Wedgwood Institute - Decorative Scheme

Decorative Scheme

The façade was completed by November 1871. The basic design is by an architect called Nichols, but the elaborate decorations which form an integral part of the facade were designed by Robert Edgar and John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling, the father of the famous writer Rudyard Kipling, emigrated to India with his son while the building was still under construction.

The style of architecture chosen was Venetian Gothic, which had been popularised by John Ruskin.

It is an ornate building coated with numerous inlaid sculptures, ceramics and a series of zodiac mosaics, the latter executed by Signor Salviati. Over the entrance is a tympanum with portrait medallions of three people connected with Wedgwood's projects: these are John Flaxman, the sculptor, Joseph Priestley, the scientist and discoverer of oxygen, and Thomas Bentley (1730–1780), a business partner of Wedgwood. Above the tympanum is a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The statue is in the middle of a frieze.

Around the upper storey is set a series of twelve terracotta panels to illustrate the months of the year, and above them mosaics of the corresponding signs of the zodiac. Around the middle of the building are ten terracotta panels depicting processes involved in the manufacture of pottery. The cresting at the top of the facade recalls the Doge's Palace.