Towards the end of his partnership with Thomas Whieldon of Fenton, which lasted from 1754 to 1759, Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) developed an improved green glaze for use on earthenware. He recorded its ingredients of white lead, calcined flint and copper in his Experiment Book on 23 March 1759, noting later that it was ‘the result of many Expts. which I made in order to introduce a new species of colored ware, to be fired along with the tortoiseshell & Agate wares in our common gloss ovens, to be of an even self color, & laid upon the ware in the form of a colored glaze’. On 1 May 1759 Wedgwood leased the Ivy House and potworks in Burslem and set up in business on his own. This teapot may have been made there or at the Brick House Works to which he moved in 1764, but the possibility that it was made at Fenton Vivian at the end of the Whieldon-Wedgwood partnership cannot be ruled out. It is unlikely to have been made long after 1 August 1766 when Wedgwood wrote to his friend and future partner, Thomas Bentley, telling him of his plans to abandon the manufacture of green glazed ware and to sell off all his existing stocks.

Many other potters adopted green glaze, notably William Greatbatch, who had also worked for Whieldon before setting up his own pottery at Lower Lane, Fenton in 1762.