ABSTRACT
Ceramic repair was certainly not new in the eighteenth century; nor were all the techniques deployed for mending likewise novel. Mending teapots in the eighteenth century was, it seems, not an act of economic necessity, but rather more tied up with enduring practices of adding value. Surviving repairs to punchbowls show both the ingenuity of the repairer and the possible reasons that lay behind the choice of mending. The late eighteenth-century account book for the Yorkshire household of gentleman William Danby records on 6 May 1776 payment for "'a China saucer mending 2d". In the middle of the century however, there is a discernable shift in the terminology used by China menders to describe the techniques deployed for mending objects other than teapots and handled goods. Wedgwood was clearly not concerned about the ethics of presale repairing: this was mending as commercial opportunism.
