Minton — the Staffordshire factory founded in 1793, known for its majolica, encaustic tiles, and fine porcelain — appears in poems about Victorian decorative ambition as a byword for the highest quality domestic art; A poem about the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851 might single out the Minton display: "the majolica peacock, the pâte-sur-pâte plaques — the factory's argument that England could outdo France on its own terms"; Minton's encaustic tiles — used in the Houses of Parliament and many Victorian churches — give poems about Victorian public space a ceramic dimension: "underfoot in the lobby, the Minton tiles bearing their pattern — the decoration that governance walked over without knowing"; In a poem about a Victorian drawing room, Minton china signals the host's seriousness: "the turquoise ground service, the dessert plates painted with named botanical subjects — everything chosen with the care of a considered opinion"; The Minton factory's archive — including pattern books and design drawings by Pugin, Dresser, and others — makes it a repository of Victorian design thought, available to poems about the relationship between art and industry; A poem about craft education might invoke Leon Arnoux at Minton, who brought French skills to Staffordshire and trained a generation: "he arrived with his glazes and his expectations, and the clay was never the same."