They should have been celebrating Josiah Wedgwood’s 250th anniversary this year. It was in 1759 that Wedgwood – potter, innovator, ruthless perfectionist and shameless self-promoter – first set up his own business in the Staffordshire village of Burslem; by the time he died his business had become a worldwide enterprise, with Wedgwood dishes and ornaments to be found on the tables of the crowned heads of Europe, from Queen Charlotte to Catherine the Great of Russia.

But instead of celebration it is a wake, as the iconic name of Wedgwood becomes yet another casualty of the recession. What died yesterday, though, was more than just an historic name, a once-renowned manufacturer reduced to no more than a fond memory; it signalled the last throes of an industry that has been dying for more than a quarter of a century.

More than anything else, it was changing public tastes that did for Wedgwood. Look at the Wedgwood website, and there are exquisite Jasper Conran chinoiserie plates for £36, or soup tureens designed by Vera Wang for £244; if anyone knows anyone under the age of 60 who spends such money on their tableware, or even has time for the concept of a dinner service reserved for “best”, perhaps they would let the administrators of Waterford Wedgford know. Wedding lists are not what they used to be.

Kevin Farrell, chief executive of the British Ceramic Confederation, said: “There have been specific problems in the premium dinnerware market and Wedgwood has not been immune from those problems.

“And we’ve had the period of the credit crunch where, really, the willingness of people to go out and buy premium dinnerware has been more limited.”

Or, as Rob Flello, Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent South, put it: “People are more likely to go to their local supermarket for their dinner service. For a lot of people, dinner is sitting down in front of the TV with their Ikea plates on their lap and their Ikea mug. Times, and tastes, have changed.”

Against such changing patterns of lifestyle, the pottery – and glassware – industry has struggled to survive. “There has been a history of growing by taking each other over, rather than growing by finding new markets,” Mr Flello said. Waterford merged with Wedgwood; Wedgwood took over Royal Doulton; and still sales continued to decline. There may have been a market for fine English china in America and Japan, but at home the once-proud name of Royal Doulton was reduced to the status of a running joke on the sitcom Keeping up Appearances, with Hyacinth Bucket’s references to her Royal Doulton china “with the hand-painted periwinkles”.

Not only was there a shrinking market for the products, there was always someone somewhere else who could produce them for a fraction of the cost. After the Royal Doulton factory in Staffordshire was closed in September 2005, production was moved to Indonesia, where labour costs are one tenth of those in Britain.

In the view of Kilian Murphy, an analyst at the Dublin stockbroker Goodbody, the move came too late. “Production could have been moved to Indonesia much earlier,” he said. In the end, though, it probably would not have made much difference: “I don’t think it would have changed consumers’ views that much,” he said.

The irony is that the company that failed to adapt to the times was once a byword for innovation. After a childhood bout of smallpox left Josiah Wedgwood with a weak right leg, which meant that he was unable to operate a potter’s wheel, he concentrated instead on design and experimentation. He invented a new way of measuring the temperature inside kilns, and, after experimenting with barium sulphate, produced Jasperware, the blue stoneware with white relief decoration that was still being produced by Wedgwood when it went into administration. His fortune owed much to such enterprise – as did Charles Darwin, Josiah’s grandson, who also married a Wedgwood and whose inheritance allowed him the time to formulate his theory of evolution.

Hilary Young, ceramics curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, said that Wedgwood’s success was down to technical innovation, experimentation “and the fact that he was a fantastic entrepreneur”. He latched on to neo-classical designs before other manufacturers, said Mr Young, enlisted talented designers and had a great eye for what would sell at the top of the market. When Queen Charlotte ordered his creamware, he persuaded her to allow him to call it Queen’s Ware. “He had a genius for self-promotion and marketing,” Mr Young said. If only he was still around today.

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