In February 1883 the International Tile Company was organized in New York State, and by late 1883 was producing English-type transfer tiles and molded relief and encaustic tiles at 92 Third Street, Brooklyn--near the Gowanus Canal, where raw materials could easily be off-loaded and tiles could be shipped. According to decorative arts historian Susan Padwee, “...the International Tile Company...was an anomoly. I.T.C. was the only company organised and financed in England." I.T.C. was organized by sons of the Irish and English nobility, and was the first U.S. company to produce English-style transfer tiles for U.S. consumption. "According to Fred H. Wilde, an English ceramist who worked for I.T.C. for about a year, ‘all presses, dies, and special machinery were brought from England. Many of the workers (all department heads) were brought over, including a printer and engraver’ [needed for transfer tile production]." (Susan Ingham Padwee, “The International Tile Company” in Glazed Expressions, No. 38, Spring 1999, p. 5, http://tileresearcharticles.omeka.net/items/show/20--just scroll down the page and click on the pdf file) One of I.T.C.'s English artists, for instance, was Samuel Jenks whom the Minton Archives list as born about 1856. Jenks was a student at the Newcastle School of Art in the 1860s. He was also an apprentice painter/gilder at the Minton China Works from 1870 to 1877. Jenks left Brooklyn NY and appeared in the Fitzgerald's Trenton NJ Directory 1887-1889. From New Jersey he went to Ohio where he died at age 58. (Email from Carol Jenks Apperson to Susan Padwee, 2 Aug 2010, "Re: Samuel Jenks")
By 1886 the English owners sold the I.T.C. to the owners of the Arbuckle Coffee Company. Although the tile company remained in buisness until about 1891, when its plant was taken over by the New York Vitrified Tile Company, it is possible that I.T.C. did not produce many art tiles after the British left. (Susan Ingham Padwee, p. 6) Thus, the years of art tile production at the International Tile Company were few, indeed. Only between 125 and 150 distinct tile designs are known for this company; no exterior tile installations are known, and few interior art tile installations--such as fireplace surrounds--are known to still exist.
