Mintons
Mintons was a major company in Staffordshire pottery, "Europe's leading ceramic factory during the Victorian era",[1] an independent business from 1793 to 1968.
[2] As well as pottery vessels and sculptures, the firm was a leading manufacturer of tiles and other architectural ceramics, producing work for both the Houses of Parliament and United States Capitol.
[4] Early Mintons products were mostly standard domestic tableware in blue transfer-printed or painted earthenware, including the ever-popular Willow pattern.
Minton was a prime mover, and the main shareholder in the Hendra Company, formed in 1800 to exploit china clay and other minerals from Cornwall.
Named after Hendra Common, St Dennis, Cornwall, the partners included Minton, Poulson, Wedgwood, William Adams, and the owners of New Hall porcelain.
[5] Early Mintons porcelain was "decorated in the restrained Regency style",[6] much of it just with edging patterns rather than fully painted scenes, thus keeping prices within the reach of a relatively large section of the middle class.
Minton entered into partnership with Michael Hollins in 1845 and formed the tile making firm of Minton, Hollins & Company, which was at the forefront of a large newly developing market as suppliers of durable decorative finishes for walls and floors in churches, public buildings, grand palaces and simple domestic houses.
It was further developed by Minton who employed John Bell, Hiram Powers and other famous sculptors to produce figures for reproduction.
He also developed the colored lead glazes and kiln technology for Minton's highly successful lead-glazed Palissy[12] ware, later also called 'majolica'.
[13] The next twenty-five years saw Mintons develop several new specialities in design and technique, while production of established styles continued unabated.
[14] Alexandre Brongniart (1770–1847), artistic director of Sèvres had given Mintons plaster casts of some original moulds, which enabled them to make very close copies.
[17] Copies of contemporary sculptures that had been hits at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition or elsewhere were produced at a much-reduced scale in Parian.
Mintons first made a copy in 1848; by the version illustrated here, from 1849, the figure had lost the heavy chains between her hands, which were perhaps too expensive to make for a popular product.
This was very high-quality lead-glazed earthenware made from the 1520s to the 1540s in France; in 1898 the pottery was located to the village of Saint-Porchaire (nowadays a part of Bressuire, Poitou).
Arnoux mastered the technique and then taught Charles Toft, perhaps Mintons' top modeller, who produced a small number of pieces.
The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 gave Arnoux the opportunity to recruit the modeller Marc-Louis Solon who had developed the technique of pâte-sur-pâte at Sèvres and brought it with him to Minton.
There was great demand for Solon's plaques and vases, featuring maidens and cherubs, and Minton assigned him apprentices to help the firm become the unrivaled leader in this field.
Solon introduced designs influenced by the Vienna Secession art movement, founded by Gustav Klimt and others, and a range in earthenware made from about 1901 to 1916 was branded as "Secessionist Ware".
[25] The Secessionist range covered both practical and ornamental wares including cheese dishes, plates, teapots, jugs and comports, vases and large jardinières.
Early Secessionist patterns featured realistic renderings of natural motifs—flowers, birds and human figures—but under the combined influence of Solon and Wadsworth, these became increasingly exaggerated and stylised, with the characteristic convoluted plant forms and floral motifs reaching extravagant heights.
