The Minton Tile Companies
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Minton & Co c.1835 - 1868 Managed
by Michael Hollins from 1840, Minton & Co
brand used on tiles post 1868 and possibly in to
the twentieth century especially for floor and
buff clay majolica wall tiles but apparently
gradually phased out presumably as the dies wore
out. Hollins became a partner in 1840, Campbell
in 1849. [2]
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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 (aka Houses of
Parliament), US Capitol, Victoria & Albert
Museum and many other prestigious buildings.
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Mintons Ltd 1868 - 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]. Used
Mintons China Works on tiles, tile catalogues
say Mintons (Limited) China Works, they were
prohibited 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.
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Minton Brick & Tile Co temporarily
used by an association of Robert Taylor and
Colin 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
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.
Minton took two nephews into partnership, Michael
Daintry Hollins and Colin Minton Campbell in 1840 and
1849 respectively [2]. From 1840 the company was
split in to two divisions, Hollins mananged the tile
business, [4] Campbell when he later joined
managed 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 relative 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 some 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 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 which Hollins used to build a new
factory and propel his company to being the world's
largest tile maker.
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 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 China Works brand name and 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 largely 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 Campbell had to
rename the company, it was renamed Campbell Brick and
Tile Co 'brick and' shortly being dropped. The judge
specifically admonished Campbell for actions leading to
effectively a retrial of the same issue and Campbell was
thenceforth prohibited from using the words Minton(s) and
Tile for any company or on the same line in advertising
(he still did so on his catalogues, maybe Hollins got fed
up with suing him).
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 ways been another attempt to get around the naming
issue and as it was owned by Campbell it is odd that they
used tiles from erstwhile competitior Minton Taylor and
not Mintons Ltd. Taylor's however were better quality
than Mintons Ltd and there was clearly an arrangement
between Minton Taylor and Campbell, Hollins must have
been somewhat 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 certainly
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 points. 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, 1840 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 1 June 2011
