Today is our fourth weekly round-up of our ongoing #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton Twitter thread, meaning we’re almost a month into this bitesize-breakdown of Philip and Zillah Wadsworth’s “Minton” manuscript already!
As always you’ll find this week’s collection of 280-character snippets below as well as links to previous WHoM instalments for easy reference. If you’re new to the blog and would like to find out more about what we’re trying to do with this series we recommend heading straight to the first post – it’ll hopefully explain everything!
WHoM:1
(01/04/20 – 07/04/20)
WHoM:2
(08/04/20 – 14/04/20)
WHoM:3
(15/04/20 – 21/04/20)
Born in Stoke-on-Trent in 1793 – the same year his father had begun to build the factory he would later inherit – Herbert Minton grew up “at the heart of the bustling life of the Potteries” and at 14 years old was taken into the family business.[35/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 22, 2020
Within 6 years of his induction into the firm Herbert was sharing in the manufacturing side of the business, “a young man, vigorous, breezy, kindly, but a strict disciplinarian, full of energy and ideas yet attentive to detail”.[36/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 23, 2020
“‘Mr. Herbert was everything’ as one of the workpeople put it, and his enthusiasm and enterprise were invaluable assets.”[37/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 23, 2020
After his father’s death Herbert Minton looked for a partner and his choice fell on John Boyle, also the son of a potter. The partnership would be relatively brief, however, with differences between the two being settled by arbitration in 1841.[38/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 24, 2020
(A quick aside: though Wadsworth’s manuscript doesn’t mention it at this point other Archive papers show that Herbert Minton subsequently went into partnership with Michael Daintry Hollins and soon after began producing encaustic tiles.[39/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 25, 2020
“In the year 1841 Herbert Minton took his nephew-in-law Michael Daintry Hollins into Partnership [and in] 1843 they added to the [China and Earthenware] business the manufacture of [encaustic] tiles”. https://t.co/YCAnLrA01K )[40/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 25, 2020
“[The] Romanticism [of] the late 18th & early 19th centuries brought with it a new enthusiasm for mediaeval architecture [and] in England [the] beautiful tiled floors attracted the attention and the admiration of a new generation of art lovers.”[41/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 26, 2020
Herbert Minton was himself taking an enthusiastic interest in these medieval encaustic tiles and as early as 1828 was making experiments to find ways of producing similar effects by modern, mechanical means.[42/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 26, 2020
Of these experiments Wadsworth writes: “Jewett records that […] ‘Mr. Minton was ever confident that skill and perseverance would in the end prove a success; but surely never was any man’s patience or pocket more severely tried’.”[43/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 27, 2020
Others were experimenting along similar lines; in 1830 Samuel Wright, a Shelton potter, was granted a patent for making glazed encaustic tiles but he was only moderately successful and would later sell the (renewed) patent to Herbert in 1844.[44/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 28, 2020
In the meantime Herbert had developed the process into a practical proposition and in 1835 published a catalogue of encaustic tile patterns. Wadsworth notes that the first recorded commission – a design for tiling a hall floor – came in 1836. [45/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 28, 2020
(That catalogue – “The earliest pattern book of the first Encaustic Tiles made in England by Herbert Minton in 1835” – can be found at Stoke-on-Trent City Archives and is included in the Minton Archive as SD 1135/1: https://t.co/TVV11Qxffb )[46/] #WadsworthsHistoryofMinton
— The Minton Archive (@MintonArchive) April 28, 2020