of Wedgwood'. A brief history of the catalogues is provided, followed by a long list of the cameos, intaglios, figurines, vases and dinner, tea and coffee services which the firm offered. Wedgwood also advised on how to form a collection of cameos, which are listed by subject: sets containing Greek gods, or kings of France, or popes were available.