Matthew Boulton and the Art of Making Money

This publication accompanies an exhibition held at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts to mark the bicentenary of Matthew Boulton’s death (1728-1809). Boulton was an internationally significant industrialist whose introduction of innovative minting practices helped accelerate the growth of modern cash economies world-wide.

At the Soho Manufactory, just outside Birmingham, Boulton established an international team of engineers and artists who designed, produced, and distributed nearly 600 million coins between 1787 and 1809. This book explores how and why the Soho Mint made high quality images available to such vast national and international audiences and, in the process, briefly rendered Birmingham ‘the art capital of the world’.

Boulton was a prominent intellectual, a valued civic leader, and played a key role in developing the steam engines that powered industrialisation. But, his proudest achievement was the way in which the art of making money was mastered at the Soho Mint.