Richard Prosser (1804-1854) English patentee of the dust-pressed process, was an engineer and inventor based in Birmingham England who collaborated with the eminent potter Herbert Minton in the patent’s application to buttons and tiles. Much of the background to the history of his patent involves the attempts by his brother Thomas Prosser (who emigrated to the States in 1838) to secure a patent in the USA, which he did but only for the manufacture of china buttons. Thomas subsequently prospered in the USA as a steel importer in New York acquiring a large tract of land in Brooklyn where he and his family lived on Stuyvesant Avenue.
Prosser the Engineer: A Forgotten Birmingham Genius is a biography recently published in the UK by Susan Darby (Prosser is the great great grandfather of Darby’s husband). She was greatly assisted in her research by Hans van Lemmen, tile historian and President of the Tiles & Architectural Ceramics Society in England.
The biography also covers the background to Prosser’s nail and metal tube machinery inventions both of which involved Thomas and American participants.
Prosser the Engineer: A Forgotten Birmingham Genius
by Susan Darby 2026
Available for pre-order on Amazon.