Items14The creator’s order
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Josiah WedgwoodPottery, Staffordshire. Wedgwood founded his firm in 1759 and combined craft with method: thousands of recorded glaze and clay experiments, a factory at Etruria where work was divided into specialised tasks, and strict standards that famously led him to smash flawed pots. That let him sell fine…0i - 2
Thierry HermèsBorn 10 Jan 1801Leather, Paris. Hermès opened a harness workshop in 1837 serving the carriage trade, known for saddle stitching done by hand with two needles. When cars replaced horses, his descendants moved the same skills into bags and luggage. Hermès still trains its own leather craftsmen for years and has each…0i - 3
Henry E. SteinwayBorn 22 Feb 1797Pianos, New York. Steinway, a German cabinet-maker who emigrated with his sons, founded Steinway and Sons in Manhattan in 1853 and combined hand-building with patented engineering, such as overstrung bass strings and a cast-iron frame. Prize-winning instruments and endorsements by concert pianists…0i - 4
Michael ThonetBorn 2 Jul 1796Bentwood furniture, Vienna. Thonet, a cabinet-maker from the Rhineland, developed a way of steaming and bending solid beech into curves, and his No. 14 chair of 1859 used just six pieces of wood, a few screws and nuts. It could be shipped flat and assembled at its destination, and tens of millions…0i - 5
William MorrisBorn 24 Mar 1834Arts and Crafts, Britain. Morris co-founded the decorating firm that became Morris and Co. in 1861 and revived hand techniques such as natural dyeing, block printing and tapestry weaving at his Merton Abbey works. He argued that good design and satisfying work belonged together. His socialist…0i - 6
Louis Comfort TiffanyBorn 18 Feb 1848Art glass, New York. Tiffany, son of the jewellery firm's founder, ran his own glass and decorating studios from the late 1870s and developed opalescent and iridescent glass for windows and lamps. Much of the design and selection of glass was done by a women's department led by Clara Driscoll,…0i - 7
Kokichi MikimotoBorn 25 Jan 1858Cultured pearls, Japan. Mikimoto, the son of a noodle-shop owner in Toba, produced the first cultured pearls in 1893 by seeding oysters by hand, and spent decades refining the technique with skilled divers and technicians. To counter claims that cultured pearls were fakes, he publicly burned…0i - 8
Henry RoyceBorn 27 Mar 1863Engineering, Manchester and Derby. Royce, a self-taught engineer who had started as a newspaper boy, built his first car in 1904 because he was dissatisfied with the one he owned, and with Charles Rolls founded Rolls-Royce. His obsession with precise fitting, testing and reliability, captured in…0i - 9
Georg JensenBorn 31 Aug 1866Silver, Copenhagen. Jensen, trained as a goldsmith and sculptor, opened his silversmithy in 1904 and hired artists to design pieces that his workshop made by hand, crediting the designers by name. His flowing Skønvirke style became a symbol of Danish design. The model of a workshop that both…0i - 10
Bernard LeachBorn 5 Jan 1887Studio pottery, Cornwall. Leach, who learned pottery in Japan, set up the Leach Pottery in St Ives in 1920 with Shoji Hamada. Alongside individual pieces, it made a catalogue of standard tableware sold at modest prices, and trained apprentices in a workshop system. His book A Potter's Book became a…0i
