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On 26 September 1792, Earl Macartney set sail from Portsmouth aboard HMS Lion<\/em>, accompanied by the East Indiaman Hindostan<\/em>. After stalling in squally weather off Torbay, they skirted Brittany before sailing south to Madeira, round the Cape of Good Hope and then east to the Chinese port city of Tientsin (Tianjin). Counted among the passengers were nearly 100 of Georgian Britain\u2019s finest brains \u2013 natural philosophers, instrument makers and draughtsmen \u2013 and, as importantly, some 600 crates of artefacts and objects carefully chosen to showcase the advanced thinking and industrial might of Great Britain.<\/p>\n Macartney\u2019s mission was to convince the Chinese to open up their huge markets to imports from Britain \u2013 \u201cto excite at Peking a taste for many articles of English workmanship hitherto unknown there\u201d. So he laid before the \u201cCelestial Court\u201d a vast array of textiles and trade goods. Most remarkably, he took china to China, in the form of six Wedgwood vases. In the official register of Goods Purchased for the Embassy to China, \u201cWedgwood Jasperware\u201d valued at \u00a3169.17.0 stands as perhaps the most outrageous testament to an unwavering British belief in its design and manufacturing prowess.<\/p>\n It was an inspired choice. What Josiah Wedgwood \u2013 the father of English pottery \u2013 had achieved was of global significance. During the final decades of the 18th century, he turned the tide on Chinese porcelain imports and made Great Britain the epicentre of ceramics. In the words of his epitaph, Wedgwood converted \u201ca rude and inconsiderable manufacture into an elegant art, and an important branch of national commerce\u201d.<\/p>\n