The development of the manufacture of pottery and porcelain in Europe
and America throughout the 19th century need not be treated in such
detail as the history of its growth up to that period, for modern means
of communication and the general diffusion of knowledge have tended to
destroy the individual character which was so marked a feature of the
pottery of different countries in previous centuries. The 19th century
was distinctly the century of machinery, and, for the most part, it
witnessed the displacement by mechanical processes of those methods of
handicraft which made the older pottery individual and interesting even
in its simplest forms. Collectors are prepared to pay very large sums
for choice examples of the potter's art of bygone centuries, but it is
doubtful if much of the pottery of the 19th century will ever be
collected for its intrinsic merits, though it may be preserved as an
illustration of the spirit of the age.
In preceding 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 managed by Englishmen,
where earthenwares were made after the English fashion. We shall refer
presently to the survival or revival of the older styles of pottery and
porcelain, but the English influence was undoubtedly paramount, with one
or two notable exceptions, down to 1850, or even later. England itself
witnessed a notable development of its pottery manufacture, which became
more and more aggregated in that district of North Staffordshire
designated emphatically "The Potteries," where, in spite of later
developments, from two-thirds to three-quarters of all the pottery and
porcelain made in the British Isles is still produced. This
concentration of the industry in England has resulted in a race of
pottery workers not to be matched elsewhere in the world, and while it
was the supply of cheap coal and coarse clay which first gave
Staffordshire its pre-eminence, that pre-eminence is now retained as
much by the traditional skill of the workmen of the district as by the
enterprise of its manufacturers.
[Illustration: PLATE IX.
Sèvres. Pâte-tendre, c. 1757, painted by Falot and Morin.
Meissen. May-flower vase mounted in ormolu. Pâte-dure.
Meissen. Crinoline figure (Kandler), Pâte-dure.