Elegant Findings Antiques Has A Large Selection Of Antique Minton China And Dinnerware. We look for the finest quality antique Minton china like dinnerware, service plates, decorative cabinet plates, pate sur pate Minton china pieces and Minton majolica. Many of the antique Minton china has raised gilding, pate sur pate and beautiful artistry. We are always amazed at the fine workmanship on antique Minton porcelain.
The Minton China factory was started by Thomas Minton in 1793. In the early 1800s, they produced encaustic tiles. Encaustic tiles were special because they used clays of different colors on the same tile to make a design.These tiles were sought after and used on the floors in castles, churches and the Capital building.
Around 1840s, the Minton factory started to make white figures out of white unglazed porcelain. These were called parian figures. They were a beautiful addition to homes as they resembled marble statuary. They were sometimes famous figures or mythological figures like you can see in the picture above of Prometheus. At the same time, Copeland, another English ceramic company was making parian figures also. You can see some of the Copeland on .Antique English Porcelain,p2. Antique English Porcelain,p2.
During the mid nineteenth century, the Minton company hired Leon Arnoux to be their art director. During his directorship, they developed tin glazed bright colored ceramics called majolica and also Palissy ware. You can see some majolica in the pictures above of the jardiniere and the oyster plates. Minton was so successful in making majolica, that they won many honors at different exhibitions.
In the second half of the 19th century, Minton wanted to look like the French Sevres company. They copied the Sevres colors as well as their forms and shapes, They copied the blue Celeste color as well as the pompadour pink color. If you look at the pictures above, you will see a Minton blue Celeste urn in the Sevres style with a putti.
Arnaux was also responsible for hiring Marc Louis Solon to Minton. Solon had perfected the difficult and labor intensive art of making pate sur pate at Sevres porcelain in France. This is also called paste on paste. This process can take up to 50 days to complete. They put one layer of white slip and let it dry. It can take up to 50 applications of the white slip to build up the hair strands, the muscles, finger nails and facial figures as well as other details in the decoration. If one mistake was made in the process, all the previous work would be destroyed. Solon had apprentices at Minton to make the pate sur pate like Albion Birks. If you look at the pictures above, you will see how beautiful pate sur pate is. Arnaux also hired the wonderful sculptor Ernest Carrier Belleuse from Sevres to Minton as well as fabulous artists like Antoine Boullimier. You can see some of Boullimier’s fabulous artwork in the green plate in the picture above.
In the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, Minton made decorative vases as well as dinnerware.They had many talented artists and each artist specialized in painting different subjects like fruits, flowers, seascapes, landscapes and birds. Since the acid gold decoration was developed in 1863, other artists specialized in the raised gilding decorations on the dinnerware. In 1968, Minton merged with Royal Doulton.
Please visit our Spode page, Royal Worcester, Royal Doulton, Royal Crown Derby or our English porcelain pages to see a larger variety of English porcelain. You can also visit us at our store in Boston to see these antiques in person.
