By the time he was sixteen, in 1749, his life took a turn for the better, when he was apprenticed to Thomas Whieldon, who was then the most successful potter in Staffordshire. After a further five years, he moved on to work as a skilled potter for William Banks, of Stoke, before opening his own small factory, making cream-coloured and blue painted earthenware. He obviously prospered, for he was able eventually to purchase the factory of his former employer, William Banks, here in Stoke-on-Trent, where the company has remained ever since.

The rest, as they say, is history'. In essence the history of a whole industry; because in the space of 30 years, Josiah Spode's outstanding skills and creativity were to produce the two most important developments in English ceramics.

His reputation was initially secured by the perfection of blue underglaze printing on earthenware from hand-engraved copper plates in 1784. It not only ensured the future of his company, but also was essential for the phenomenal growth of the English tableware industry that followed. As an authoritative history of the subject says, "If the Spodes had produced nothing except their blue printed earthenware, their reputation would still be assured."

But Josiah Spode the First did a great deal more. In the closing years of the 18th Century, he produced the single most significant development in the history of his industry - the perfection of the formula for Fine Bone China. Its brilliant whiteness and delicate translucency inspired new standards of artistry, skill and finish, which when it was put on the market, led the way forward for the whole industry.

While Josiah Spode I was carrying out his pioneering work in Stoke, his son, Josiah II, was in London, proving himself equally adept at marketing his company's products.

Having opened a showroom and shop to sell his father's wares in Cripplegate in 1778, by 1784 he had appointed another Staffordshire man, William Copeland, as a travelling representative. It was probably their knowledge of potential markets that led Spode I to concentrate on the experiments that eventually created Fine Bone China.
After a century of importing Chinese porcelain, the East India Company started reducing this trade in 1793, and stopped completely in 1799.Profitability had been eroded by an 'auction-ring' and demand drastically reduced by the neo-classic fashion in interior design with which Chinese blue and white decoration was not compatible.

Once again the Spodes were ready to demonstrate their outstanding ability to seize an opportunity.

The use of bone ash had been known from the middle ages, when it was first used in cupels for the assaying of metals. Interest in it as a tableware ingredient emerged about 1750 and in the succeeding fifty years several experimental formulations were tried. However, these were 'soft-paste' porcelains with the inclusion of bone ash. Whereas what we now know as bone china is a true porcelain of china clay and Cornish stone with 45%-50% calcined bone.

By 1796, Spode I was at the very least on the verge of perfecting bone china, as demonstrated by an invoice to William Tatton, containing the first known reference to 'English China'. Certainly, by 1799, two years after his father's death, Spode II was successfully selling bone china, initially branded as 'Stoke China'. Such was its immediate impact and obvious superiority, that the rest of the industry was forced to follow.

But, with his flair for innovation the younger Spode always managed to stay ahead, gaining the Company's first of six Royal Warrants, following a factory visit by the Prince of Wales in 1806.

As the curator of the S?vres Museum has written, "The Spode factory at Stoke-on-Trent was without doubt the most important factory in the early 19th Century." Obviously, Spode did realize his dream of producing the whitest, most translucent, strongest and most resonant Fine Bone China.