Wedgwood - the first industrial designers

The Week 4 article entitled 'The First Industrial Designers' by A. Forty from the text book Objects of Desire, provides a case study of the work of Josiah Wedgwood and his porcelain company of the same name.  The article provides us with a background of how his porcelain was made, the materials and the finish, as well as the method of sale.  This was significant as Wedgwood adopted a different means by which to sell his wares.  The traditional method was to sell to merchants or directly to markets but Wedgwood adopted a method of selling to order through either a catalogue from which the customer could select from or by providing a sample. 

This method of sale required Wedgwood to have a consistent product that was the same as the sample.  This was difficult as Wedgwood wares were all hand made, therefore there were naturally differences in manufacture.  Wedgwood had to solve these issues with the type of material he used.  Greenware was too inconsistent in colour and glaze so through experimenting Wedgwood came up with Cream Ware which was more consistent under different firing conditions.  The next step was to change the process of manufacture to one where the craftsman has influence in the process.  He did this by adding extra steps to the production, allowing him to hire less skilled workers and because of the design of the process still get a consistent result. 

The article explained the way Wedgewood refined his designs to come up with good looking neo-classical shapes that were easy to make.  He cut the number of various shapes and increased the motifs or prints to provide larger variety.  This enabled Wedgewood to limit downtime in setting up for a new shape.  Wedgewood produced wares that were both consistent in quality and met the needs of the consumer in terms of asthetics, usabiltiy and streamlined production.
This is a useful article which provides insight into how a successful company used the design process to create symmetry in both production and style.

Something that it caused me to ponder on was whether art must always answer to economics?  Would these designs be famous if they were too expensive to be economically successful? And should production and economic rationalisation dictate design?