History: Handpainted faience?

Generally faience / earthenware is said to have been a cheap material in the 18th and especially 19th century. However there's handpainted faience (Moustiers faience for example) and those two elements contradict each other's reputation. Handpainted porcelain wares were regarded as expensive, but what sort of households used painted faience?

 

Faience can be very fine and elaborate. It's a technique with a long history. I don't think there was any level of society that would disdain faience, depending on quality.

 

In order to respond correctly to the question being posed we must first agree on a definition of the term. The word Faience is, in general, applied to tin glazed pottery. The process involves submersing a unfired clay object in at least one bath of liquified tin glaze (known as Smalto). The purpose of the tin glazing was to hopefully, end up with a product that closely resembled precious porcelain. In Europe during the 15th century, when it very popular, the best faience was being produced in Faenza, northern Italy. Thus the French applied the name of the town to the creation of Faience. The Italians experimented with the glaze and discovered that firing a tin glazed piece two or three times enhanced the look and durability. These pieces became known as Maiolica (Majolica). Two drawbacks to creating maiolica was: a) The breakage due to heating and reheating pieces in the kiln and b) the inability to correct a design once the item is fired.
Majolica has always been highly prized, has always been expensive to buy and it remains so today.
Whereas Faience from Italy, France, Spain and surrounding countries are referred to as Majolica, pieces from the Netherlands and its neighbors are known as Delft or Delftware. This type of Faience is usually less expensive than majolica.
A third type of product known as Egyptian Faience, Because it is composed mainly of silica (sand or crushed quartz), along with small amounts of sodium and calcium, faience is considered a non-clay ceramic. It is a precursor to glazed clay-based ceramics, such as earthenware and stoneware, and also to glass, which was invented around 2500 BC.
And finally, there is an 18th century English substitute for porcelain. It is known as Creamware.
When the Europeans unlocked the secret of making porcelain in the first half of the 18th century interest waned for the tin-glazed clay products but it never died away completely and today many hundreds of dollars are being spent on the finer examples of faience and majolica.