Enoch Wood (1759–1840) was one of the most prominent Staffordshire potters in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In his youth he was a skilful modeller, and in middle age was respected as an astute businessman and an active participant in local affairs. After collaborating with his cousin Ralph Wood for an undefined period about 1784, he entered into a partnership with a lawyer, James Caldwell, which lasted from 1793 until 1818. Wood made several types of pottery during the early part of his career but is best known for his figures. Some of these were pearlware, an off-white earthenware with bluish glaze, described by contemporaries as ‘china glaze’. They were decorated overglaze with enamels which included shades of pink, yellow and turquoise. This figure of the great Athenian orator, Demosthenes (384–322 BC), also known as Eloquence, may have been made during the 1790s or in the early nineteenth century, as Wood apparently continued to use his own mark after the commencement of his partnership with Caldwell.

Like other potters, Wood based some of his figures on earlier sculpture by making moulds from plaster casts, which were obtainable in several sizes from London sculptors. Demosthenes had started life in the early 1750s as a fullsized plaster statue by John Cheere (1709–87), who later sold reduced size casts of it. Wood could also have obtained this model from another London castmaker, Charles Harris (d.1795?), whose undated catalogue of casts of about 1790 included a Demosthenes and several other subjects produced as figures by Wood, such as Fortitude.