fire that gutted the production building and a limitation on the manufacture of soft-paste porcelain, discouraged the original investors. When Custine purchased the property in 1770, it was a struggling investment. He encountered significant financial problems over the next eight years, and considered bankruptcy in 1778. He subsequently entered into business with François-Henri Lenfrey and the factory began producing faience in the English style of tableware. Lenfrey also revamped the production process, producing cailloutage, which combined faience production techniques with a new process that mixed crushed limestone with the clay. Custine's execution led to the temporary closing of the plant when the regime confiscated his property; the workmen, summarily laid off, traveled to Paris to find work, and several signed a petition for her release. The continued war with the Coalition reduced the number of employees to 15; the factory survived, however, and enjoyed a renaissance in the mid-nineteenth century. Custine presented George Washington with a set of this tableware service in 1782. Notes References Appleton Prentiss Clark Griffin and United States Congress, Joint committee on the Library. Rochambeau: A commemoration by the Congress of the United States of America of the Services of the French Auxiliary Forces in the War of Independence. Washington, DC., Government Printing Office, 1907. Bardoux, Agénor. Madame de Custine: d'après des documents inédits. Calmann-Lévy, 1898. Begin, Émile Auguste Nicolas Jules. Biographie de la Moselle, Verronais, 1829, vol. 1 . Bertaud, Jean Paul, R.R. Palmer (trans). The Army of the French Revolution: From Citizen-Soldiers to Instrument of Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. Bodart, Gaston. Militär-historisches kreigs-lexikon, (1618–1905). Vienna, Stern, 1908. Chuquet, Arthur, Les Guerres de la Révolution, [Paris?], L. Cert, 1886–1895; vol. vi (1892), "L'Expédition de Custine". Doyle, William. Aristocracy and its Enemies in the Age of Revolution, Oxford University Press, 2009. Dumouriez, Charles Francois, and Adam Philippe Custine, Mémoires sur les guerres de la Républicque. Introduction by Charles Francois Dumouriez. Paris, Ladvocat, 1824. Dupuy, R, Nouvelle histoire de la France contemporaine. La République jacobine, 2005 (reprint) Faience Assoc. History of Niderville factory. Infofaience, 2012–2014. Accessed 8 December 2014. Fyffe, Charles Alan, A History of Modern Europe 1792–1878, nl, H. Holt, 1896. Gay de Vernon, Jean Louis Camille. Mémoire sur les opérations militaires des généraux en chef Custine et Houchard, pendant les années 1792 et 1793 Firmin-Didot frères, 1844. Hebert, Jacques. Le Père Duchesne, No. 264; Jacques Hebert archive. Accessed 3 March 2014. Mansel, Philip.