Seals are life

(Yesterday kind of went to pieces on me in the end, so for the first time this entire project I took an entire day and said nope, nothing is being drawn. Today is much better, so I'm just going to do a Pope Gregory and say that the calendar went from the 12th to the 15th. Thanks for patience.)

Today's outing was a trip to the Gardiner Museum, the ceramics museum downtown that has this... this whatever the hell this is outside. The interior, thankfully, is slightly less surreal and slightly more full of bunnies.

If you're familiar with ceramics, porcelain and china, then the name you probably know above all others is Josiah Wedgwood. (This isn't a Wedgwood piece, but I'm not going to let that get in the way of this narrative.)

Wedgwood was kind of a marvel of his time. He dropped out of school at 14, dedicated himself to making porcelain, and marketed it so successfully that the Queen herself became a customer. And then he was able to market this new china, "creamware" as he called it, to everybody else as being the Queen's personal favorite. The sort of person who had long-term knee problems from a bout of smallpox, needed two legs of equal length to work at his craft properlyl, and solved the problem by amputating his leg.

In his personal time he was part of a family of great minds and great artists that included Darwin, and he certainly held his own during their discussions and debates. And during the rest of his spare time he was a staunch opponent of slavery, manufacturing abolitionist medallions for like-minded people to wear.

Oh. You spent a moment thinking he was hanging out with Charles Darwin. Sorry, I should have been clearer. He was hanging out with Erasmus Darwin. Who was Charles Darwin's grandfather. Oh, and Charles's other grandfather was... Josiah Wedgwood.

An autodidact. A person surrounded by those more schooled than him, yet part of the community and family nonetheless. A crusader for social justice at a time when even mentioning the crusade risked ridicule from the aristocracy. And, of course, a hustler constantly out there trying to get people to commission him for work and buy his art.