{"product_id":"melancholy-wedgwood-9780262546348","title":"Melancholy Wedgwood","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn experimental biography of the ceramics entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood that reveals the tenuous relationship of eighteenth-century England to late-capitalist modernity.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eMelancholy Wedgwood\u003c\/i\u003e traces the multiple strands in the life of the ceramic entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) to propose an alternative view of eighteenth-century England's tenuous relationship to our own lives and times, amid the ruins of late-capitalist modernity. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThrough intimate vignettes and essays, and in writing at turns funny, sharp, and pensive, Iris Moon chips away at the mythic image of Wedgwood as singular genius, business titan, and benevolent abolitionist, revealing an amorphous, fragile, and perhaps even shattered life. In the process the book goes so far as to dismantle certain entrenched social and economic assumptions, not least that the foundational myths of capitalism might not be quite so rosy after all, and instead induce a feeling that could only be characterized as blue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIris Moon is Assistant Curator in the European Sculpture and Decorative Arts Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eLuxury after the Terror\u003c\/i\u003e and coeditor with Richard Taws of \u003ci\u003eTime, Media, and Visuality in Post-Revolutionary France\u003c\/i\u003e. She teaches at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50708213465362,"sku":"9780262546348","price":25.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_0adb21b1-22fc-420e-b68b-138b77c884d4.jpg?v=1734506098","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/melancholy-wedgwood-9780262546348","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}