CHAPTER XI.
MINTON, TILES AND PORCELAIN.
While the Copelands have continued to perfect the old Spode china, their rivals, Mintons, have tried several new fields—tiles, majolica, pâte-sur-pâte. Herbert Minton (1793-1858)[190] and an elder brother joined their father’s firm in 1817, and, after his father and brother retired, he took Robert Boyle as a partner in these works at Stoke. Here in 1828 Herbert Minton first turned his attention towards producing tiles.[191] In 1830 Samuel Wright of Shelton patented a process for making encaustic tiles in the manner of the old Cistercian monks. The patterns were pressed in hollows into the tiles, the hollows were filled up with different coloured slip clays, and then the face was all cut level and flush. This patent was bought up by Minton and Boyle, and after great difficulties the first successful encaustic tiles were made in 1836.[192]
But it was the patent of Richard Prosser of Birmingham in 1840 which gave us the tile industry of the present day. He compressed clay dust between metal dies, and made the dry dust solid under the pressure of a differential screw. The process was intended at first for making buttons, door-knobs, etc., and it was for these purposes that Minton immediately bought the patent. J. M. Blashfield, who had already had experience in making mosaic pavements, saw the value of the machine for making tiles, and developed this line so effectively that by 1842 no less than sixty-two presses were at work making white glazed dust tiles.[193] Herbert Minton took his wife’s nephew, Michael Daintry Hollins, into partnership in 1841 to look after the tile branch.[194]
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.
M. Leon Arnoux (1816-1902) was engaged in 1849 by Messrs Minton, and became thenceforth the art manager of the works. He improved the decoration of their porcelain and the whiteness of its body, but his chief claim to notice rests on his “majolica” and his imitation of the old Pallissy, or Henri II, ware. For 30 years nothing was more popular than Minton’s majolica, whether for ornamental ware, tiles or façades. Arnoux was followed by such artists as Jeanest, Lessore, Protat,[196] and in 1870 by Mons. M. L. Solon, whose special work—pâte-sur-pâte decoration—still holds the public taste and deserves to become classical. In this process white slip clay-paste is painted on to a dark clay body, and the varying thickness and transparency of the layers of paint produce an effect which differs completely from either plain enamelling or the high relief of jasper. At the same time it lends itself to the individual taste of the artist and can never become merely mechanical.
When Herbert Minton died in 1858 his firm employed 1500 workpeople,[197] a number which has never been exceeded by any ornamental factory before or since. His two nephews, M. D. Hollins and Colin Minton Campbell (1827-1885)—the latter had become a partner in 1849—carried on the business jointly under the title of Herbert Minton & Co. for china and earthenware, and Minton, Hollins & Co. for tiles. In 1863 they were joined for a few years by another partner, Robert Minton Taylor, and on his leaving in 1868 Hollins and Campbell divided the business between them. Hollins took the tiles, and Campbell the main factory. One of the conditions of the division was that Campbell had to take over the stock of moulds at a valuation. It is said that they were valued at the unexpected and extraordinary figure of £30,000, the compulsory payment of which dissolved the friendship as well as the partnership of the two cousins. It may have been the recollection of this heavy grievance that induced Campbell in 1871 to start the Campbell Tile Co., a serious competitor for Minton, Hollins & Co., and the progenitor of many lawsuits.
Colin Minton Campbell was High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1869, Chairman of the North Stafford Railway, and Conservative Member of Parliament for North Staffs 1874-80. He died in 1885, and his statue stands in the High Street of Stoke. The Minton Works are now the property of his son John Campbell of Woodseat, but he takes no share in the business, which is managed by Mr J. Robinson. Another John Campbell owns and manages the Campbell Tile Co. in Stoke.