| Description | The Minton company records and the Royal Doulton company records form part of the archive collection of Royal Doulton plc, which preserves records of more than twenty companies including such famous names as Adderley, Booth, Davenport, Paragon, Ridgway, Royal Albert, Shelley and more. The Minton Archive is the name given to the whole of this collection.
The Minton Company records and the Royal Doulton company records (these catalogue entries are currently in the process of being made available on this online catalogue- so please bear with us) are currently the only part of this collection which have been catalogued and are available for consultation. Any questions concerning access to the records of the other companies in this collection should be directed to the Archive Services Manager, Stoke-on-Trent City Archives, City Central Library, Bethesda Street, Hanley, Stoke on Trent, ST1 3RS.
The Minton Company records:
During 2015 initial work on the Minton company records took place, this involved placing the Minton paper catalogue compiled between 1971 and 1998 by Alyn Giles Jones, Archivist, University College of North Wales, Bangor on this database, this basic task was completed in December 2015.
The catalogue describes in excess of 5,000 items. The first 2,575 catalogue entries in the paper catalogue had been arranged into a structure as reflected in this electronic catalogue. Please be aware that later items had generally not been arranged into a structure, whilst efforts have been made to fit some later items into the original structure and required alterations have been made accordingly, that a great deal of further work (including development of the structure and arranging into date order etc.) is required to fully arrange this collection catalogue. The items in Section 6 (Miscellaneous) remain to be fitted into the structure at a later date. Please also be aware that the latest catalogue entry is 5,470, however there are gaps in the later part of the paper list, 161 catalogue entries have not been discovered and so are not present in this catalogue.
The Royal Doulton Company records (these catalogue entries are currently in the process of being made available on this online catalogue- so please bear with us):
Since April 2017 work has been ongoing sorting, ordering, arranging into a structure and cataloguing the records of the Royal Doulton Company, no previous catalogue existed. The catalogue currently describes in excess of 3,000 items, enhancements continue to be made to the catalogue.
This collection consists of the records of Royal Doulton Plc and companies acquired by the Company which include (as described in Bonham's April 2007 catalogue):
Minton, Royal Doulton, Adderley, 'Bell China' (part of Shore and Coggins), Booths, Brownfield, Colclough, Davenport (Hicks and Meigh), Goss, Paladin, Paragon, Regent, Ridgway, Roslyn, Royal Albert, Royal Vale, Shelley, Swinnerton, Vulcan. At this point in time records for 'Bell China' (part of Shore and Coggins), Brownfield, Roslyn, Royal Vale, Swinnerton and Vulcan have not been located. It is not currently clear whether these records are included in this collection.
The Royal Doulton Company have operated factories in multiple locations during its existence, but the majority of this archive are the records of the Burslem factory, although there are records of the business established in Lambeth, London (which are still being catalogued) and representations of most of the other factories within the collection, including the records of the businesses which became part of Royal Doulton from the 1960s onwards, there are also records for some of these businesses prior to amalgamation, but we plan to catalogue those at a later date.
The catalogue is intended to be a reflection of the functions of the company, dictated by the records which have survived within the archive. Within that function the catalogue is arranged by individual factory or subsidiary company where appropriate, i.e. the Doulton, and later Royal Doulton Company Headquarters for many years was in Lambeth, London and from the mid 20th century it transferred to Stoke-on-Trent, so there are many documents within the archive which involve multiple factories/subsidiary companies.
This Collection consists of the following Accessions, some of which are not yet catalogued (as indicated below):
Accession Number: SD 1135 (catalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1370 (uncatalogued - consists of the records of Arthur G Ellis, Director of Production of Allied English, 20th cent)
Accession Number: SD 1374 (part) (uncatalogued - consists of an album of photographs of Beswick pieces, titled Mr G Lawton, Design Conference, April 1984)
Accession Number: SD 1705 (partially catalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1809 (catalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1848 (catalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1856 (catalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1864 (uncatalogued)
Accession Number: SD 1874 (uncatalogued- catalogued but not live on Gateway)
Any questions concerning uncatalogued Accessions should be directed to the Archive Services Manager, Stoke-on-Trent City Archives, City Central Library, Bethesda Street, Hanley, Stoke on Trent, ST 1 3RS. |