The ceramic relief portrait profile is modeled on the wax relief profile by Isaac Gosset, an example of which is owned by the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia. The image, the earliest Franklin multiple issued by Wedgwood, depicts him as a prosperous, mature Englishman wearing a voluminous bag wig, dressed in a waistcoat and a coat with wide lapels and prominent buttonholes, and neckcloth or stock.

James Tassie worked for Wedgwood 1769-74; Sellers attributes to him the translation of Gosset's wax original into a model for Wedgwood's ceramic medallions.