page_title: Matthew Boulton
section_title: Expansion of the business
hierarchical_section_title: Matthew Boulton / Innovator / Expansion of the business
caption_attribution_description: English: Front &amp; back of steel button, most likely made in England around 1750-1770. It has Matthew Boulton cut steels around a Josiah Wedgwood center showing a Merfamily. There are three merbabies along with the parents riding the wave of the sea. It is a little over 32 mm (1 1/4 in) in diameter. Back of the button shows rivets of the cut steels and a large heavy shank. This button was probably used on a gentleman's wool coat.
context_page_description: Matthew Boulton FRS was an English manufacturer and business partner of Scottish engineer James Watt. In the final quarter of the 18th century, the partnership installed hundreds of Boulton & Watt steam engines, which were a great advance on the state of the art, making possible the mechanisation of factories and mills. Boulton applied modern techniques to the minting of coins, striking millions of pieces for Britain and other countries, and supplying the Royal Mint with up-to-date equipment.
  Born in Birmingham, he was the son of a Birmingham manufacturer of small metal products who died when Boulton was 31. By then Boulton had managed the business for several years, and thereafter expanded it considerably, consolidating operations at the Soho Manufactory, built by him near Birmingham. At Soho, he adopted the latest techniques, branching into silver plate, ormolu and other decorative arts. He became associated with James Watt when Watt's business partner, John Roebuck, was unable to pay a debt to Boulton, who accepted Roebuck's share of Watt's patent as settlement.
context_section_description: After the death of his father in 1759, Boulton took full control of the family toymaking business.  He spent much of his time in London and elsewhere, promoting his wares.  He arranged for a friend to present a sword to Prince Edward, and the gift so interested the Prince's older brother, George, Prince of Wales, the future King George III, that he ordered one for himself.
  With capital accumulated from his two marriages and his inheritance from his father, Boulton sought a larger site to expand his business.  In 1761 he leased 13 acres (5.3 ha) at Soho, then just in Staffordshire, with a residence, Soho House, and a rolling mill.  Soho House was at first occupied by Boulton relatives, and then by his first partner, John Fothergill.  In 1766 Boulton required Fothergill to vacate Soho House, and lived there himself with his family. Both husband and wife died there, Anne Boulton of an apparent stroke in 1783 and her husband after a long illness in 1809.
  The 13 acres (5 ha) at Soho included common land that Boulton enclosed, later decrying what he saw as the "idle beggarly" condition of the people who had used it.  By 1765 his Soho Manufactory had been erected.  The warehouse, or "principal building", had a Palladian front and 19 bays for loading and unloading, and had quarters for clerks and managers on the upper storeys.  The structure was designed by local architect William Wyatt at a time when industrial buildings were commonly designed by engineers.  Other buildings contained workshops. Boulton and Fothergill invested in the most advanced metalworking equipment, and the complex was admired as a modern industrial marvel.  Although the cost of the principal building alone had been estimated at £2,000 (about £276,000 today); the final cost was five times that amount.  The partnership spent over £20,000 in building and equipping the premises.  The partners' means were not equal to the total costs, which were met only by heavy borrowing and by artful management of creditors.
  Among the products Boulton sought to make in his new facility were sterling silver plate for those able to afford it, and Sheffield plate, silver-plated copper, for those less well off.  Boulton and his father had long made small silver items, but there is no record of large items in either silver or Sheffield plate being made in Birmingham before Boulton did so.  To make items such as candlesticks more cheaply than the London competition, the firm made many items out of thin, die-stamped sections, which were shaped and joined together.  One impediment to Boulton's work was the lack of an assay office in Birmingham.  The silver toys long made by the family firm were generally too light to require assaying, but silver plate had to be sent over 70 miles (110 km) to the nearest assay office, at Chester, to be assayed and hallmarked, with the attendant risks of damage and loss.  Alternatively they could be sent to London, but this exposed them to the risk of being copied by competitors. Boulton wrote in 1771, "I am very desirous of becoming a great silversmith, yet I am determined not to take up that branch in the large way I intended, unless powers can be obtained to have a marking hall [assay office] at Birmingham."  Boulton petitioned Parliament for the establishment of an assay office in Birmingham.  Though the petition was bitterly opposed by London goldsmiths, he was successful in getting Parliament to pass an act establishing assay offices in Birmingham and Sheffield, whose silversmiths had faced similar difficulties in transporting their wares.  The silver business proved not to be profitable due to the opportunity cost of keeping a large amount of capital tied up in the inventory of silver.  The firm continued to make large quantities of Sheffield plate, but Boulton delegated responsibility for this enterprise to trusted subordinates, involving himself little in it.
  As part of Boulton's efforts to market to the wealthy, he started to sell vases decorated with ormolu, previously a French speciality.  Ormolu was milled gold (from the French or moulu) 
caption: Wedgwood button with Boulton cut steels, circa 1760 (courtesy of Northeast Regional Button Association)
exif: {}