Tiles—dust and encaustic—were the first of Minton’s improvements. The next change, due in some degree at least to Minton, was a general improvement in taste. The financial success of common blue printed ware had done away with any inducement to improve ornamental ware. The brilliant natural art of Whieldon had been forgotten; the classic style of Wedgwood fell out of favour under the Regency; and instead we find the gaudy decoration of old shapes by artists ever more mechanical and less artistic. As M. Solon has said: “Worse and worse became the shapes and models; lower and lower sank the work of the decorators; nor could this deplorable state of things be altered by the inspiring study of fine works of art. The Potteries were situated very far from the artistic centre; good examples and good advice were equally wanting. It is not to be denied that all that remains of the most pretentious examples of the pottery of that period (1800-1850) bears the stamp of an unmitigated bad taste.”[195] Some second-rate china painter from Worcester or Derby came over to the Potteries to direct workmen and was called an artist. The modest cream colour was embossed and gilded; the white earthenware was entirely covered with badly engraved blue printing; and the porcelain pieces of importance were decorated in the manner which one now associates with the mantelpiece of the cheap lodging house. Gradually this has been changed. The exhibitions of 1849 in Birmingham, of 1851, 1862, and 1871 in London, and of 1867 in Paris, induced healthy competition in excellence as an alternative to competition in cheapness and wage cutting. The public museums of Hanley, Stoke and Tunstall came later, but the Museum of Practical Geology, opened in 1851, and the South Kensington Museum, opened in 1857, helped to raise taste. Above all the Wedgwood Institute at Burslem, opened in 1865 under the fostering care of Thos. Hulme and William Woodall, M.P., with its admirable classes for students in applied art, has given a certain artistic training to the designer, decorator and moulder. But much credit also must be given to Herbert Minton for bringing over to Staffordshire the first of a series of French artists who have added extraordinarily to the ornamental value of Staffordshire ware.