NAVIGATION

Addressing his customers in 1779 Josiah Wedgwood announced it was self evident that the multiplying of copies of ancient masterpieces would, like the printing of scientific discoveries, prevent ‘the return of ignorant and barbarous ages’. Through these copies ‘good taste’ would be diffused and ‘the publick eye …… instructed.’ He added ‘can there be any surer way of rendering an exquisite piece, possessed by an individual famous without diminishing the value of the original : for the more copies there are of any works, as of the Venus Medicis, for instance the more celebrated the original will be’
( Mankowitz, Wedgwood, 1953 pp 228-9 )