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2005
The Tim Wedgwood Show - checking Minton tiles in Washington | |
|  | | Tim in front of the Capitol building |
| | BBC Radio Stoke's Tim Wedgwood Show travelled to Washington DC to see a huge restoration job - as original 1800s Minton tiles (from the Potteries) are being repaired and replaced in the city's Capitol Building...
While there, the team took photos, did interviews - and wrote a diary of their experiences. |
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| | "Are you really in America or are you the other side of Cheadle?"
Some listeners to Tim Wedgwood's Show couldn't believe he'd made it all the way across the Atlantic to Washington in order to broadcast live from the American capital.
Tim and his producer, Lisa Pettifer, spent a week there experiencing a taste of American life, as well celebrating the achivevements of a small company from Stoke on Trent, which is re-tiling the floor in the Capitol Building.
Maw & Company from Sneyd Hill in Burslem, Stoke on Trent, are replacing the original Minton tiles which were laid in the mid 1850s.
They're one of the few companies in the world which still make encaustic hand-made tiles - the kind of thing many of you might still have on your hall floor at home.
The tiles will follow the original patterns exactly, and the man whose job it is to make sure they match up is the local agent for Maw & Company in America, Paul McGinty.
Paul meets Tim
A former Scouser, Paul met Tim and Lisa in the corridors of power... wearing his Everton FC tie!
'I love these tiles', he told us, 'but a lot of the visitors coming through here don't notice them. They're either following a tour guide or looking at the decorated ceilings.
'The people who really notice them are the police and the security staff who, when I'm working, come over to me and tell me how much they like them.'
It's been Paul's job to photograph each tile, send the pictures back to Burslem and let the computer at Maw & Co re-create the pattern for the staff to make into a new tile.
It's a job that's going to take many years.
A test panel was put down in the late 80s and still looks brand new - but only just over half of the eight sets of new tiles have been made and it takes two and half years to make each set.
Maw & Co
This is a very prestigious job for the company, which is also making flooring for Washington's National Portrait Gallery, for two churches in the Washington suburb of Georgetown, and for our Houses of Parliament in London.
However, Paul McGinty is staying tight lipped about the job's costs.
'I can't tell you how much the job is worth. I'm not allowed to do that.
All I can say is that it's million of dollars!'
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Stoke-on-Trent
Staffordshire
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tel: (+44) 01782 221281
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