has ever seen. This was nothing less
than the abandonment of the ordinary red or buff clays with a coating of
white slip or of tin-enamel, and the substitution of a ware white
throughout its substance, prepared by mixing selected white-burning
clays and finely-ground flint (silica).[24] The change has generally
been associated with Wedgwood, most famous of English potters, but he
really only perfected, along with his contemporaries, the Warburtons,
Turners and others, the work of half a century's experiment and
discovery. The ware compared most favourably, from the point of view of
serviceableness, neatness and mechanical finish, with all that had gone
before it, and as the tin-enamelled wares had almost everywhere in
Europe sunk to the position of domestic crockery--for the Chinese,
German, French and English porcelains had displaced it with the
wealthy--this better-fashioned and more durable English ware gave it its
final death-blow. English earthenware in its various forms was to be met
with all over Europe, from London to Moscow, and from Cadiz to
Stockholm; and, aided by emigrant English potters, the continental
nations soon began a similar manufacture for themselves. Everywhere this
great change was encouraged by the growing fondness for mechanical
perfection, and it is not without a sigh that a lover of pottery can
witness the gradual disappearance of the painted tin-enamelled
wares--degenerate survivals though they were of Italian majolica, French
faience and Dutch "Delft"--before the unconquerable advance of another
form of pottery which in its inception was based on technical rather
than artistic qualities, especially as nearly a century passed before
the new material was turned to artistic account.

By general consent the name of Josiah Wedgwood has been pre-eminently
associated with this great change, and with good reason, for though he
had many contemporaries who equalled or even excelled him in certain
kinds of pottery, no other potter ever approached him in the range of
his products and the varied applications to which he turned the exercise
of his remarkable talents.[25] True, he soon abandoned the simple
Staffordshire wares, coloured with mottled glazes or clay-slips, to
which the names of Astbury or Whieldon are commonly attached, but the
varied productions of his factory united the best work of a district
fruitful in new kinds of pottery, with something especial to Wedgwood
himself. Thus he adopted a