ing sections of this article the development of the brightly
painted tin-enamelled wares and the gaily decorated porcelains of
various European countries have been traced down to the end of the 18th
century, because that date marks, quite distinctly, the period when the
old handicraft of the potter was for various reasons displaced by
organized manufacture. The disturbed economic condition of Europe in the
last quarter of the 18th century and the Napoleonic Wars of the early
19th century proved disastrous to most of the pottery and porcelain
works where artistic wares were made, and the disturbance of traditional
methods was completed by the superior mechanical perfection and
cheapness of the English earthenware introduced by Wedgwood and his
contemporaries. The English pottery was neater, more perfectly finished
and more durable than the painted tin-enamelled pottery of the
continent. It vied in finish with the expensive continental porcelains,
and for nearly half a century it carried all before it, not only in
England, but throughout the world. An intelligent observer, M. Faujas de
Saint Fond, writing in the beginning of the 19th century, remarks of
English pottery that "Its excellent workmanship, its solidity, the
advantage which it possesses of sustaining the action of fire, its fine
glaze impenetrable to acids, the beauty and convenience of its form, and
the cheapness of its price, have given rise to a commerce so active and
so universal, that in travelling from Paris to Petersburg, from
Amsterdam to the farthest parts of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to the
extremity of the south of France one is served at every inn upon English
ware. Spain, Portugal and Italy are supplied with it; and vessels are
loaded with it for the East Indies, the West Indies, and the continent
of America."[36] It was calculated that at this time three-fourths of
the pottery manufactured in England was sent abroad. Such a state of
things was not likely to continue, and in most of the European
countries, after the settlement of 1815, such of the older factories as
had survived, or new factories specially created for the purpose,
adopted English methods of manufacture. In many cases experienced
Staffordshire potters were procured to direct these works, and so far as
ordinary domestic pottery was concerned, the first half of the 19th
century witnessed the establishment in every country of Europe and in
the United States of America of pottery works man