George Henry Grundy was born 19 November 1862 into a relatively wealthy Derby family. His father, John Grundy, a provisions dealer, was later to become a senior Alderman of the town.
George Henry was brought up and educated in Derby. Even though the family was well off, he was made to help his father in the family business most evenings and weekends. Helping his father run the business at 27, Duffield Road, Derby gave him a good grounding for commercial enterprise and business life.

At the age of 28, Grundy left the running of the provisions dealership to his father and set about making a living for himself. He had become interested in photography and in printing. By 1891 Grundy was established as a PROCESS-PRINTER. This particular method is now commonly known as lithographic printing.

In 1893 he teamed up with an old school friend, George Arthur Lingard at 56, Stockbrook Road, Derby. Lingard was already established as a collotype printer. Their partnership produced a successful business in printing and photo-engraving.
They worked from the Grundy family home for over a year producing prints and photo-engraved plates. Grundy and Lingard enjoyed a sound business, selling their goods and services through various magazines and local outlets.

Grundy's mother helped finance a prestigious business outlet for her son, when in January 1895 she secured a lease on No.2 The Strand Arcade, Derby. Grundy and Lingard used the shop in this newly opened arcade for over two years. Initially they sold only prints and printing services.
At about the time they took on the shop, Grundy began to experiment with the application of photographic images on to pottery.

Other firms had successfully fired a photographic image onto ceramics. Due to a high failure rate and the long, skilled man-hours needed to produce each article, this type of decoration was never a commercial proposition. Amongst the British firms to apply photographs to ceramics were Maw & Co., Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, and Mintons. Prior to Grundys' patented method all the firms used either 'DUSTING ON', 'SUBSTITUTION' or 'AUTOTYPE' methods, each an expensive and laborious process resulting in highly priced finished items.

22nd April 1873 saw patent No.1449 granted to Jonathan Edwin Billups and Edwin Palmer Lee of Cardiff for "Improvements in Producing permanent colored and other photographic pictures, delineations, or devices on porcelain and other fictile ware."

Also in 1873 but on 12th June, patent No.2079 was granted to Leon Freret of Princes Street, Barbican, London from a communication to him from Paul Marney Godard of 62, Rue Triquetonne, Paris. These letters patent announced "An improved method of producing and re-producing drawings, devices, and designs on porcelain, delph-ware and such like materials."

The methods described in both the patents are very vague and contain very little detail of exactly how they achieved full continuous tone shading which would survive a kiln firing. It is thus a strong possibility that their respective 'patent' methods were little more than brave 'tongue in cheek' attempts to protect processes which were far from successful in their results.

When Grundy and Lingard were established in the Strand Arcade, they began experimenting with ceramics and photographic decoration. The summer of 1895 saw the first tiles decorated with photographic images. These were tentatively offered for sale in their shop. They sold well, and gradually the quality and variety of tiles offered increased.

Grundy and Lingard applied for letters patent, to protect their photo-decorating methods on 24 February 1896. By 20th February the following year they were accepted. They 'declared' that the nature of their 'invention' was for "The decoration of tiles, and other flat surfaced articles of ceramic ware, and consists in a direct mode of printing by the photo-collographic process without the use of transfers."