The Minton Tile Companies
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Minton & Co c.1828 - 1868
commercial production from circa 1835.
Tile making managed by partner Michael
Daintry Hollins from 1840 onwards whence the
brand name, Minton, Hollins, & Co was
adopted.
Minton Hollins & Co, and Minton & Co
brands were used on tiles contemporaneously in
the nineteenth century, catalogues, letterheads
and advertising wares show Minton & Co in
conjunction with Minton Hollins & Co as late
as 1912. Floor and buff clay majolica wall tiles
post 1868 may bear the legend Minton & Co
which was apparently gradually phased out
presumably as the dies wore out, groups of tiles
from installtions with both Minton & Co and
Minton Hollins & Co are quite common.
Michael Hollins became a partner in Minton
& Co in 1840 and Colin Campbell in 1849,
whilst Hollins managed the tile business
Campbell managed the china business and had
little involvement in the tile business.
[2] In 1868 the combined china and tile
company split in to Minton Hollins & Co the
tile company the remaining pottery company
apprently continued trading as Herbert Minton
& Co until 1873 when it became Mintons Ltd.
Following the court judgment Minton, Hollins,
& Co and Mintons Ltd both had the right to
use the name Minton & Co for their
speciality products.
For all intents and purposes Minton & Co
on tiles means Minton Hollins & Co the
exceptions being limited to those few tiles
produced prior to 1840. Mintons China Works as
it is widely known (actually Mintons Ltd) is not
Minton & Co on tiles, although this
connection is commonly made not least in the
literature (mostly written by pottery people)
and by museums it is wrong.
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Minton, Hollins & Co 1840 - 1968
(1840 - 1868 as a division of Minton & Co)
bought by Johnsons in 1968 who still use the
name. The most famed and prolific manufacturer
for most of the Victorian era their tiles were
used in The Palace of Westminster (The Houses of
Parliament), US Capitol, Victoria & Albert
Museum and many other prestigious buildings.
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Mintons Ltd 1873 - 1918 (these dates
for tiles, china and pottery for longer) often
referred to simply as 'Mintons' this is the
china behemoth substantively owned by Campbell
until his death in 1885 [1]. Apparently
used the branding Mintons China Works on tiles
however 'Vhina Works' is the address just as
'Patent Tile Works' is the address fro Minton,
Hollins, & Co. Mintons Ltd tile catalogues
say Mintons (Limited) China Works, they were
prohibited by order of the court from using
Minton & Co on tiles but could use it for
other products.
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Robert Minton Taylor 1869 - 1874.
Temporarily traded as R Minton Taylor until
prohibited by the court in 1871. Associated with
Campbell to form Minton Brick & Tile Co
another name prohibited by the court.
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Mintons Art Pottery Studio, Kensington
Gore 1871 - 1875, owned by Campbell.
Produced good and indifferent art pottery and
hand decorated tiles, when destroyed by fire in
1875 was considered not economical to rebuild ie
it was not making a profit.
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Minton Brick & Tile Co 1874 - 1875
temporarily used by an association of Robert
Minton Taylor and Colin Minton Campbell (both
nephews of Herbert Minton) before its use was
quashed by the court,. Renamed Campbell Brick
& Tile Co.
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Campbell Brick & Tile Co 1875 -
1963, part owned by Campbell, initially managed
by Robert Minton Taylor [4]. 'Brick
&' was soon dropped and the company became
The Campbell Tile Co.
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Herbert Minton began experimenting making encaustic
tiles in 1828 in addition to the established Mintons
pottery and china business, early results were most
unpredictable 100 satisfactory tiles from a kiln load of
700 was considered a success. Work continued refining the
processes and in 1835 the company was confident enough to
produce their first catalogue of 62 designs. In 1836 they
tendered for the supply of tiles for special schemes and
full scale production began around 1842.
In 1840 Herbert Minton took his nephew Michael Daintry
Hollins into partnership [2], and the company was
split in to two divisions, Hollins mananged the tile
business, [4] Another nephew Colin Minton
Campbell joined the company in 1849 and took over
management of the china business. The tile business, and
especially the wall tile business, was barely in
existence before Hollins joined so it was mostly his
creation, Jewitt reports it made a loss until 1844. The
tile business traded as both Minton & Co and Minton,
Hollins & Co for tiles and the china business as
Minton & Co, the almost exclusive use of Minton,
Hollins & Co for wall tiles surely indicates Hollins
influence in that regard. Herbert Minton died in 1858 and
the two divisions became more defined, Hollins and
Campbell remained partners and continued in their roles
Hollins managing the tile business and Campbell the china
business as before. Another nephew of Herbert Minton
Robert Minton Taylor became a partner with Hollins in the
tile business in 1863.
There was an acrimonious disagreement between the two
major partners and the company split in 1868 Hollins
taking the lesser value tile business and Campbell
retaining the much larger and well established china and
pottery business. Campbell however still had some tile
making equipment at the china works site and continued to
use it and the Minton & Co name for wall tiles (he
didn't make floor tiles), he clearly had the right to use
Minton & Co for pottery and china as his was a
continuance of the previous business but not for tiles.
Campbell also used many of the same patterns on tiles as
Hollins the result being that there were two companies
producing tiles with the same patterns and same brand
name Minton & Co which of course caused confusion in
the marketplace. Hollins maintained that under the terms
of the agreement all of the tile business was his
including the equipment at the china works and that
Campbell could not use Minton & Co on tiles.
The dispute reached the courts who found in favour of
Hollins, the tile making equipment remaining in
Campbell's factory was determined to belong to Hollins
who was also awarded the exclusive right to use the name
Minton & Co on tiles. Campbell however wanted to keep
on making tiles and reached a settlement with Hollins for
the tile making plant at the china works reputedly in the
sum of £30,000 (in excess of ten million pounds in
today's money) which Hollins used to build a new factory
and propel his company to being the world's largest tile
maker. It would appear that Campbell and Taylor both
paternal nephews of Herbert Minton conspired against
Hollins a maternal nephew however Herbert Minton was the
last Minton to own and run the company.
Robert Minton Taylor had left Minton & Co's tile
making division run by Hollins just before the final
Hollins/Campbell split and in the following year started
trading as R Minton Taylor making floor tiles and later
some wall tiles. The court found that this name was also
confusing implying that it was Minton in partnership with
Taylor and ordered that company use the full name Robert
Minton Taylor & Co to identify its wares and in
advertising.
Campbell owned Mintons Ltd continued making tiles with
Mintons brand and the full address China Works, Stoke
Upon trent, Campbell joined with Robert Minton Taylor in
1874 in the form of a buyout or partnership and the
company was renamed Minton Brick and Tile Co. It appears
that the merger was at least in part an effort by
Campbell to find a loophole in the court judgment
prohibiting him from using the name Minton & Co on
tiles. The use of such name by Campbell was clearly
against the spirit of the judgment and again the dispute
reached court, Hollins again won and the company had to
change its name. It was renamed Campbell Brick and Tile
Co 'brick and' shortly being dropped apparently
reinforcing the influence that Campbell had in the
setting up of R. Minton Taylor & Co. The judge
specifically admonished Campbell for actions leading to
effectively a retrial of the same issue as in 1868 and
Campbell was thenceforth prohibited from using the words
Minton and Tile for any company or on the same line in
advertising.
Campbell was a great salesman and wielded the
considerable Minton influence aggressively, no doubt he
expected to prevail in court despite the weakness of his
case. So persuasive a speaker was he, or should we say so
great a salesman was he, that he was elected as Member of
Parliament for North Staffordhire. He entered parliament
on 32st January 1874 leaving on 24 March 1880, he was
also Mayor of Stoke from 1880 to 1883, Maybe his time in
parliament spurred on his animosity to former partner
Hollins being surrounded by Hollins' tiles which were
used in the construction of the Palace of
Westminster.
Mintons Kensington Art Pottery Studio may also have in
some part been another attempt to get around the naming
rights issue, owned by Campbell however they used some
blank tiles from Minton Taylor. It certainly appears that
there was an arrangement between Taylor and Campbell
prior to the dissolution of the Hollins/Campbell
pertnership, Hollins must have been especially aggrieved
that Robert Minton Taylor whom he had trained in tile
making had joined forces with Campbell to compete against
him. The studio's wares today have a great reputation but
in its day this was clearly insufficient to pay its way
otherwise it would have been rebuilt after the fire in
1875 indeed Atterbury & Batkin report that it lost
money, the fire was possibly rather convenient. Many of
the studio's wares are of poor quality and the current
reputation is to my mind exaggerated, it appears that the
best products were made in the first years whilst W S
Coleman was in charge. Julian Barnard makes this comment,
"Minton's Art Pottery Studios in Kensington Gore, London,
which opened in 1871, employed many artists (and would be
artists) to decorate their products." [3] They
did make and decorate some outstanding wares but there
are also those that have the look and feel of novices'
work.
There was actually a series of court cases mostly
concerned with the rights to use the name Minton on tiles
and stemming from the original agreement between Hollins
and Campbell, Hollins won on almost all accounts. Hollins
in the split took the smaller part of the company in
exchange for exclusive rights yet Campbell tried to deny
him the entire tile business, the court found it belonged
to Hollins as did the exclusive use of the name Minton
& Co in relation to tiles. What drove Campbell's
enmity is unknown but it deflected both companies'
attention from running of the businesses and the
publicity that it attracted cast a shadow further afield.
Perhaps it was Campbell's own settlement with Hollins
that aggrieved him, how he came to agree to the reported
sum of £30,000 is unfathomable, surely had he kept
to the agreement, let Hollins have the equipment and
avoid paying the settlement he could have built his own
brand new state of the art tileworks with the
£30,000. Furthermore Hollins would likely have been
required to pay the costs for removal of his equipment
from the China Works site.
Currently the accepted wisdom is that Mintons Ltd were
the greater quality company but this is predicated
primarily on the number of pictorial tile series that
they produced, the name became popular amongst collectors
and parlayed the already existing collectability of
Minton china. For the most part Hollins produced the
better quality wares and a greater variety of them,
certainly so during the lifetime of Campbell. Mintons
China Works had a marketing coup with John Moyr Smith's
designs for tiles, particularly the Shakespeare series,
which were very popular and being so numerous are well
collected yet the smaller range of series designed by
Moyr Smith for Minton Hollins are executed by them to a
far superior quality standard. Robert Minton Taylor's
tiles, the few that we see, are similar excellent quality
to Hollins'.
Quite a messy business, it seems that Campbell was
overly fixated with battling for the name and finding
loopholes in his agreement with Hollins, the £30,000
settlement seems a huge amount for some tile making plant
but perhaps it was that he bore the Minton name being
from the father's side of the family whereas Hollins was
from the mother's side. Tiles were only ever a minor part
of his Mintons business around 25% of sales some of which
were sourced from Campbell Tile Co, around 75% was
tableware. It appears that Colin Campbell had little to
do with the running of Campbell Tile Co being mostly a
financier and marketeer, the company made both wall and
floor tiles (rather more of the latter) and was managed
by Robert Minton Taylor [4], it grew to be a
substantial company remaining independent until 1963.
[1] Atterbury & Batkin report Campbell's
death as 1887, the Gladstone Pottery Mueum has an
encaustic memorial plaque stating that he died 8th
February 1885.
[2] Various sources have various dates for the
Minton partnerships most herein are from the judge's
summing up in the Hollins v. Campbell and Taylor case of
May 1875 as transcribed in part by Barnard. This source
states1841 for the Minton, Hollins partnership however a
floor tile catalogue apparently dating from the 1870s
proclaims on its cover:
Minton,
Hollins, & Co.,
Patent Tile Works,
Stoke-Upon-Trent.
Established 1840,
By the late Mr Herbert Minton and his
Nephew, Michael D Hollins (now sole
proprietor); and they continue to manufacture
every description of Plain and Ornamental
Tiles by the most improved
processes.
Jewitt reports Hollins joined in 1845 and gives 1845
for the separation of the tile business "under the style
Minton, Hollins & Co". Other reported joining dates
are both Hollins and Campbell 1845 by Atterbury &
Batkin, and1840 and 1848 respectively by Steve Birks
quoting from a 1956 book 'British Potters and Pottery
Today'.
[3] Victorian Ceramic Tiles by Julian Barnard
published in 1972 by Christies is a highly recommended
book. Written more in the tone of a dispassionate
auctioneer giving a straightforward assesment it tends to
avoid the sycophantic aggrandisement of established brand
names, artists and techniques that many other
publications suffer from. It is also as far as my
knowledge extends the most error free, unfortunately as
time goes by the number of errors in books about tiles
seems to be generally on the increase.
[4] Jewitt.
Edited 25 March 2013
