Secrets for Sale? Innovation and the Nature of Knowledge in an Early Industrial District: The Potteries, 1750–1851

Abstract

This article investigates innovation and knowledge circulation in the North Staffordshire Potteries during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It evaluates new empirical evidence of formal and informal patterns of knowledge creation and dissemination in order to highlight tensions between forms of open knowledge sharing and the private appropriation of returns to innovative activity. By presenting new patent data it shows that formal protection was not a widespread strategy in the industry. It uses patent specifications to determine what types of knowledge were, and could be, patented in the district, and by whom. A range of sources are used to demonstrate evidence of innovation and knowledge appropriation outside of the patent system. The article identifies distinct types of knowledge in the industry and shows how differences in these led to a range of strategies being employed by potters, with the role of secrecy highlighted as a particularly prevalent and effective strategy.

Patterns of innovation during the Industrial Revolution: A reappraisal using a composite indicator of patent quality

“…27 Accordingly, we do not consider far-fetched to assume that the "representativeness" of our sample of macroinventions may be somewhat more accurate than for ordinary inventions. 26 For preliminary applications of BCI to the pottery industry and to the engineering trades, see Lane (2019) and Hanlon (2020). 27 These patenting rates are in line with Dutton's view (1984, p. 112) who noticed: "Knowledgeable contemporaries believed that almost all the important inventions were patented".…”

The historical shifts of in/formality of learning within craft skills ecosystems in the United Kingdom

“…The legacy of craft guilds which regulated and organised the knowledge transfer and training diminished in pottery in the United Kingdom (Lane, 2019). There was a lack of powerful craft guilds and associations to mediate the relationships between different actors, especially the developing industrial base for pottery.…”

“…In common with other crafts, there was a developing division of labour that separated out craft knowledge, although new knowledge and skills in pottery making, for example, modelling and mould making, continued to develop. Further, parts of pottery ‘production’ was advanced by technology, although this still required high‐level hand‐crafted skill from makers (Lane, 2019). What could be mechanised in response to demand, coupled with increasing foreign competition from the end of the 19th century accelerated mechanisation, which increasingly began to replace manual skills (Whipp, 2018).…”