Iconic tableware firm Waterford Wedgwood has become the latest victim of the global economic crisis, calling in the receivers last night.

Deloitte was appointed administrator of the Irish-listed company, which over the last seven years has seen its share price slump to just €0.001, giving it a market capitalisation of €5.35 million against net debts of €448.9 million. The owner of brands Waterford Crystal, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton has fallen victim to the twin forces of a dwindling retail appetite for luxury goods and investor revulsion for corporate debt.

Despite significant revenues, the company has struggled to turn a profit for years. Major shareholder and media baron Tony O’Reilly attempted to revive the company by throwing loans at it, but ultimately this seems to be its undoing. It begs the question whether companies like Waterford Wedgwood, which employs thousands of people in Britain, Ireland and across the world, can maintain high quality, compete on a global scale and make enough profit to keep investors and stockbroking analysts happy. Perhaps Waterford Wedgwood’s collapse shows that such competing forces produce impossible compromises.

When Wedgwood was founded in 1759 such competing forces did not exist, and this allowed Josiah Wedgwood to not only develop his company the way he wanted, but create a singular brand at the same time. The British potter was famous for his exacting standards, striding around his workshop and smashing items with a stick that did not have the perfect glaze, consistency or shape.

Wedgwood was not just famous for blue and white china however, he was a prominent anti-slavery campaigner and a pioneer of workers’ rights. Surrounding the Etruria Works near Stoke-on-Trent was a purpose-built village where workmen and their families could live in a humane and respectable environment.

Unlike the dark Satanic mills that would come to typify England’s industrial revolution, Wedgwood’s factory — in use until 1950 — was a relative workers’ paradise. But now, in an age where price-point mass consumerism favours cheap imports and where investor greed demands continuously high dividends and rising share prices, the eccentric tradition of Josiah Wedgwood has no place, except for perhaps in some kind of family-run fair trade niche.

Waterford Wedgwood’s collapse may not be the biggest story in the credit crunch, but it usefully illustrates the present crisis’s historical context.