My name is Lewis Edwards, and in 2025, as part of my MA course at the University of Birmingham, I undertook a placement at Winterbourne with a focus on the GKN archive. One object sparked off some fascinating research!

On the first floor of Winterbourne House, a spacious room houses the Guest, Keen and Nettlefold exhibition. The Nettlefold business was metallurgical manufacturing, primarily of screws, and Nettlefolds Ltd became part of a merged company in 1900. In this blog, I want to discuss a particular object in the current GKN exhibition at Winterbourne, which I stumbled upon in the archive.

This finely bound Victorian-period book gives an insight into how GKN would come to be formed, and also into a key point of change in British industrial history.

The binding displays the typical ornamental exuberance one expects from the Victorians. Lovely, gilded text, in Gothic style font, reads ‘Jas. Miller and Co.’ —for James Miller and Company— Stobcross Works, Coatbridge, near Glasgow. My principal question was how did an industrial catalogue from Glasgow, Scotland, end up in Winterbourne’s GKN collection in Birmingham, England?

James Miller and Co. was established in 1840, incorporated in 1895. In Glaswegian post office directories, the company is listed as ‘Jas. Miller & Co., Ltd., Stobcross, Rivet, Bolt and Nut Works, Coatbridge, and George Miller & Sons’.  On the frontispiece of the catalogue, is a handwritten inscription ‘John W. McCulloch, 1899’, which dates this magnificent book to the dawn of the twentieth century. 

James Miller & Co Ltd was renamed the ‘Rivet, Bolt and Nut Co’ in 1900.  Later, it was acquired by Acton Bolt in 1960, which itself was taken over by GKN in 1962. What had once been James Miller’s Stobcross works was assigned to GKN’s ‘Rivet, Bolt and Nut Division’ in 1966, though still based in Coatbridge, ‘near Glasgow’. Through this brief, though complex, history of corporate expansion and acquisition, we can see how the catalogue of a Scottish metallurgical company from the 1890s found its way into the GKN archive at Winterbourne.

But what of the catalogue as an artistic object? Why was a catalogue of metal components bound in such an eye-catching way? In essence, it was to ‘sell steel’; to demonstrate a level of prestige and quality which James Miller and Co wished to embody as a company. To produce the catalogue, they commissioned a local Glasgow printer, William Lyon.

Lyon’s career began as a stationer.  He allegedly invented the folding, or hidden, message Christmas card.  Similarly to the Millers, Lyon was able to incorporate his business during the early twentieth century (1910) into ‘Lyon Ltd’. As the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, there was an industrial climate of mutual support amongst expanding Scottish –and specifically Glaswegian– industries. And, ultimately, Lyon’s catalogue for Miller and Co was made, perhaps unconsciously, in celebration of this.

Lyon’s design also moves in a more aesthetic and even philosophical direction; promoting the factory itself as an architecturally ideal structure, whilst being simultaneously a practical modern site. The catalogue’s design features neo-classical art forms and motifs. On the front cover, a view of Stobcross Works is set in a navy convex oval relief reminiscent of cameo sculpture of ancient Greece and Rome. Decorative laurels too surround this central cameo, which evokes the grandeur of the Roman empire.

This situates Stobcross works as an essential component in the much larger machine of Britain’s empire. When Miller’s catalogue was published in 1899, the British were only fourteen years away from reaching the pinnacle of their territorial expansion as an empire, in 1913. By that time, as in previous decades, the railways served as vital supply routes across the empire. Discernible in the cameo of the Works are small steam trains shunting out from the works, cargo wagons in tow.

Inside, the catalogue is no less artistically driven. A wonderful etched illustration displays minimal wisps of smoke rising from the Stobcross chimneys. The architecture too blends ideally with a romantic vision of the Scottish countryside. The winding canal is overshadowed by graceful railway viaducts, which themselves are affixed to large, rolling hills populated with luscious trees. It is an ideal depiction of how British industrialisation, and industriousness, was thought to enhance the very landscape of Britain itself through the union of human invention and nature.

Industrial sites, such as the factory, were primarily functional, but they were constructed in such a way that they served as exemplars of Western civilisation more broadly, and symbols of British imperial wealth specifically. The Miller catalogue, by extension, emphasises their company wealth as part of this broader machine of western capital. Having a private on-site railway only adds to this effect. Again, the railway itself is a functional system, but the way that it is showcased in the catalogue makes it a symbol of wealth, success, and industrial capability.

In addition to the etched illustration, there are also photographic ones. To photograph the Stobcross site was to present James Miller as a company up to speed with technological innovations. The photographer focused on the Stobcross railway and its fleet of top-of-the-line tank engines, a particular favourite being one steam engine fitted with a crane; clearly a source of pride for Miller and Co.

The technological efficiency of the works, then, is packaged with visually exuberant style. Yet the catalogue is functional. On the last page is a delicate, fold-out chart for measuring out screw sizes and angles, printed on paper so thin it feels more like baking paper. It is beautifully coloured, with gothic type titles. Potential buyers could get exact figures and measurements of the products they were after, increasing the chance of a sale.

Miller’s catalogue provides an insight into a Scottish business, before it became centralised into an English-owned business. It offers a window into a Glaswegian industrial network. It shows a unique intersection of industry, technology, advertising and artistic practice. This beautiful catalogue presented an impression of reliability and quality for those looking through its pages.

You can see the James Miller catalogue on display in the GKN exhibition on the first floor.