Wood, Enoch
1759-1840

Burslem master potter for whom John Wesley sat in March 1781. He was the nephew of Ralph Wood, who founded a dynasty of Burslem potters and with whom the Toby jug originated. He was sent for three months in 1770 to Liverpool to be taught by his uncle, the portrait painter William Caddick. Back in Burslem he spent a short while 'learning his trade' under Josiah Wedgwood and was then apprenticed to Humphrey Palmer of Handley Green, before embarking on his career as a master potter.

His bust of Wesley was considered by Wesley himself (and later by Adam Clarke) to be the most faithful likeness of him every achieved. In 1830, when Samuel Manning was working on a statue of Wesley commissioned by Joseph Butterworth, Clarke sent him two copies of the bust, one of them (now in the Museum of Methodism at Wesley's Chapel) specially supplied by Wood himself from the original mould, as a model for the features. The statue, formerly at Richmond College, is now at Westminster Central Hall. Wood also produced busts of George Whitefield and Adam Clarke.

Sources
  • Richard Green in WHS Proceedings, 6 pp.17-23
  • Frank Falkner, The Wood Family of Burslem (1912)
  • Arthur D. Cummings, A Portrait in Pottery (1962)
  • Viscount Mackintosh, By Faith and Work (1966) pp.185-92
  • David J. Jeremy, in Brands Plucked from the Burning (2013) pp.51-3