Antique Minton Plates between £0 and £0
Plates made by the Staffordshire firm Minton, mostly 19th-century porcelain, painted and gilded for the dessert table or the display cabinet rather than everyday use.
What Are Minton Plates?
Minton was founded at Stoke-upon-Trent in the late 18th century and grew into one of the largest English ceramic makers of the 19th. Dessert plates came from large services; cabinet plates were made from the outset as display pieces, painted and gilded to be looked at.
The plate you are most likely to meet is a single 19th-century porcelain one, described as dessert or cabinet, with hand-painted decoration. Porcelain appears in fifteen of thirty-three titles here, cabinet in ten and dessert in nine. Flowers, landscapes, birds and game recur, usually over a named coloured ground: cobalt, apple green, pink, celeste bleu.
Smaller groups sit alongside. Aesthetic-period plates account for roughly a sixth, including two Japanese-style dessert plates of 1875 with a gilt sun. Named shapes turn up as Newcastle-shape basketweave. Earthenware is thin on the ground: one drab ware waterlily set, one creamware platter-and-plates group, one set of majolica oyster plates. Pâte-sur-pâte appears twice, both dated 1890.
Dating is loose in the listings themselves. "19th Century" is used ten times and "Victorian" nine, against eight listings with a clean year, and those years run 1860 to 1890. Titles often reach further and more precisely, back to a Regency apple green dessert plate given as c.1825-1830.
Where The Range Splits
Technique does most of the sorting. The two pâte-sur-pâte listings sit at the very top, with the pair of Pearl Jewelled landscape plates well above the middle. Plain hand-painted flower and swag dessert plates gather at the bottom of the range. Porcelain with a coloured ground and gilding outranks moulded bodies, and the basketweave Newcastle-shape plates sit in the lower middle.
Number matters as much as painting. A set of twelve zodiac plates is the largest group to come to market on Sellingantiques, followed by a set of eight game plates and two sets of six; pairs and sets cluster in the upper half, single plates at the bottom. Several listings are numbered as fragments of a dispersed group, "1 of 4" or "no 3 of 4", so plates from one original set reach the market separately.
Subject sorts the porcelain further. Landscapes, armorials, game birds and figural work sit above flowers and swags, and the three titles that name the individual hand behind the painting all sit above the median.
Retail Price Guide 2026
Typical UK retail prices for minton plates between £0 and £0, calculated from the Sellingantiques database of over a million retail prices indexed since 2003. This retail price guide relies exclusively on Sellingantiques data; no external sources or auction records are used, so the figures do not describe the wider market.
19th Century is the period label used most on Sellingantiques for Minton plates, with Victorian next and the 1890s third.
The Antique Minton Plates between £0 and £0 Glossary
- Cabinet plate
- A plate made for display rather than use, painted and gilt; the description on ten of thirty-three titles here.
- Dessert plate
- A plate from a dessert service, the commonest functional description in this archive, on nine titles.
- Ground
- The overall background colour behind the decoration. Cobalt, apple green, pink and celeste bleu all appear, celeste bleu being a pale turquoise-blue.
- Pâte-sur-pâte
- Decoration built up in layers of liquid clay slip to give a low relief, usually white on a coloured ground. Two listings, both 1890.
- Jewelled
- Small drops of enamel applied over gilding to imitate gemstones, as on the two Pearl Jewelled landscape plates.
- Newcastle shape
- A named Minton plate shape, appearing here with basketweave moulding across three listings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Minton plates porcelain or earthenware?
Porcelain dominates. It is named in fifteen of the thirty-three titles in this archive, and it accounts for the bulk of the plates described as dessert or cabinet.
Earthenware appears three times: a drab ware set of six in the Waterlily pattern, a creamware platter-and-plates group, and a set of six majolica oyster plates in white and pink.
What decoration turns up most often?
Hand-painting over a coloured ground, with gilding. Flowers and floral swags recur throughout, alongside landscapes, birds, pheasants and game subjects.
Armorials appear as one set of about 1860. Specimen painting turns up as three plates with single named rose studies. The oddest subject in the sample is a plate of about 1880 described as Masonic, religious and biblical, with no counterpart elsewhere.
How old are these plates?
Almost everything is 19th century. Where listings carry a clean year, those years run 1860 to 1890.
Titles reach earlier than the period field does. The oldest decoration claimed is a Regency apple green and floral dessert plate at c.1825-1830, followed by cabinet plates at c.1835-40 and a drab ware set at 1835-1840.
Do they come as pairs and sets?
Plural titles account for eleven of the thirty-three, so singles are the more usual offering. Pairs and sets tend to sit in the upper half of the range.
The largest group to pass through is a set of twelve zodiac plates. After that come a set of eight Game Series plates and two sets of six.
What is pâte-sur-pâte worth looking out for?
It is the technique at the very top of this range. Layers of liquid clay slip are built up to give a low relief, usually white against a coloured ground.
It appears twice in the whole archive, once as a single plate and once as a pair, both dated 1890.
How often do Minton plates come up here?
Around five a year are listed on Sellingantiques, and ten different dealers have offered them. That is a wide spread of sellers over a small number of pieces.
One listing is not a plate at all: a Newcastle-shape pierced low-footed comport with rose decoration, the only hollow-ware form in the sample.