Josiah Wedgwood was Whieldon’s partner from 1754 to 1759. One of the stipulations of the partnership is said to have been that Wedgwood might keep his experiments to himself. It is certain that he did experiment extensively, and we may attribute to him the green glaze and successful patterns of the “cauliflower” and “pineapple” wares.[77] It would be a mistake to depreciate these patterns as being unsuitable and vulgar imitations of nature. The natural shapes were adapted and conventionalized in a thoroughly artistic way, as anyone who looks at Whieldon’s or Wedgwood’s samples of this ware preserved in the South Kensington Museum can see at a glance. Slavish imitations there were later, but that was not Whieldon’s way. [Illustration: Staffordshire figures decorated with Whieldon glaze, probably by Wedgwood. _c._ 1760. Stoke-on-Trent Museums.] Taste changed, however, and Whieldon’s wares became unfashionable. It is only of quite recent years that the agate and marble, perfected later by Wedgwood, or the quaint cottage chimney ornaments and tortoiseshell ware of Whieldon, Wedgwood and Ralph Wood, have come to be valued as a native and genuine Staffordshire art. When Whieldon found that his market had left him he made no attempt to follow in the wake of his pupils, and about 1780 retired from business. His factory was just south of the present railway station at Stoke, and he built and lived in the house which still looks down upon the Trent and the railway. In 1786 he served as High Sheriff for the county. He died in 1798, and is buried at Stoke. His widow died in 1828, and one of his sons, Edward, was for many years Rector of Burslem, and lived at Hales Hall, near Cheadle. But his descendants are now no longer to be found in the potteries. We know of two other manufacturers who made agate and tortoiseshell ware—Daniel Bird, called “the flint potter” because of his experiments with different proportions of flint in the clay body,[78] and John and Thomas Alders of Cliff Bank. There were probably many others. These two made buttons and knife handles very largely. Both worked at the Stoke end of the Potteries.