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2009 MARKED TWO IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARIES: the two-hundred-fiftieth year of operation for the company started by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, and two hundred years from the date that Jane Austen took up residence at Chawton cottage in Hampshire. Well before these milestones, the Austen and Wedgwood heritage-keepers bowed civilly to one another. Pieces from Edward Knight's Wedgwood dinner set occupy a central spot in the dining room at Chawton cottage, while at the Wedgwood factory/ museum campus in Barlaston, Jane Austen's account of her visit with Edward and his daughter Fanny to Wedgwood's London showroom decorates one wall of the tearoom in large letters. Jane Austen had a less proprietary interest in Edward's purple- and gold-painted china than might be supposed - but she was acquainted with an enormous range of Wedgwood products from her earliest days. Her knowledge of Wedgwood and the ways in which it was promoted and sold, as well as the importance of tableware to social standing, are revealed in both her personal correspondence and her novels.
Edward Knight's Wedgwood china is important to us because it has survived, and because we know Jane Austen must have used it during her visits to her brother's home. However, it probably was not particularly significant to her, and it is unlikely that she had much to do with its selection. Her terse reporting of the event - "We then went to Wedgwoods where my Br & Fanny chose a Dinner Set. - I beleive the pattern is a small Lozenge in purple, between Lines of narrow Gold; - & it is to have the Crest" - does not suggest participation; the cautious "I beleive" distances her from the action (16 September 1813). Fanny was twenty years old at the time and since her mother's death had been, like Elizabeth Elliot in Persuasion, "doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law" (6-7) at Godmersham; perhaps, too, at that age she had already begun to consider her aunt "very much below par as to good Society and its ways" (Honan 1 18). She and her father chose a dinner set to complement their grand homes and reinforce their social standing. Each piece was ornamented with the Knight crest, to which Jane had no claim.
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