Glass Society Glass Matters_No.9, Oct 2020

THE MAGAZINE OF THE GL:ASS-, SOCIETY

”

October 2020
Issue No. 9

ISSN2516-1555

Tim Mills
4

lan
Philips

Bill Millar
14

Editor
16

Peter Henderson
17

Katharine Coleman
21

Elisa Sani
26

James Measell
30

Sally Haden
31

Graham
Slater

Chairmens’ message

Victorian Twists

Malaga Glass Museum

Engraved Love Token

In Memoriam, John Scott

National Gallery of

Victoria, Melbourne

Wheel Engraving

Venetian Hanging Lamp

Book Review

The DYNASTY BUILDER

Manchester, Glass & Nelson

Tantalising Tantalus

News, Events & Apologies
Cordials & Ratafias,Triton & Broadfield,
Bottle Seal,WH C mog

GLASS

SOCIETY

Contents

ISSN 2516-1555

Issue 9, October 2020
Published by the Glass Society,

©Contributors and The Glass Society

Editor:
Brian J Clarke

[email protected]

Design & layout:
Emma Nelly Morgan

[email protected]

Printed by:
Warners Midlands plc

www.warners.co.uk

Next copy date:
Last Week November 2020

E-mail news & events to [email protected]

“Neither the Glass Circle’s nor the Glass Association’s committee
members bear any responsibility for the views expressed in this

publication, which are those of the contributor in each case.

though neither the Editor nor the committees are responsible for

inadvertent infringements. All photographs are copyright the author
unless otherwise credited.”

GLASS SOCIETY COMMITTEE MEMBERS:

The Glass Association is registered as
Charity No.326602

The Glass Society is registered as
Charity No.1185397

Website:
www.glassassociation.orguk

This is currently the website of The Glass Society

Honorary Presidents:

Charles Hajdamach;
[email protected]

Simon Cottle;
shcottlegsky.com

Honorary Life President:
Dwight Lanmon•
[email protected]

Joint Chairmen:
David Willars;
[email protected]

Susan Newell;
chairmaneglasscirde.org

Vice-Chairman:
Paul Bishop:
[email protected]

Membership Secretary & Treasurer:
Maurice Wimpory;
[email protected]

Meetings Organiser:

Anne Lutyens-Stobbs;
[email protected]

Publications Editor:
Brian Clarke;
[email protected]

Committee Members:

Nigel Benson; Ian Goldsborough; Laurence Maxfield
Jim Peake; Ann Towse; Bob Wilcock

GLASS MATTERS EDITORIAL SUB-COMMITEE:
Nigel Benson; Susan Newell;

Simon Wain-Hobson; Bob Wilcock

FRONT COVER:
The central section of the ‘Glass wall of

water’, in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne,

Australia (see
p.17)

BACK COVER:
Glass sculpture by engraver Anne Wenzel

from Germany. Gassi gehen, 2019. Shown at Gravur on

Tour (see p.21)
Editorial

W
ith more people around the world in lockdown’ or

`shielding’, extra time has opened up for each and

every one, to explore their lives further while ‘at home’.

Attending to that ‘pile of correspondence’, for which there
just ‘hasn’t been time’. To view more closely the collections

that have built up over the years – the glass displayed on

your shelves and in your cabinets, giving you pleasure every
time you pass by. Then the glass that you’d tucked away in

a dark corner and thought – ‘why did I ever buy that’. Many
enthusiastic glass collectors have found that time comes
to change the focus of their collecting habits, requiring
room to be made to show the new glass. Groups of

collected pieces become wrapped up and packed into large

containers, labelled, then stored away in the loft or the

garage. Have you forgotten about some of those precious
items that you carefully put away and perhaps forgot to

catalogue? It’s time to find them, photograph them and

send them in to
Glass Matters,
with a description of your

favourite piece of glass.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

CHAIRMEN’S MESSAGE

Chairmen
‘s Message

Sue Newell, Joint Chairman
of The Glass Society

ow that it’s autumn and

we’re all getting used to the

new ‘normal’, we hope that

all your lives are getting easier as you
settle into a routine. Like us, you
may be missing those spontaneous

visits to your local museums and
exhibitions to see gorgeous glass and

other artworks, but at least many

institutions are now open and there
are many more offerings online.
We reluctantly took the decision

to move everything we do online
for the remainder of 2020 and it

is likely to remain the case until

Easter 2021. We hope you agree

that there has been a plus side in

terms of our online Newsletters

and talks via Zoom. These have
not only brought members

throughout Britain closer, but they

have opened up our activities to a

global audience. By allowing mem-
bers of other decorative arts soci-
eties to join these presentations

we have effectively publicised what

we do to the arts community more
broadly, and we have been pleased

at the response. In particular,
the success of the talks on Zoom

means that these will remain a per-

manent offering in the future. In
terms of the Newsletter that you

recently received via email, a big

`thank you’ to Peter Cookson who
compiled and edited it. It is full of
fascinating snippets of informa-
tion and if you are interested in

acting as guest editor for a future
edition, please get in touch. Our
thanks as ever to Brian for his edi-

torship of this magazine, which
continues to be a rich source of
enjoyment three times a year.

Before you ask, we are commit-
ted for the foreseeable future to maintaining
Glass Matters
in its

hard copy form, mindful that a

small proportion of our members
do not have the internet, and oth-
ers just prefer a physical magazine.
We are very appreciative when

speakers at our talks are able to

write about their research, or an
aspect of it for
Glass Matters,
and

this issue has two such offerings,
Elisa Sani on early Venetian glass

lamps and Katharine Coleman on

glass wheel engraving. In these
times when travel is a vexed issue,

it is marvellous to hear about col-
lections in distant locations, and

again there are two articles here to
whet our appetite for the day when

glass tours are possible again;
Ian Phillips on the Malaga Glass

Museum and Peter Henderson on

glass in the National Gallery of

Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).
Bill Millar whose great photos are
used for our Newsletter quizzes has

written on diamond point engrav-
ing, and in another follow up from

our first Newsletter, Sally Haden

has written on William Nelson’s

Glassworks in Manchester. A pre-

vious contributor to The Journal
of the Glass Association, Tim Mills,
discusses 19th century twist stems.
Every autumn we hold our

Annual General Meeting, this
David Willars, Joint Chairman

of The Glass Society

year, for the first time, an annual
meeting will take place online on
Zoom, on Tuesday 20th October

at 6.00pm. We will be sending out
the Agenda, Accounts and Minutes
of last year’s AGM meeting nearer

the time and if you have any points

you wish to raise, do contact us.
Even better, join us for the meet-

ing and become directly involved
in shaping the future of your

Society. Moreover, rather than lim-
it the meeting on 20th October to
formalities, we are opening it up

by inviting members to spend five

minutes talking about their favou-
rite piece of glass in the form of

a ‘show and tell’ — to present your
glass, please contact the chairmen.
Lastly, we would mention again

that this is your Society and its evo-

lution has to be driven by the mem-
bership – we are always looking for

greater involvement from you,
our members. If you would like to
contribute, whether on the admin-

istrative side, by editing a future

Newsletter, contributing articles
or a short piece, please contact us.

Susan Newell and David Willars

Joint Chairmen, The Glass Society

Glass Matters Issue no.8 October 2020

VICTORIAN TWISTS

COLOUR
and
OPAQUE

Twist Wine Glasses

made around the time of the Great

Exhibition of 1851

Tim Mills

s glass collectors most of us are
quite familiar with the opaque
.
st stemmed wine glasses of

the eighteenth century. These glass-

es appeared around the middle of the

century and remained in production
to perhaps 1780. Most are white

twists, though occasionally coloured

examples are found and these

command relatively high prices.
Less well known are the opaque

twist wines made in England around

the middle of the nineteenth centu-

Fig. 1

Chtonpagne glass with engraved coupe bowl.
Looped red white and blue twisted ribbon stem.

George Bacchus and Sons. C1850.©Victoria and

Albert Museum London. Ht13 cm
ry. It seems that these later glasses

appeared sometime in the 1840s and

were produced for a relatively short
period up to around 1860. The Vic-

torian glasses are considerably dif-
ferent from the earlier wares. Not

surprisingly they reflect the overall
designs of other wine glasses pro-

duced at the time, so they are short-

er, have proportionally bigger bowls,

sometimes with slice cut stems,

and are much more likely to have
coloured twists. Counterintuitively,
the eighteenth-century examples are

easier to find than the later glasses.
Examining the literature reveals

a limited amount of information on
the type. The best known glass is an
example held by the V&A that was

shown at the Great Exhibition in

1851 by George Bacchus and Sons
of Birmingham. It is shown in
Fig.1.

The unusual looped stem contains a
red, white and blue twisted ribbon.

The bowl is engraved with a repeat-
ing leaf design. The looped form of

the stem reflects the ornate stems

made in the Facon de Venise styles

of the seventeenth century. This

nod to the style widely accepted

as being from Murano at the time

Fig. 2

Wineglass with engraved shallow cup bowl. Double

series opaque twist (DSOT) stem with a pair of blue
twisted threads within a 5-Alwhite spiral band.
George Bacchus and Sons. C1850. Ht.10.9 cm

4
Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

VICTORIAN TWISTS

Fig. 3

Wine glass with engraved shallow cup bowl. DSOT

with a pair of red twisted threads within a 7-ply

white spiral band. George Bacchus and Sons. C1850.

Ht. 8.1 cm

hints at the motive behind these new
designs. Rather than a conscious

reproduction of the native wares of

the eighteenth century these new
twisted stems were an attempt to

capture the influence of the glass
made centuries before. This move-

ment fitted the increasing influence
of the Mediaeval in Victorian design

and as such was a reaction against
the tired forms of the heavily cut

glass tradition. In this it foreshad-

ows the later designs of the arts and
crafts movement and particular-

ly those of James Powell and Sons.
The glasses shown in
Figs.2

and

3 both have engraving that exactly
matches that of the Bacchus glass.

Furthermore, the distinctive mere-

ses at the top and bottom of the

stems stylistically resemble those
of the V&A example. The glass in

Fig.4,
although not engraved, also

has a bowl and stem form which

suggests a Bacchus attribution.
Evidence that the Victorian
twisted stems started in the 1840s

comes from Hugh Wakefield when

he notes
‘A threaded Venetian stem

was noticed among the Richardson
contributions to the Society of

Arts exhibition in 1849’ 1 (P.34)

A glass held by the Dudley
Museums Service has a link
to the Richardson’s out-
put of the time. This glass,

shown in
Fig.5,

has a slice

cut stem with a white dou-

ble series twist, the bowl
enamelled with fruiting

vine. It was acquired by the
museum from the bequest

made by the Richardson

family. As this bequest con-

tained glass from other fac-

tories as well as that made

by their own it is not cer-
tain that this is a Richard-

son’s glass. However, it was
noted as such at the time of

RIGHT Fig. 5

Wine glass with enamelled shallow

cup bowl. DSOT with two spiral white

tapes within a multi-spiral band. The
stem slice cut into the base of the bowl.
Possibly W.H.B. &J. Richardson. C1850.

Courtesy of Dudley Museum Services
ABOVE Fig. 4

Wine glass with shallow cup bowl. Single series

opaque twist (SSOT) with 3-ply red and white
spiral band. Probably George Bacchus and Sons.

C1850. Ht.10.6 cm

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

VICTORIAN TWISTS

FAR LEFT Fig. 6
Wine glass with shallow

cup bowl DSOT with two

spiml ink blue dreads
within 6-p4zwhite spiral

band. The stem dire cut into

the bowl Possibly W.H.B.

&J. Richanison. C1850.
Ht11.5an

LEFT Fig. 7

Wineglass with shallow

cup bowl DSOT with two
spiral ink blue threads
within 6-ply white spiral

band. The stem slice cut into
the bowl. Possibly W.H.B.

&J. Ridzarclson. C1850.
Ht11.5an

acquisition and dated 1845.
Fig.6

shows a glass from the author’s col-
lection which is almost identical but
has a blue and white twist and does

not have enamelling to the bowl.
Hajdamach
2 (Plate 76)

provides fur-

ther evidence of Richardson’s pro-

duction of twist glasses, illustrating

a goblet with a red, white and blue
twist stem and an engraved bowl

with a pronounced lip. He tells us
that this pattern appears in the

Richardson’s design books for the

1840s.
Fig.7

shows a glass with a

similarly shaped bowl engraved

with fruiting vine. The stem con-
tains a single series twist of two

pink multispiral columns. This glass

probably dates to the mid-1840s.
Hajdamach illustrates two further

examples of twist stems. One is a

white-cased goblet with cut-through
panel decoration, made in the late

1840s
2 (Colour plate 5);

this is attributed

as probably by Bacchus. The second
example is a pair of finely cut gob-

lets en suite with a jug
2 (Colour Plate 6);

these are firmly attributed to Bac-

chus and date to around 1850.
The glass shown in
Fig.8
is differ-

ent from the others shown in this
article in that it has distinctive pro-

portions – a small bowl, tall stem and

proportionately wide foot. In this it

is closer to the eighteenth-century

glasses than most. Gabriel
3 (Plate 63)
,

illustrates an almost identical glass,

save for the type of engraving. This
glass is engraved with a crown and
monogram relating to Prince Albert;

it was presented to the Prince on

the opening of the Royal Albert

Dock in Liverpool in 1846 –
Gabri-

el says London which is presumably

an error as the London dock opened
in 1880, long after Albert had died.
So far, I have only discussed Bac-

chus and Richardson’s as manufac-
turers of these glasses; however, it

is clear that several other factories

also made similar products. The

V&A holds a fine example made by

Apsley Pellatt; this is shown in
Fig.9.

Wakefield also illustrates a Pellatt
glass with a coloured twist stem
1

(Plate B,b)
this is in black and white so

the colours are uncertain — made by

Apsley Pellatt; it was acquired by the
Conservatoire National des Arts et
Metiers in Paris in1851. The glass

shown in
Fig.10

shares certain char-

acteristics with both these Pellatt
glasses. In particular the apparent
quality of the metal, the lack of a

merese at the base of the stem and

Fig. 8

Wine glass with round funnel bowl engraved with
fruiting vine. DSOT with four spiral tapes within

4-ply spiral band. Slice cut stem into the bowl. Star

cut foot Cl845. Ht.14.1 cm

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

Fig. 9

Wine glass with rounded conical bowl finely

engraved with acorns, oak leave, roses and fruit.
The stem with a pair of white twisted multispiral

ribbons. Aspley Pellatt C1850. ©Victoria and

Albert Museum London. Ht14 cm

the style of the stem shown in the

V&A glass. This is a loose attribution
but perhaps this is a Pellatt example.

Wakefield goes on to mention two

other companies associated with
making twist stems at the time. Rice

Harris is noted for producing these

glasses from at least 1849 and
‘at the

1851 exhibition elaborately convolut-
ed stems were a feature of the display
of Lloyd and Summer field
1 (p34) No

illustrations of glasses from these
factories are shown by Wakefield.

Fig.11
shows a very fine ruby

champagne glass. The bowl is
engraved with a band of fruiting

vines suspended by two eagles in
flight. The stem is slice cut with

a delicate twist made up of a sin-

gle series multispiral of white
and red. The quality of this glass

hints at the considerable price it
must have commanded when new.
A further champagne glass is

shown in
Fig.12,

this has a single

ribbon twist of white, edged in red

and blue. The coupe bowl is engraved

with geometric patterns and stylised
flowers.
Fig.13
shows another glass

with a ribbon stem. This twist is

white, edged on both sides with
red. The bowl is cut and engraved

with fruiting vine. It is interesting
Fig. 10

Wine glass with rounded funnel bowl. Single series

opaque twist stem with twisted multi-spiral band.
The stem slice cut into the bowl. Possibly Aspley

Pellatt C1850. Ht13.4 cm

to note that this glass, along with

those shown in
Figs.1, 2,

and
4,
has

a left-handed twist. As recent dis-
cussions in this publication have

shown, eighteenth century twists
are invariably right-handed. That
is to say, that if observed from the
top, the twist spirals downwards

in a clockwise direction. Although
most nineteenth-century examples

appear to follow this convention,
clearly some do not. Furthermore,

the glasses shown in
Figs.2
and 3

are identical in form save for the
colour of the twist. This suggests

that left and right-handed twists

were probably made alongside
each other and may simply have

Fig. 11

Champagne glass with ruby coupe bowl finely

engraved with fruiting vine garland suspended
by eagles. The slice cut stem with a red and white

multispiral opaque twist. C1850. Ht.11.4 cm
VICTORIAN TWISTS

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

VICTORIAN TWISTS

Fig. 12

Champagne glass with coupe bowl engraved with

geometric and floral design. The stem with single
white twisted ribbon edged in red and blue. C1850.
Ht.12 cm

been the preference of the differ-
ent glass workers. I have also noted

that the left-handed twists seem to

appear more on glasses with a Bac-
chus attribution, though the small

sample size might be misleading.
There is little evidence to show

that these opaque twist stem types

remained in production for very

long. Perhaps they fell out of fashion,
though other – more accurate Vene-

tian influenced glass – was made at

least to the end of the century. Some

twists were made later by Whitefri-

ars but they did not share the native
influence of the mid-century exam-
ples. Perhaps they were prohibitively

expensive to make compared with
plainer examples. Certainly, this

and later periods saw the develop-
ment of very colourful wine glass-

es. As can be seen, the twist stems

are very slender and the twists very
delicate. On a table these decora-

tive features may have been lost and

therefore not worth the extra cost.
It is also worth commenting

that these stems emerged exactly

at the time when some factories

were making ornate paperweights
and it is easy to see the cross fer-

tilisation of ideas between the two
forms of wares. Certainly, George

Bacchus and Sons have a consider-

able reputation for the manufac-

ture of paperweights containing

coloured canes. Whitefriars also
made weights from around 1850.
Collecting these glasses can

be fun as they are uncommon

and not particularly expensive.
Patience is required. The author’s
collection contains a dozen glass-
es acquired over as many years.

Nevertheless, this adds to the
pleasure of every new find, espe-

cially if made for just the price

of a reasonable bottle of wine!
Tim Mills, based in Olney in Buck-

inghamshire, has been a specialist
dealer in Eighteenth and Nineteenth
Fig. 13

Wine glass with round funnel bowl with basal

cutting and engraved with a band of leaves. The stem

with a single twisted ribbon in white edged with red.
C1850. Ht.12.6 cm

Century English glass for nearly thir-
ty years. He has regularly exhibited

at the National and Cambridge Glass

Fairs and written for The Glass Cone

and The Journal of The Glass Associ-

ation. His specialist interests include

glass jugs and engraved glass rummers.

Tim can be contacted at

www.antiqueglass.org.uk

N.B. All glasses are of lead metal and all feet have
polished-out pontils. Unless stated otherwise all

examples are in the author’s collection.

REFERENCES

1.
Wakefield, H. (1961) Nineteenth

Century British Glass. Faber and
Faber. London.

2.
Hajdamach, C.R. (1991) British

Glass 1800-1914. Antique

Collector’s Club. Woodbridge.

3.
Gabriel, R. (1974) English

Drinking Glasses. Charles Letts

and Co. Ltd. London.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

A VISION COMES TO FRUITION

MUSEUM
of Glass
and
CRYSTAL –

Malaga

Ian Philips

FOUNDING THE MUSEUM

S
ome twenty years ago, three

friends, one Spanish, two Brit-

ish, decided to create a museum

with a central theme of glass, as one
of them — myself — had a growing
collection of Georgian wine glasses,

while the other two had furnishings

and family portraits to provide a con-
text. But where should that museum

be? After several months searching,
our Spanish colleague saw a rather
tumbledown eighteenth-century

house — a Posada — just outside the
Moorish walls of the city of Malaga

in southern Spain and took the deci-

sion that that was where it should
be. It took some little persuasion on

his part to convince us — his two col-

leagues — until we were all in agree-
ment. A further consideration was

that the city, which had suffered bad-

ly in the Spanish civil war, might value

a cultural project such as our museum.
People ask, “Why Malaga?” and that

is our answer. Thus, the house, typi-
cally Mediterranean with its series of

patios, and in use as a lodging house,

was purchased and all its contents
removed. Our first problem then

arose — the local authorities were

appalled by our decision and insisted
that we must demolish the old house

and build afresh, and the architects,
whom we were obliged to employ,

agreed. We searched anew and even-
tually found an architect who would
permit us to do as we wished, but

largely because of the authorities’ hos-
tility, there were continuous delays.
The house, on a slope with the sta-

bles underground at the back, and in

a ruinous state, was centred around

a patio that was usually waterlogged
or frankly flooded. All this had to be
removed as we expected. However, a

major delay resulted from the prepa-
ration by our neighbours of the next-

door site for development. They’d
dug deep foundations and our side

wall collapsed
(Fig.1).
Devastation!

But they paid for our reconstruction.
Despite all of the setbacks, the

restoration was completed, but it

took seven and a half years, involv-

ing much totally unexpected expense.

All of the work, including provision
of living accommodation on the

top floor, the placing of a glass roof

over the first patio, and the inclu-
Fig. 1

The original posada, after the collapse of the side

wall in 2006

sion of the originally separate nine-
teenth-century house next door, was
completed by local tradesmen with

little technical supervision. There

was one exception: the facade of the
house had been whitewashed, and

when our Spanish colleague looked
closely at the wall underneath a small

area of flaking paint, he was con-
vinced that there might well be paint-

ed decoration under the whitewash.

Patient work by specialists revealed
the facade as we now see it
(Fig.2),

with facsimiles of stone and brick,
the latter with representations of

Asia, Africa, and America, but with a

blank space where Europe might have
been expected. We now have an obli-

gation to conserve that facade, proud-
ly facing the eighteenth-century

Fig. 2

The posada re-created in 2009. The current facade

of The Museum of Glass and Crystal – Malaga

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020
9

church of St Philip Neri.

In 2009 we started to move in,

with lorryloads of furniture, a selec-
tion of inherited Persian and Spanish

carpets, family portraits and busts,

dating from the 17th to the 20th cen-
turies coming from various parts of

Europe. Placing all this in the house

was largely the task of our Spanish
colleague, who understood how to

appropriately design the interior.

Then, just over ten years ago, the May-
or of Malaga officially inaugurated us.
Our approach to acquiring glass

has changed over the years.
I bought my first pieces from

Father O’Brian of Mission

Antiques, Dublin — a pair of
Georgian crystal ale glasses
which were on display in the

shop window; my education
in glass started as I crossed the
threshold and the priest greet-

ed me. Later, living in London,

I used to visit the glass shops

and stalls in Portobello Road —

a great deal was learned from
the owners. With the market

originally open on alternate

Saturdays, this coincided with
the only time I had “off” from

my busy medical job. I then dis-
covered out-of-town antique

centres and glass dealers.
At that time, I had only myself to

please, and I handled the items
inter

alia
to ensure good condition and on

the alert for copies and forgeries. I

also learned about trade catalogues,
trade-marks and registration marks
on press-moulded glass, and about

information that was scratched on
the base of many other types of glass.
Nowadays there are the three of us to

satisfy and virtually all our buying is

via the Internet, with occasional piec-

es from the biannual National Glass

Fair in Birmingham, UK. The sheer
volume of glass available for sale, is of

course staggering, but handling it is

usually impossible. We have learned

the questions
to

ask! Quite a lot of the

items reach us by post or via one of the

carriers. Breakage is a decided rarity.

DISPLAYING THE COLLECTIONS

Our next task was to bring the collec-
tions of glass to Malaga and display

them. Our builders created spaces

in the walls that could be shelved.

Originally all of these were intend-
ed to house our library, but

we appropriated some space

in them for glass, notably our

ancient pieces
(Fig.3).
The bot-

tom two shelves of the book-

case in the far end of the room

in the photograph, contain our

small collections of Hellenic,
Roman, and Islamic glass.

Our Spanish colleague bril-

liantly showed his flair for
design with the idea of con-

verting surplus doorways

into display cabinets, these
were made by the local car-

penter (one is seen in
Fig.4).

Fig. 5

A 17th century laburnum wood cabinet
on turned legs

A VISION COMES TO FRUITION

Fig. 3

Fig.
4

Gallery One in the museum

The doorway reconstructed as a display cabinet

1
0

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

They are particularly useful in help-

ing to bring light to the rooms and
contribute to the continuity of dis-

plays from one room to another.
The laburnum wood cabinet

(Fig.S)
usefully displays our collec-

tion of 16th and 17th century Euro-
pean glass. It has a pair of containers
for the home celebration of mass for

people who cannot go to church.

It also contains four pieces
of Murano glass. We have a
magnificent eighteenth-cen-

tury veneered Dutch cabinet

(Fig.6),
housing my entire col-

lection of British lead crystal

Georgian drinking glasses. In
addition, we were fortunate
in having several handsome
nineteenth-century mahog-

any wardrobes, which could
be easily modified to make
excellent display cabinets.

This unit
(Fig.7),

contains a

fine if limited collection of

Stourbridge Cameo and other
turn-of-the-century glass.
Fig.8
shows a late nine-

teenth-centuryunit by Gillows
containing glasses of the same peri-

od. To our surprise, the modern
display cabinets fitted in well. We

use the pair to house our growing
collection of modern studio glass
from different parts of the world.

Our walls carry European stained

glass of the late nineteenth and the
first half of the twentieth century,
mostly from
churches converted
for alternative use or sadly

demolished, many displayed in

light boxes made by our carpen-
ter, but some acting as windows

that admit light
(Figs.9

and 1
0).

Other pieces are displayed on

table tops, appropriate glass cab-
inets and on rare and unusual fur-

niture.
Fig.11

depicts a mahogany

table made by Wilkinson of London

in the early nineteenth cen-
tury; over the table is a fine

chandelier by the Spanish

glassworks at La Granja.

At the far end of a drawing

room in
Fig.12

is an intrigu-

ing integrated sofa and dis-
play unit designed by Gaudi,

carrying glasses of the same

period. While
Fig.13

is a

modern unit holding twen-

tieth-century glass.
Fig.14

presents a table setting in a

dining room with chandeliers

and a stained-glass wall panel.

Fig,
8

Mixed display cases. A 19th century

cabinet alongside modern glass units

A VISION COMES TO FRUITION

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

An 18th century Dutch cabinet, displaying 18th century British glass

A mahogany wardrobe converted into a display cabinet

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

BELOW Fig. 9

Melpomene is the Greek Muse of Tragedy. The window (1.8m x
1.25m), was designed by Arthur Lewis Moore in the 1890s. It came
from a house in Wimbledon, London, since demolished, that once

belonged to the dancer Isadora Duncan — her death, by being strangled
when her scarf became caught in the wheels of her car, was a Tragedy.

A VISION COMES TO FRUITION

Our neighbouring glass art-

ist came in and built up a large
free-standing glass wall unit, now

filled with our large collection of

1930s to 1970s Whitefriars glass.
This style of display is our only large
example comparable to that of a
conventional museum. We are now

extending the ground floor of the

museum where external windows

will display glass, probably from our
considerable collections of pressed

and Carnival glass. It became clear
that the same spaces, with excellent
LEFT Fig. 10

The Good Samaritan by Clayton and
Bell 1890. 1.95 x 48cm

acoustics, plus a garden, would
be useful for formal and infor-

mal events such as concerts of
classical and popular music, din-

ners, lectures and wedding cele-

brations, all providing essential
financial support for the museum.
I have also photographed the

entire collection held in our display

cabinets, my “studio” being the
essence of simplicity, consisting

of a camera on a tripod and rolls

of black and white paper, set up on

the terrace outside my apartment

on the upper floor above the muse-

um. Lighting is by daylight, my
favourite time for taking photo-

graphs being in the early morning
as the sun rises above the horizon.

VISITING THE MUSEUM
We accompany visitors to the
museum in tours of one to twenty

people, as we can’t take the risk

of letting people wander around

without a guide. The tour lasts

about an hour, in a language
that we share, albeit sometimes

imperfectly — we offer Spanish

(and Bable and Basque: rarely
necessary but fun), French, Ital-

ian, English, German, and Russian

(the last usually at weekends only).

All visitors are welcome, including

LEFT Fig. 11
Chandelier
from La Granja

glassworks
in the small
dining-room

RIGHT Fig. 12

Seat and

display unit

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

A VISION COMES TO FRUITION

Fig.
13

Fig.14

Modern glass display cabinet with contemporary glass

Dining table setting around the seven-metre-long mahogany dining table

children. Additionally, we offer a
private dinner party around our

seven-metre-long mahogany dining

table
(Fig.14),
at which our best por-

celain, glass and silver are brought

out, and top caterers are brought in.
I like to begin my tours with the

oldest glass — Hellenic, Roman and
Islamic –
(Fig.3),
followed by 16th

and 17th century glass from Bar-
celona, Venice, Holland and Bohe-

mia
(Fig.S).
In the next room is the

eighteenth-century Dutch cabinet

(Fig.6),
containing my original collec-

tion of British lead-crystal drinking

glasses, displaying the various stem
types – baluster, air twist, opaque

twist and facet cut. Close by, in a con-

verted French nineteenth – century
wardrobe, we display La Granja

gilded glass. In the same small room

(Fig.4)
we have a converted doorway

cabinet with early nineteenth- century
cut and/or enamelled glass. Our

small dining room
(Fig.11),
with its

La Granja chandelier, has a fine set
of 1820s Wedgwood blue-and-white

pottery. In the converted “doorway”

and free-standing cabinet on the bal-
cony surrounding the central patio, is

our main collection of pressed glass.
Also on the balcony is early White-

friars glass, with pieces designed

by Philip Webb for William Morris,

and Harry Powell. The Music Room,

with its Salviati chandelier, fine 19th
century Errard piano, and imposing
family portraits, has a converted

wardrobe
(Fig.
7) containing mainly

Stourbridge cameo glass. In the first

of the last two drawing rooms are
our small collections of Emil Galle

and Rene Lalique glass, given by a

friend, and cut glass on open display.

In the final drawing room overlook-
ing the church of St Felipe Neri, there

is a fine chandelier by La Granja,

and a Scandinavian collection with
pieces by some of the most talented

glass makers of the twentieth cen-
tury – including Alvar Aalto, Franck,

Wirkkala, Sarpaneva, and Lutkin. As
we leave the drawing rooms we have

Caithness glass, and at the top of the
stairs, Carnival glass (currently in

an inappropriate wardrobe) largely
from the United States – featuring

Fenton, Imperial, Northwood and

Millersburg — and Czech glass. Once
downstairs, we are back to the large

glass wall unit built by our local glass

restorers. In glass cases are examples
of decorative glass from firms in the

British Isles – Davidson, Jobling,

Chance, Dartington, the Harris fam-
ily, Nazeing, Stuart and Caithness.
Our admission charges are mod-

est and sadly, in these days, our
earnings are much lower than costs.

When the time is opportune, we
hope to establish a charity to which
we can give our collection. In the
meantime, we continue to enhance

it and to develop the property. Using

the opportunity of our enforced

Covid-19 closure, a project is being

started to use a plot of land adjoining
ours to provide a better entrance to
the museum and better office facili-

ties. As with many museums, insur-

ance and security are a concern;

we reply to questions by referring
to prayer, sturdy largely window-

less outer walls, iron bars and our
Boxer dogs – the first is Chaty and

we sometimes feel that our second,

Carlos Enrique, now nearing his ninth

birthday, is the boss of the museum.
Ian Phillips, and his two colleagues

will enjoy welcoming you. Following

Covid-19, re-opening is anticipated
on October 1st.
Do

view the website:

www.museovidrioycristalmalaga.com

Glass Matters Issue no,9 October 2020

ENGRAVED LOVE TOKEN

A VICTORIAN
love token

BillMillar

I
t was fascinating to read the arti-

cle ‘GEORGIAN
love tokens’
by Neil

Chaney
(Glass Matters 7, February

2020).
How marvellous to identify the

owners and their biography more than

two centuries after the event. The arti-

de brought to mind a small wine glass
in my collection, probably made as a

valentine, but certainly a love token.

The original owner has yet to be iden-
tified but it is just possible a reader

maybe able to help complete the story.
The glass is quite small (11.5cm

high) of three-part construction, a

bucket bowl, the stem with a bladed
knop and a broken, unpolished pontil

mark to the foot. It could possibly have

BELOW Fig. 1

Small wine with diamond point

engraved armorial device.

BELOW (RIGHT) Fig. 2
Royal coat of arms seen from the reverse.
been made in the Georgian period but

engraved later as it is dated 1864. So,

well and truly a Victorian love token

with links to the Georgian period.
The bowl of the glass is diamond

point engraved with four distinct

objects: the royal coat of arms, a sec-

ond armorial device, a paddle steam-
er and a love poem. The upper side of

the foot is also engraved with a frieze
of flowers.
Fig.1
shows the glass with

a view of the second armorial device.

The decorative value of the engrav-
ing is high, especially as the space

available is limited, so the engraver
dearly had a high level of artistic abil-

ity. However, when seen through a

lens there is some splintering which
might suggest a capable artist work-

ing with a less usual medium. The

positioning of some of the engrav-

ing indicates the layout evolved rath-
er than being carefully preplanned:

another hint of an amateur hand?
The royal coat of arms,
Fig.2,
is

engraved in great detail over a very

small area (4cm high x 5.5cm wide).

It is a very complicated item to draw,

far more to engrave, so it says much

about the artistic skill of the engraver.

The reverse of the glass, shown

in
Fig.3,

displays a paddle steamer

(2.5cm high x 5.5cm wide). The steam-

er depicted is similar to the Cunard

Britannia-class ships which worked
the Atlantic crossing from 1840. The

introduction of the propeller in the

early 1850s made paddles obsolete

and by 1864 the Cunard paddle steam-

ers were obsolete and long since sold

off. The ship on the glass would have

been a memory of days past rather
than a contemporary vessel. Howev-

er, it might have been a reference to

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

LEFT Fig. 3

Reverse of the glass showing paddle steamer and ten lines of script.

ABOVE Fig 4.
Engraved frieze of flowers on upper side of foot

a ship with a special meaning to the
giver and or receiver of the glass. As

a depiction of Britannia or one of her
sisters it is accurately drawn with
three masts and a tall funnel spewing

forth smoke afore the main mast. The
masts each carry a single horizontal

spar for square-rigged sails, where-
as the originals carried two horizon-
tal spars on each mast. The steamer

was drawn too close to the rim for the
masts to be tall enough to carry two

spars so this may be a forced error.

Beneath the ocean supporting the

paddle steamer there are ten lines

of script (3cm high). Given the aver-

age of 3mm per line the writing is
tiny and some of the words are diffi-
cult to read, but the only one that is
really problematic is what appears

to be “Thurso” (a town in the very
North of Scotland) in the final line.

Art thou not dear unto my heart

Ah search that heart and see

And from my bosom tear the part
That beats not true to thee,

Yes thou art dear unto my heart
More dear than tongue can tell

And if I am guilty of a fault
Tis loving thee too well
Forget me not

Thurso 1864

A search of the internet produced

a very close variant of this poem
printed in the Morning Herald on

15th March 1811, so despite a gap of
over half a century this is at heart a

Georgian love token. The verse, less
the final line ‘Forget me not’, was

also included in
‘The Sentimental

Valentine Writer’
published in 1850.

If you try writing the above verse

within 3cm using a sharp pencil on
paper, you’ll begin to appreciate just

how demanding a task it was to engrave

the verse on the curved side of a glass.
Set between the royal arms and the

paddle steamer is the second armori-

al device (4cm high); see
Fig.1 .

The

crest comprises three ostrich feathers
emerging from a ducal crown; beneath

is an armorial badge of a domed, straw

beehive or skep. The belt and buckle
surrounding the skep is indicative
of a Scottish armorial, which would
fit with the location of Thurso as the

place where the glass was engraved or

presented. On either side of the badge

there are two letters: “A” and “L”. The

same letters are paired and appear
to the top left of the badge. To date I

have been unable to identify the fam-
ily associated with this armorial. Cur-
rent records no longer include the

badge and crest of lapsed or obsolete
titles, so further research is needed.
Fig.4
shows the top of the foot,

engraved with a frieze of twelve

simple ‘flower and leaf’ motifs.
There can be no doubt, given the

Georgian love poem, that this glass
was decorated as a love token or a

valentine. The other elements are
undoubtedly significant dues to the
giver or his/her valentine. The bee-

hive armorial with ostrich feather
crest, initials and date must surely

lead to an individual within a titled

family. The paddle steamer might add

to the story. A unique little glass with

a story to tell, but perhaps not yet.
While I have yet to establish the

identity of either the donor or recip-

ient of the glass, I have been more

successful in identifying the proba-
ble engraver. Charles Hajdamach in

British Glass 1800 — 1914 explains
on page 155:
“One group of rummers

and tumblers carry naïve diamond
point decoration of hunting and shoot-

ing scenes, railway engines and coats
of arms intermixed with doggerel verse.

Many are signed ‘Sutherland, London’
and have the common characteristic of
the royal coat ofarms. They range in date
from 1847 to 1863.”
While the date

on my glass is just a year later than

those seen by Charles it may be safe
to assume that it too was engraved

by Sutherland. I have already identi-

fied a number of Sutherland’s glass-

es in the collections of the V&A and

Corning Museum of Glass. Further

research might justify a separate arti-

cle on Sutherland engraved glasses.
If you can help me solve the mys-

tery of the Victorian lovers I will be

delighted to hear from you at billmil-

[email protected]. Even if the original
owners remain undiscovered the glass

will always be a symbol of love. I just
hope their story had a happy ending.

ENGRAVED LOVE TOKEN

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

IN MEMORIAM

Remembering
John Scott

I
4
ast January, John passed away

peacefully in his sleep after a

brief stay in a Kensington care

home. He’d been a member of the

Glass Cirde (GC) for many years (our
records show that he had been a mem-

ber since 1961, and possibly before).
He was invariably present for the

GC meetings held at the Artworkers

Guild in London and sitting alongside
David Watts, would hold the speakers
to account and then add additional,

informative comments of his own.
Members recall that he did much

for the GC and in 2014 he donated
many Whitefriars glasses, which were

then auctioned, the proceeds adding

to the GC funds. He could be contro-

versial, challenging and intellectually
demanding, but he was full of char-

acter, caring, and well respected and

admired for the depth of knowledge
he held on his many areas of collecting.
John was born in 1935, in

Birkenhead – hence his eventual

choice of ‘The Birkenhead Collection’

as the credit line, when making muse-
um and exhibition loans. After attend-

ing Radley College boarding school,

he was awarded a National Service
commission in the Gurkha Regiment

in Malaysia. During his studies in law

at Corpus Christi College, Oxford,

and as a keen rugby player, he was
capped for England v. France in

1958, then continued to play for the
Harlequins. He would ‘keep fit’ play-

ing squash and as a sailor, joined the

America’s Cup challenge team aboard

Anthony Boyden’s
Sovereign
in 1964.

John only worked briefly as a solici-

tor, then followed a career in property,

alongside his passion for collecting.
In 1961, John was lent a sizeable

amount of money by an uncle, to buy

his first home. To celebrate, he bought

some glass rummers – over the years
he learnt that they were all differ-

ent and not all old! Then, collecting

`being in his blood’, over the years and
with the help of leading dealers, nota-

bly Michael Whiteway, John amassed
a rich, wide-ranging, eye-catching and

encompassing collection concentrat-

ing on British Design from the period

1850 to 1930. His taste was catholic,
but he favoured the outstanding
designs of A.W.N. Pugin, Christopher
Dresser, William de Morgan, the

Martin Brothers, the Whitefriars

Glass Company and Hector Guimard.

The collections ranged over early 20th
century glass, ceramics, furniture and

sculpture, both English and European.

John’s company bought property in
Westbourne Grove, where he moved

Fig 1

A Claret Jug by Archibald Knox
into an extensive apartment, sharing

his life there with Takako Shimizu, a

talented sculpture artist using mosa-

ics; married in 2013 she survives him.
Deteriorating health encouraged

John to seek new homes for his
treasures and in 2014 he instigated

eight selling exhibitions at the Fine

Art Society, then in New Bond Street.
He was proud of these catalogues

and they remain his legacy. For glass
collectors, two of the John Scott

Collection sale catalogues stand out:
they are Volume Four,
James Powell

& Sons White friars Glass 1860 -1960,
and Volume Seven,
Art Nouveau

Continental Design & Sculpture,
where

his Christopher Dresser claret jugs

were shown as well as the jug in
Fig.
/,

by Archibald Knox: John had cho-

sen this piece for an article on his

glass collections in The Glass Cone,
issue 108 and in his inimitable style,
described it as
‘a Claret Jug of sturdy

and robust design, rather English in
its formality and slightly aloof from
the more racy whiplash designs of Art

Nouveau on the Continent. A mas-

terpiece by Archibald Knox, perhaps

Britain’s greatest silver designer of this
flamboyant epoch. Green glass mount-

ed in silver from the Cymric range for

Liberty & Co., stamped L&Co for 1901.’
John Scott

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

LEFT Fig. 2

The
Leonard French
cut-glass

ceiling in the Great Hall
BELOW Fig. 3

Italian. An early 16th century venetian glass footed bowl with

gilt applied decoration. 15.4an h x 26.3cm. Purchased, 1871

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA

GLASS at the NATIONAL GALLERY of VICTORIA:

a brief introduction

Peter Henderson
Fig. 1

Water runs over the glass wail

at the entrance to the NGV

M
elbourne, the capital of the

Australian state of Victoria
is a vibrant city of around

five million. Famous among other
things for its wine and food, its lane-

ways and shopping, it is arguably the
cultural capital of Australia – from

the esoteric Percy Grainger Museum

at the University of Melbourne to
the magnificent National Gallery of

Victoria. Adjacent to Melbourne’s
business district and opposite
Flinders Street station is Federation

Square’, a major cultural hub with

institutions like the Koori Heritage

Trust, which focuses on the expe-
rience and culture of Victoria’s

indigenous people; the Australian

Centre for the Moving Image and
the Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia

which houses an important collec-

tion of Australian art. Crossing

the Yarra River and a short walk

along St Kilda Road is the National
Gallery of Victoria International.
To anyone interested in glass,

the large glass wall of water that all
visitors pass to enter the museum

is a portent of the significant col-

lection which the NGV holds
(Fig.1).

More dramatic still is the massive
cut-glass ceiling in the NGV’s great

hall by the Australian artist Leonard

French
2
(Fig.2).
It towers nearly four-

teen metres above the ground and

is just over 60m in length by 15m
wide, making it one of the largest
cut-glass installations in the world.
The NGV started life in 1861 as an

adjunct to the state’s public library
(another very worthwhile place to

visit when in Melbourne) and from
its inception it has had a commit-
ment to the decorative arts; for exam-
ple, in 1871 it acquired 102 pieces

of Venetian glass
(Fig.3).

Recently

these pieces were part of a major

exhibition, ‘Liquid Light’,
3

featuring

the gallery’s Venetian glass holdings.
For the NGV as a whole and the dec-
orative arts in particular, the role of
philanthropy has been very signif-
icant.
4
Chief among benefactors to

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA

Fig. 4

A Newcastle, English wine glass c.1760, Wheel-

engraved decoration attributed to Jacob Sang.
19.7cm h x 8.4cm.
Felton Bequest, 1949
Fig. 6

English wine glass c.1760, bowl decoration

in enamel on an enamel-twist stem. 14.9cm

h x 7.6 an. William
and Margaret Morgan

Endowment, 1973.
The portrait is of Prince

Charles Edward Stuart the Young Pretender”
Fig. 5

An English Amen glass c.1743-1750, air-twist

stem, diamond-point engraving on DT bowl
attributed to Robert Strange.
17.3cm h x 7.6 x 7.4cm. Felton Bequest 1960

the
NGV

was the industrial

chemist Alfred Felton whose gift

meant that at the start of the twen-

tieth century the
NGV
was wealthier

than Britain’s National Gallery and

Tate combined. Currently the NGV’s

works acquired through the Felton
Bequest are valued at over two bil-

lion dollars.
5

In 1949 the Felton

Bequest provided the nucleus for
the NGV’s British and Irish glass
collection when 102 pieces were

acquired
(Fig.4),
including Jacobite
glasses. Since then the bequest has

been used for many other glass
purchases. In 1960 this included

one of the NGV’s two Amen glass-
es
(Fig.5).

Poynter notes how in

June 1965 the Felton Bequest gave
the NGV’s Honorary Consultant
for glass, Rex Ebbott, “£1000 to

spend on glass in London and

£400 more when he asked for it”.
6

The second significant bequest

regarding glass, has been the

William and Margaret Morgan
Endowment which was originally

formed to purchase the G. Gordon

Russell collection which came to

the NGV in two tranches in 1968

and 1973.
7
This collection, much

of which had been bought through

the London dealer Howard Phillips,
contained a significant number of

Jacobite pieces
8

, some extremely

rare, such as the enamel portrait

glass in
Fig.6.

The Morgan fami-

ly has continued to support the
NGV not least in helping to digi-

tise many of the glasses in the
collection which allows for any-

body with an internet connection
to view the gallery’s holdings.
9

Jacobite glass has held a cer-

tain attraction for many collectors,

but the NGV’s holdings of British

glass go far beyond the Jacobite.

There are very interesting early

pieces of English glass, several

by Ravenscroft — a bowl is shown
in
Fig.

7; some wonderful baluster

glasses, including one from media
magnate, Rupert Murdoch’s father,

Fig.
7

English. A glass bowl by George Ravenscroft

c. 1677, applied decoration.
6.0an h x 17.6an.
William and Margaret

Morgan Endowment, 1973

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA

BELOW Fig. 8

An English baluster wine glass c. 1710.
18.6cm h x 8.8cm. Purchased, 1953

Sir Keith Murdoch
(Fig.8) –
I

believe this glass came from his col-

lection following its dispersal after

his death in 1953; then light baluster

glass; commemorative glass; opaque

glass; Beilby glass — an unusual

example is seen in
Fig.9,
and down

the centuries to modern British

glass. In short, the NGV’s hold-
ings of British glass are world class.
Of special note with British glass

was the involvement of Rex Ebbott,

who in 1956 became the gallery’s

honorary curator of glass during

the directorship of Daryl Lindsay.
1

°
Ebbott is said to have had a long

correspondence, starting in the

1930s, with E. Barrington Haynes
of Alfred Churchill, and was a friend

and correspondent of the London
dealer Howard Phillips. Much of

the glass in the collection came via

these London dealers, presumably

at the direction of Ebbott, who

had also been elected a member
of the Glass Circle in 1959. Ebbott

was also involved in the estab-
lishment of another significant
collection of glass at Melbourne

University, the Ernst Matthaei
LEFT Fig. 9

An English wine glass c1760, with enamel-twist

stem. Enamel decoration on bowl attributed to

William Beilby. 14.8an h x 6.7an.
William and

Margaret Morgan Endowment, 1976

Memorial Collection of Early Glass.
While this article has mainly

focused on British glass it is import-

ant to note the richness of the NGV’s
entire glass holdings, which include

ancient glass, Persian glass, German

and Bohemian glass, Netherlandish

glass, Spanish glass, Chinese glass

and nineteenth and twentieth cen-
tury glass. A favourite are the two
Baccarat candelabrum, designed in

1903, manufactured in 1911, which
adorn the gallery’s impressive
European paintings gallery
(Fig.10).

The collection is aesthetically and
intellectually outstandingn
(Fig.11).

POSTSCRIPT

After discussions with Glass
Matters’ editor Brian Clarke, I had

hoped that this article could have
been a more substantial look at the

NGV’s glass collection and might
have included information on Rex
Ebbott and his correspondence

with Phillips and Haynes which, if

it comes to light, could be of con-

siderable interest to collectors of
glass. However, like everywhere
else, the coronavirus pandemic has

played havoc with any plans I may

have had. As I write, Melbourne is

in lockdown, the NGV is closed and
the border between Victoria and
New South Wales, where I live, is

also closed. Research is limited to
the internet and other materials

that I already have. At the least, I
hope that this article alerts people

who did not already know, of this
major antipodean collection of glass,

which has a virtual reality for any-
body with an internet connection.

Dr Peter Henderson is a historian

and collector of 18th century glass. In
the 1980s, having just read and been

intrigued by historian E.P. Thompson’s

Fig. 10

One of the Baccarat candelahnon

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA

Fig. 11

A
display cabinet of some of the glass at the NGV

“The Making of the English Working
Class”, which looked at, among other
things, the lot of glassmakers, he dis-

cussed old glass with a knowledgeable
friend — this stimulated his interest

and he started collecting. He would
like to live in Melbourne, Victoria,
but instead lives in Wingello, New

South Wales, birthplace of Australian
cricketing legend Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly.

In January, the disastrous fires in

Australia threatened his home, hav-
ing reached and destroyed one of his
boundary fences — he told us that one

of the first things he packed and sent

to safety was his collection of glass!
He’s used his time through

Covid-19 lockdown to involve
himself further in his glass col-

lection and has written this over-
view on the glass collections of

the National Gallery of Victoria.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Amanda Dunsmore,

senior curator, international dec-

orative arts and antiquities at the
NGV for her assistance with this
article. More widely, my thanks to
Mr Ron Tauss at Leslie Antiques in

New York, whose friendship,

connoisseurship and extraordi-
nary knowledge of glass has been

inspirational.
IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Figs. 1, 2, 10 and 11 – The Author

All remaining photos are with
thanks to the National Gallery of

Victoria, Melbourne; the glasses
shown are part of their permanent

collection.

REFERENCES

1.
Before venturing over to Federa-

tion Square a visit to one of Mel-

bourne’s most famous watering

hotels, Young & Jackson is highly
recommended. The famous nude

painting of Chloe by the French

artist Jules Lefebvre is in the bis-

tro upstairs.

2.
https://www.smh.com.au/

entertainment/art-and-design/
is-this-melbournes-favourite-ceil-

ing-50-years-on-were-still-looking-
up-at-ngv-20180813-h13vu3.html

3.
Liquid Light. 500 Years of Vene-

tian Glass, https://www.ngv.vic.

gov.au/exhibition/liquid-light/

4.
For an overview of the develop-

ment of the NGV’s decorative

arts collection
see

Terence Lane,

‘The development of the collec-
tions of decorative arts in the

National Gallery of Victoria’, at

https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/

the-development-of-the-collec-

tions-of-decorative-arts-in-the-na-

tional-gallery-of-victoria/

5.
For succinct overviews of the

Felton Bequest see, Fund-

raising and Philanthropy at
https://www.fpmagazine.

com.au/a-philanthropic-mas-

terpiece-alfred-felton-2-bil-

lion-art-donation-357786/ and
Ursula Hoff, The Felton Bequest,

NGV, Melbourne, 1983. The major

study remains John Poynter, Mr

Felton’s Bequests, Miegunyah
Press, Melbourne, 2003. Both

Hoff and Poynter are mainly con-

cerned with the processes whereby

the bequest was used to acquire

major art works and the acquisi-

tion of glass is barely mentioned

by Poynter.

6.
Poynter, p. 525.

7.
Matthew Martin, Kings Over the

Water: Jacobite glass in the Nation-
al Gallery of Victoria, at https://

www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/ldngs-

over-the-water-jacobite-glass-in-
the-national-gallery-of-victoria/

8.
For an excellent view of some of

these pieces see, https://www.ngv.

vic.gov.au/exhibition/kings-over-
the-water/

9.
Go to https://www.ngv.vic.gov.

au/. This is an excellent site to
see

many glasses that are currently

not on display as well as the gal-

lery’s standout pieces.

10.
The Lindsay family were promi-

nent in artistic circles and includ-

ed the artists Lionel and Norman.
Daryl’s wife, Joan was an author

best known for her novel on which

the acclaimed 1971 film, Picnic at

Hanging Rock, was based. While

Daryl’s tenure at the NGV has gen-

erally been well regarded it was not

without controversy. Possibly with

the connivance of Ebbott, Lind-

say de-accessioned much of the

NGVs collection of art nouveau

and late Victorian glass. See Terry
Ingram, ‘Fine Collection of Glass

on the Move’, Australian Financial
Review, September 5, 1991.

11.
The best overview of the collection

is by the former senior curator of

international glass and sculp-

ture, Geoffrey Edwards, Art of

Glass. Glass in the Collection of

the National Gallery of Victoria,

Melbourne, 1998. Beautifully

written and with outstanding pho-
tographs it is a book worth having

for any glass collector.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

1‘1r

!
7 \V
il
e

sIL –

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,

111,1,1111″,

!M
AMA!
WHEEL ENGRAVING

Disappearing Skills:
Wheel

Engraving on Glass

Katharine Coleman MBE

F
.i

ngraving with lathe-mounted

copper wheels smeared with

a grit paste is older than glass

itself, originating from Babylonian

gem stone cutting. A belt-driven
lathe turns interchangeable spin-
dles, each carrying a copper wheel

of varying width, diameter and pro-
file, to suit the cut. The wheel is

cut from copper scrap, with a hole

drilled in the centre, then placed

at the tip of a steel spindle (either
reamed or with a rebate). The end

of the protruding steel spindle is

then hammered over to form a sim-
ple rivet while the lathe turns, a
moment when even the most expe-
rienced engraver holds their breath.
Copper wheels carry grit mixed

with oil sufficiently well to
push the abrasive into the

stone or glass surface; they
can be easily re-profiled

with a blade or file. Coarse

grit and fast lathe speeds
are used for rapid and large-
scale excavation, fine grit

and slower speeds for more
polished, delicate work. A

two-minute YouTube films

shows this clearly and Peter
Dreiser & Jonathan Mat-
cham’s
Techniques of Glass

Engraving
2
describes

it fully.

Engravers prepare a set

of wheels to suit their par-

ticular work and may also
use stone and diamond

wheels if available. Polish-
ing, using a cork wheel with
pumice powder and water

is followed by a fine pol-

ish, using cerium oxide and
water on a hard felt wheel.
In earlier times, lead wheels

cast from the particular
copper wheel, smeared with pum-

ice, were used for a brilliant shine.
Today most wheel engravers

prefer sintered diamond wheels
3

lubricated with water, being quick-
er, cleaner and efficient. However,
they are expensive, with the profile

width and diameter fixed, limiting
the possible cuts. They are useful
for students who do not have to

learn to reprofile their wheels every
few minutes or to clean the glass

to see the results of their labours.
Peter Dreiser
(Fig.1)
taught me in

the 1980s at Morley College where

there was no budget for diamond
or stone wheels, so I was fortunate
to learn with the slower but more

versatile copper. Copper wheels are
cheap, but require constant re-profil-

ing, wearing away almost as quickly

as the glass itself. This is now rarely
taught and the decline in numbers
of practising engravers is alarming.

Soon there will be no more than three

left in the UK with knowledge of this
technique, none under the age of 60.
4

In 1998, with so few skilled

engravers coming from German,

Austrian and Czech glass schools,
Peter Rath, of Viennese glass mer-
chants Lobmeyr, persuaded the

Czech community of Kamenicky
enov to organise a series of tri-

ennial international glass engrav-

ing symposia, immensely popular

with the international fraternity of
engravers who witnessed their own
numbers dwindling. Some

120 Russian, East European,
German, British, Australian
and Scandinavian engrav-
ers regularly attended in

1998, 2002, 2005 & 2008.
5

My paper to the 2002

symposium warned that
European glass schools

would soon lose their wheel
engraving courses, as had

already happened in the UK

and USA with the advent
of the Studio Glass Move-

ment.
6
The Stourbridge

colleges and Royal College

of Art had lost their stu-
dents’ interest in engraving

and the Edinburgh College
of Art Glass Department’
packed their lathes into

a cupboard. German and

Czech glass school teachers

Fig. 1
Peter Dreiser cutting
The Drowning

of the Innocents,
1989

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

were still confident of a bright future.

How wrong they were. Professor Jiff

Harcuba declared unhelpfully that

glass engraving need not be taught;
even a three-year-old child could

apparently discover it for themselves.
While engraving is still taught

in the glass colleges of Germa-
ny, Austria and the Czech Repub-

lic, wheel engraving is being
rapidly supplanted by sandblast-

ing, drill and water jet, these

being more accessible and not
requiring several years of practice.
By 2013, with German colleagues

Wilhelm Vernim and Norbert

Kalthoff, I helped form a support

group, the Glass Engraving Net-
work, with the inaugural meeting
being held at Bild-Werk, Frauenau,
in Bavaria. We invited five engrav-

ers from each European country to a

weekend meeting to plan the group
organisation, its future activities and

to establish an active internet site for

the worldwide benefit of all engrav-

ers.
8
£10 secured a domain name

and the first touring exhibition was
planned to seven countries – UK, Bel-

gium, Netherlands, Germany, Czech

Republic, Estonia, Finland and back

to Germany – with 32 artists from 12

countries, each in a significant muse-

um near a glass school, from August

2015 to September 2016. Funds

were raised with sponsorship from
Lobmeyr, printing a high- quality

catalogue for sale, with a modest €50

contribution from each artist. The

logistics were organised by engrav-
ers in each country and with the gen-

erous help of some of the museums.
Uta Lauren, enthusiastic curator

at the Suomen Lasimuseo (National
Finnish Glass Museum) in Riihimaki,

reported engraving had disappeared

50 years previously in Finland. She
proposed showing to Finnish glass

artists that engraving was not just

something unpleasant from Sweden.

After our 2016 exhibition, two Ger-
man engravers were invited by her for

a month to teach interested young

glass artists the rudiments of wheel
engraving. Largely on the strength

of this venture’s success, our second
tour,

“Gravur on Tour:
Back on Tour”,

(Fig. 2)
started again in Riihimaki in

2019, focusing on the new Finnish
engravers’ work. Dr Sven Hauschke,

Director of the Kunstsammlun-

gen Veste Coburg and the Muse-
um of Modern European Glass

at Rodenthal in Germany was so
impressed, he invited us to take the

show to Coburg. Arranged by Sven,
the touring exhibition arrived in

Coburg this March, and will remain
there until early November 2020.

On the museum flyer Dr Haus-

chke writes:
“Glass engraving has

moved away from two-dimension-

ality.

The result is inspired,

Fig.
3

Hemiddca Manor
Uranium Heritage,
2019

WHEEL ENGRAVING

Fig 2

The Route of G
ravur

on Tour.
Stourbridge

July 2015, Lommel

03), Epe (NL,

Rheinbach (D),
Kamenicky Senov

(CZ) 2016, Talinn

(EST), Riihimaki

(FIN), Frauenau (D)

September 2016

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

WHEEL ENGRAVING

qualitatively and conceptually demand-
ing work documents the new boom in

glass engraving. The enthusiasm of the
early studio glass movement can now be

felt again. It shows once more that con-

certed commitment and persistence can
lead to success if individual initiatives

combine

engraving is back on track.”

(KC translation). A film has also been
made introducing the exhibition.
9

The catalogue can be obtained from
the museum or online at https://

view.publitas.com/p222-13464/
back-on-tour-catalogue-final/.
Figs.3
to
8
show the work of

exceptionally gifted engravers

in these tours who are less well
known to Glass Society mem-

bers. Nancy Sutcliffe, Ronald Pen-

nell, Peter Furlonger and Alison

Kinnaird have also taken part.
Why then should it matter that

copper wheel engraving techniques

are dying out when modern tech-
niques of sandblast, drill, acid and

water jet cutting, let alone sin-
tered diamond wheels, are so excit-
ing? It matters because soon there

will be nobody left who can identi-
fy and demonstrate the difference

in the nature and quality of the
cut surface between copper, stone
ABOVE Fig. 4

Tinne Vroonen (B):
I Do — Lost Childhoods,

2018

LEFT Fig. 5

loan Stelea (RO)
The

Dream,
2018

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

WHEEL ENGRAVING

LEFT Fig. 6

Pavlina Cambalova (CZ)
Reclining Figure,
2017

BELOW (LEFT) Fig.7
Lada Semetlai:
Cyde of Horses,
2002

BELOW (RIGHT) Fig.8

Anne Wenzel (D)
Gassi gehen,
2019

P
ft
i`

J lgo

,„L
I

T
4

and diamond to curators, collec-
tors, academics and auctioneers.
Having advised contemporary

British hardstone carvers and jewel-

lers on engraving with copper wheels,
I have also been able to assist Dr Elise

Morero and Professor Jeremy Johns
from the Dept. of Islamic Archaeolo-

gy in Oxford with their analyses of the

cutting of the famous Fatimid crystal

ewers (one is in the V&A Early Islam-

ic Collections). From early travellers’

accounts they believed rock crystal

was cut with steel wheels and grit oil
paste. I demonstrated to them how

grit simply flies off steel wheels, the

metal being so hard. The softness of
copper allows the grit to be carried

into either rock crystal or glass. Cut-
ting hard stone only requires harder

abrasive and slightly more speed than

glass. Highly magnified photographs
of the cut surfaces allow identifica-

tion of bow drill and lathe wheel cuts,

also the slight mismatch of superim-
posed cutting and polishing wheels.

Sample cutting on rock crystal shards

was useful to show this to them.
The archaeologists had also stud-

ied the fourteen known Hedwig Bea-
kers’ surfaces in detail. It was possible

to demonstrate that the engraver was

probably the same for most if not all

of them, having had repeated diffi-
culty holding the glass absolutely

square to the wheel when cutting
circles in relief, especially to the left,

causing fractures in precisely the

same place each time,
(Figs.9 & 10).

We all know falsely attributed

works can find their way onto the
market. Dating engraving on glass of

any period is so hard to prove: repro-

ductions may use mixed grits and oth-

er tricks to reproduce natural grits of

earlier times. For an engraver, recog-

nising another’s work is like recog-

nising handwriting, nuances in cuts

and style that generally escape oth-

ers. They may spot technical faults

and different grits, where cuts and

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Fig.1 P.Dreiser

Fig.3 H P011anen
Fig.5 J Stelea

Fig.7 S.Stein

Fig.9 E Morero
Fig.2 K.Coleman

Fig.4 T Vroonen

Fig.6 G Urbanek

Fig.8 A&T Wenzel

Fig.10 B Clarke
WHEEL ENGRAVING

LEFT Fig. 9

Under foot of
HedwigBeakerat

Corning

RIGHT Fig.10
HedwigBeakerat

Veste Coburg

polishing have been overlaid and

slightly mismatch, where turning to
the left or to the right has been more
of a challenge for a particular engraver.

Some know about the development of
particular cuts and styles (viz. the lat-
er corner-cutting “Egermann” curls

on 19th century Bohemian glass-

ware,
1
° the engraver quickly slipping

the wheel round curves rather than

the crisper, more laborious fine line
curves and cuts of the 18th century).
The V&A day conference in

November 1996 concerning the diffi-
culties of attribution was particularly
interesting, showing how both tech-
nique and content can mislead, repro-
ductions and fakes having a fine line

between them and that a wily forg-
er may often win through. I sat with
Peter Dreiser and we enjoyed the heat
of the Jacobite and Williamite debates.

“Several old friends there!” said Peter,

referring not only to members of the

audience? When the value of an 18th
century glass is increased by a fac-
tor of 10 or more if it is an engraved

Jacobite or Williamite, when dating
an engraving is largely subjective and
provenance is also not always what

it seems, the temptations are clear.
Czech, Romanian and Rus-

sian glass schools teach students
by copying old Bohemian, Dutch

and English glass masterpieces,

blowing fine reproduction glasses
from photos of antiques and then

copying the engraving techniques

of the same period. These are sold
in museum and antiques shops,
online and occasionally, to the

less discerning antique collector.
The above is a presentation of

the online talk from Katharine

Coleman, given to the Glass Society
and guests 16th June 2020.
Katharine Coleman MBE was

trained in glass engraving at Morley

College in London with Peter Dreiser,

1984-7 and is described by the V&A
Museum as perhaps the foremost glass

engraver working in Britain today. Tech-
nically skilled, she explores the optical
properties of glass, to draw the eye

beyond the surface, creating illusions
4.

of one body floating within another.

Recognised by the wider glass com-

munity, with work in many internation-
5.

al museum collections, she received an

MBE for services to glass engraving in

2009 and has won several prizes, includ-
ing an Hon Mention Prize in the 2006

Coburger Glaspreis and the People’s
Prize in the British Biennale 2015. Her
current interest is in ensuring the surviv-

al of copper wheel engraving techniques.
Katharine can be contacted

at:- www.katharinecoleman.co.uk

REFERENCES

1.
https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=gJut8MiPkMo

2.
Peter Dreiser & Jonathan Mat-

cham,
Techniques of Glass Engraving,

2nd ed, A&C Black, London 2006,

pp.168, ISBN 0-7136-7516-0.

3.
Cutting wheels made from phos-
phor bronze, sintered throughout

with diamond grit. The diamonds
are revealed as the metal very slow-
ly erodes. These wheels are long

lasting in profile. The choice of grit

size (fine to coarse), profile, diame-
ter and width of wheel is set. As the

profile is gradually lost, the wheels

are usually sent back to the man-
ufacturer for reprofiling, another

added cost. One wheel may cost
between £100 and £800.

Alison Kinnaird, Steve Piper and
myself. There are a few others with

very limited knowledge.
Funding ran out with the last

symposium in 2008, after which it
became a parochial workshop.

Is There a Future for Teaching Glass

Engraving in Britain?
Katharine Cole-

man, 3. Mezinarodni Sympozium
Ryteho Skla, Kamenicky Senov, 2002,

Museum of Glass, Osvobozeni 69,

CZ-47114 K. Senov, pp.92-95,
Founded by glass engraver Helen

Munro Turner

https://www.facebook.com/glas-

sengravingnetwork
https://www.facebook.com/
kunstsammlungen.coburg

To speed up production, the
Egermann factory in today’s Novy

Bor encouraged all labour-saving

short cuts, particularly when deco-
rating the cheaper stained (rather

than overlaid) ruby and other
coloured glassware,
Dreiser & Mat-

cham,
2006, p.11

To my knowledge Peter had con-
tempt for fakers, but he knew them.
He had always signed his own com-

missioned reproductions.

10.

11.

Glass Matters Issue no,9 October 2020

ABOVE Fig. 1

Vittore Carpaccio,

The Presentation

in the Temple
(detail), altarpiece

from
the Church of

San Giobbe, Venice,
1510. Gallerie

dellAccademia,

Venice (inv. no. 44)

LEFT Fig.la

The lamp in the Figl
painting enlarged

VENETIAN HANGING LAMPS

A note on
Renaissance Clays Hanging Lamps

Elisa Paola Sani

V
enetian glass is as elegant and

fragile as the city itself. In 1540,

Vannoccio Biringuccio declared:

Considering the short life of glass due

to its fragility, one cannot and must not

give it too much love, and one must use
it and understand it as an example ofthe
life of man and ofthe things ofthis world.

This is particularly true of Renais-

sance lamps which are extraordinari-

ly rare objects. Less than a handful
of Renaissance hanging lamps, or

`cesendelli’ as they are known in

Venetian dialect, have survived.
The importance of their function

is, however, clear from their represen-
tation in altarpieces by leading art-

ists. The first major work to feature

a glass hanging lamp was the monu-
mental San Zeno altarpiece by Andrea

Mantegna in Verona (1431-1506).

High above the Virgin and Child the
painting shows a clear glass lamp

of beaker shape, with flat base and

a flaring rim to accommodate a

gem-encrusted metal mount.’ Dat-
ed to the late 1450s, the painting

was created only a few years after
cristallo
glass was invented in Ven-

ice. Mantegna’s brother-in-law was

Giovanni Bellini (1435-1516), the

leading Venetian painter who also
included glass lamps in his paintings.
2

By 1510, the shape of such lamps

had evolved to a long cylindrical

shape with a drop finial, as visible
on
The Presentation of Jesus in the

Temple
for the Church of San Giobbe

in Venice, painted by the master
of Venetian narrative painting Vit-

tore Carpaccio (1465-1520). The
painting features a lavishly mount-

ed glass lamp suspended from the

ceiling of a chapel high above the

main characters
(F ig.1

and
la).

A notable survival of the ‘Car-

paccio type’ lamp exists in a private

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

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VENETIAN HANGING LAMPS

collection. This had been trans-
formed into a goblet during the 19th

century.’ Once detached from its foot,

the shape was fully revealed: that of

a cylindrical drop finial lamp, with
ribbing on the lower part of its body.

This is the only survival of a lamp fea-
turing this type of moulding, which

appears in the painting by Carpaccio.

The lamp is made of dear glass and is

enamelled and gilded. It bears a coat

of arms,
pale d’or et de gueules,
repeat-

ed three times.
4
Beneath the arms a

vivid scalework decoration surrounds
the body, a type of ornament com-

mon on early 16th century Venetian

glass, especially footed tazze
(Fig.2).

Similar scalework painted with a

red line appears on a turquoise goblet

from the late 15th century at the

British Museum.
5
The red line was

perhaps used on the lamp to make

the decoration more visible, as it was
meant to be seen from a distance.
The cylindrical lamp has a weighty

ribbed knop among two gilded

mereses, decorated with vertical

blue lines highlighted in white. This
distinctive feature appears on a few

famous gilded tazzas: two have the

arms of Louis XII of France and his

wife Anne, Duchess of Brittany, who
married in 1499 and both died in

1514-1515, thus providing a dating
reference. The unusual form of these

tazzas combined with the presence
of French armorials has led schol-

ars to consider the group as French.
6

Only recently I was able to track

down a painting showing a lamp

which has a ribbed knop above the
finial. This weighty finial, which

helped to balance the lamp, appears

on a painting by Girolamo Dai Libri

(1477-1555) in the Church of Saint

Anastasia in Verona
(Fig.3).
Dai Libri

was a leading artist of the city, famous
for his meticulous attention to detail.

Like his father, he was a manuscript

illuminator – `libri’ meaning ‘books’.

Fig. 2

Vittore Carpaccio,
The Presentation in the

Temple
(detail), altarpiece from the Church of San

Giobbe, Venice, 1510. Gallerie dell’Accadernia,

Venice (inv. no. 44)

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

VENETIAN HANGING LAMPS

As shown in paintings, such lamps

would have been mounted on metal
supports hung from the ceiling or a

wall. The mount is attached to the
ceiling by usually three chains; the
metal mounts were invariably very

sumptuous. The most common type

shows a metal band fixed to the cylin-

drical body of the lamp. A recently
restored marvellous altarpiece paint-

ed in Cremona by the Venetian artist
Marco Marziale (active 1492-1507)

and now at the National Gallery,
shows in great detail the mechanics

of such lamps. With the wick float-

ing on a layer of oil, the rest of the

lamp is filled with water to prevent
the lamp from burning once the

oil is extinguished. The elaborate

mount is fitted with a dome-shaped

smoke shade (to protect the ceiling)

above a round disk into which the
flaring top of the lamp was inserted,

to prevent the lavishly gilded vault

to be darkened by the flame
(Fig.4).

In Renaissance Italy the special
presence of such lamps above paint-

ings of the Virgin Mary is intended
to reflect her holiness. The newly

invented transparent
cristallo
glass

was strongly synonymous with
the purity associated with the Vir-

gin. In the Christian tradition, light

guides the soul to eternal life. That

glass lamps appear frequently in the
paintings of the
Presentation in the

Temple
is causal. The presentation

of the infant Christ by Mary and

Joseph in the temple in Jerusalem
to be “consecrated by the Lord” coin-
cides in the calendar with the purifi-

cation of the Virgin Mary, and this

became a Christian festival incor-
porating a procession of candles,

hence its name: Candlemas. Known

as
Candelora
in Italy, it is tradition-

ally celebrated on the 2nd of Febru-

ary. The day is a celebration of light

at the end of the winter. Candles

are traditionally blessed during the
mass and so symbols of light, espe-

cially transparent glass ones, are
Fig.

Girolama Dai Libri, Virgin and Child among St
Thomas and St Augustine (detail), altarpiece in the

Church ofScmtAnastasia, Verona, ca 1505-1510

therefore highly suitable for incor-
poration in paintings depicting the

subject and were probably also used
during the celebrations of the day.
Such lamps were prestigious and

would have been owned only by the
elites, who would also pay for the oil
required to keep the lamps alight.

The use of such hanging lamps in
churches was primarily symbol-

ic, rather than practical. The light
coming from such lamps would

have been small, especially when

hung from a height, so their role
could not have been functional. The

lamps would, however, have carried

strong symbolic meaning. Hang-
ing lamps were also widely used in
the Islamic world, where special

lamps were developed to be hung

in mosques. Such mosque-lamps
with spherical body, flaring neck

and foot and bearing three or more
rings for suspension – were produced

mainly in Syria and exported into
Europe from the late middle-ages.’
During the lively discussion at the

end of my talk, among the different
topics, the use of oil glass lamps still in

the 1950s was proved by some lovely
English examples brought to the lec-

ture by Sami and Stephen Pollock-Hill.

They kindly suggested I visit the coun-
tryside home of Winston Churchill,

Chartwell, in Kent, where I saw some

19th century Venetian examples,
which I hope to illustrate in more
detail in a future contribution
(Fig.5).

Elisa Paola Sani is a Research

Fellow at the Courtauld Gallery in
London; she was previously Assis-
tant Curator of Ceramics and Glass

at the V&A, and started her curato-

rial career at the Wallace Collection.
This discussion is a summary

of the presentation given to

the Glass Society in May 2019

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Brian Clarke, Anne Lutyens-Stobbs,

Sue Newell, Rainer Zietz and Nicole

Day and Catherine Carter, Chartwell,
National Trust.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

Fig.4

Fig.5

Marco Marziale, The
Circumcision
(detail), altarpiece from the Church of San

Hanginglamp, probably Venice, 19th century,

Silvestro, Cremona, 1500. The National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG 803)

Chartwell, National Trust, © National Trust

‘
4
n
11111

IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Figs.1 and 4

Elisa Sani

Figs.2

Rainer Zietz

Fig.3

Warburg Institute

Fig.5

Nicole Day

REFERENCES

See the paintings illustrated

by Rosa Barovier Mentasti in

Trasparenze e Riflessi: it vetro italiano

nella Pittura,
Novara, 2006 (figs.

17-34). On the subject of Renais-
sance hanging lamps see Luigi

Zecchin, “Cesendelli, inghistere,

moioli,”
Vetro e Silicati, v.
14 (80),

no. 2, March/Apri11970, pp. 25-28,
republished in
idem, Vetro e vetrai di

Murano: Studi sulla storia del vetro, v.

3, Venice: Arsenale, 1990, pp. 161-

165; Rosa Barovier Mentasti,
Mille

anni di arts del vetro a Venezia,
2nd

ed., Venice: Albrizzi, 1982, cat. nos.

106 and 107, pp. 100-101;
idem,

Trasparenze e riflessi: II vetro italiano
nella pittura,
[Verona]: Banca Popo-

lare di Verona e Novara, 2006, pp.

16-18, 52, and 71-75, figs. 17-34;
and Stefano Carboni, ed.,

Venice and

the Islamic World,
828-1797, New

York: The Metropolitan Museum of

Art, and New Haven, Connecticut:
Yale University Press, 2007, cat. nos.

164 and 165.

2.
A 1471 altarpiece, now lost, was

the earliest painting to feature a

cylindrical drop finial hanging lamp.

Towards the end of his career, in

1505, he again induded a lamp in an
altarpiece in one of the major Vene-

tian churches, San Zaccaria.

3.
The lamp has been the subject

of a detailed artide: Elisa P. Sani,

`Renaissance Light: A glass Cesendel-

lo (Hanging Lamp) Rediscovered’,

Journal of Glass Studies, Volume 59,
2017, pp. 193-205. I thank here Mr

Rainer Zietz for permitting me to
reproduce the lamp in his collection

again here.

4.
The coat of arms could belong to

a French or Italian family. Of the

French families, three (de Beau-

mont, Le Maigre de Kertenguy, and

Saint-Brice), are from Brittany, and
the fourth (Briqueville, Marquis de
Colombiere et de la Luzerne) is from

Normandy. This coat of arms was

also used by the Bensarades from

neighboring Ponthieu. The Italian

families are the Turrentini
(palato di

rosso e d’oro di sei pezzi
in Crollalan-

za) from Lucca and the Tergola da

Villa-Rappa or Rapa from Padua

(the same family is called “Tergala
Da Villarupa” in Eugenio Morando

di Custoza,
Blasonario Veneto,
Vero-

na: s.n., 1985, pl. CLXXXVII).

5.
Inv. no. WB.55, see D. Thornton,
A

Rothschild Renaissance: Treasures
from the Waddesdon Bequest,
London

British Museum, 2015, p. 132-7.

6.
See Lanmon and Whitehouse,

The

Robert Lehman collection volume 11,

Glass,
The Metropolitan Museum of

Art, 1993,111. 1.5-1.6.

7.
For recent discussions of Islam-

ic lamps in Europe, see David

Whitehouse, “A Glass Lamp in the
Museum Kunstpalast,” in
Glasidar:

Festschrift far Helmut Ricke,
Dussel-

dorf: the museum, and Petersberg,

Germany: Michael Imhof Verlag,

2012, pp. 42-53.

VENETIAN HANGING LAMPS

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

REVIEW

THE DYNASTY BUILDER
The Hidden Diaries of Samuel Cox Williams, Founder of Steven.s and Williams

David Williams-Thomas
his remarkable volume offers

I both insights into the histo-

ry of a premier British glassmaker,

Stevens and Williams in Brierley Hill,
and interesting accounts of various

family members, many of whom were

involved with this important firm.
Most of the book (pages 175 to 493)

is devoted to a meticulous transcrip-
tion of a handwritten diary kept by

Samuel Cox Williams from March 29,

1869 to January 17, 1883. During
this period, Williams took finan-

cial control of the glassmaking firm

after the death of company partner

William Stevens on May 3, 1869; was

instrumental in the construction

and operation of a new glasshouse;

saw his son “Joe” (Joseph Silvers-
Williams) assume increasing respon-

sibilities in the family glass business;

and welcomed the celebrated cameo

artist John Northwood into the ranks
of company employees. Quite a histo-
ry in so few years, months and days!
The introductory pages of this

book cover a variety of topics, rang-
ing from personal and biographical

details about Samuel Cox Williams

and other family members to an over-

all account of major points in the
history of the Stevens and Williams
firm and a description of the diary

itself. Sections of the introduction

are devoted to the economic status of

glassworkers and the strength of the

glassworkers union, the Flint Glass
Makers’ Friendly Society, as well as

family matters regarding Samuel Cox

Williams’s sons, Jim and Joe. Nine

appendices relate information about
the Stevens and Williams glassmak-

ing operation, including matters of

design and financial balance sheets.
One really ought to read the intro-

duction and several of the appendices

most carefully before proceeding to

the diary. The lengthy introduction
combines the history of the glassmak-

ing firm with family history and, all in
all, is quite an enjoyable read that will

enlighten those interested in glass
technology as well as those who wish

to understand customs of Victorian

times through the events of a family

that gained in economic status over

the years addressed in this diary.

Appendix 1 lists glassware products
from the early nineteenth century,
ranging from the familiar (butters,

caddies, inks and jellies) to the won-

derfully mysterious (who knows what

an “antiquqular”might be?). Appendix
4 consists of brief notes from an oral
history that focused on numerous key

individuals representing various areas
of the firm, from management and

skilled glassworkers to glass decorators
and “sundry workers and characters”.
Some pages of the original hand-

written diary are pictured (pp. 29,

221, 383, 458 and 470), and these

illustrate the small pocket note-

books that Samuel Cox Williams
filled with his tight handwriting

over some 14 years. Further regard-

ing the diary, readers will marvel at
the wealth and breadth of details,

as Samuel Cox Williams recorded

both important events in his per-
sonal and business life along with
the minutiae of daily activities for an

up-and-coming Victorian business-

man who enjoyed an active social

life, travel, and cattle breeding. The
careful recording of payments and

debts, of dinners with friends and of
joyous family occasions, along with

matters of personal consternation
or great grief, amounts to a revealing

social history of both an individual
family and the mid-Victorian peri-

od in the West Midlands of England.
A well-chosen series of illustra-

tions adds much to the appeal of this

book. There are formal portraits of

family members, of course, along

with similar depictions of noteworthy

glassworkers and glass decorators,
and the candid photos and the photos
of documents are especially interest-

ing. One might wish for more colour

photos of Stevens and Williams

glass, but those that do appear are
excellent, and we must remember

that this book is focused upon an

individual and a family rather than

upon glassware products, however

beautifully artistic they might be.
David Williams-Thomas is the

great-great-grandson of Samuel Cox

Williams. He is the sixth generation
of the family that owned and man-

aged Stevens & Williams, later Royal
Brierley Crystal. A helpful genea-

logical chart (pp. 12-13) will enable
readers to sort out the various fami-

ly members and to understand their

sometimes complex relationships.

Review by:-
James Measell, Historian

Fenton Art Glass Co., Williamstown,

West Virginia

This book was published by Brown Dog

Books, Bath, in October 2016. Softbound,

with just over 500 pages, including notes,

bibliography and index. David Williams-

Thomas is offering signed copies of the
few remaining copies in his possession at

£15, including postage. He can be con-
tacted at [email protected]

Currently, he is writing an in-depth his-

tory ofStevens & Williams /Royal Brierley

through the years with the Stourbridge

glass industry. To be published in the
next
Journal of the Glass Society.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

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MANCHESTER, GLASS & NELSON

Manchester’s glass industry and the life of

William Nelson (1836-1915)
Part 1: Getting established in glassmaking Nelsons first
firstforty years

Sally Haden
INTRODUCTION
lassmaking in Manchester
has recently been attract-
ing a range of interest and

research. Articles have been pub-

lished by the Glass Association
and the Glass Society, Peter Bone
made a detailed survey and there

has been much friendly debate and

valuable exchange between mem-
bers of the North West group. Along

with previous papers, we can now
begin to appreciate the true nature

and scale of the city’s glassmaking.
There is, however, much to

improve on. Not only to refine our

identification of table and decorative

ware and the histories of the com-
panies that made them, but also to

learn more about other glass sec-
tors in the city. Then beyond that – a
bigger picture: how the glass indus-
try operated within, and was affect-

ed by, the city’s economy. This was

Vottonopolis’, the beating heart of
the British Empire’s industry and

trade; cotton had spawned the fac-

tory system, heavy engineering, a

chemical industry, huge popula-
tion growth and a mass market.

To what extent did glassmaking
in this metropolis owe its charac-
ter, or even some of its origins to

these factors, and if so, which ones?
I recently unearthed some detail

about a nineteenth century Man-
chester glassmaker named William

Nelson; this helped me to think

through these questions and I hope

that sharing it may be useful. Part 1

introduces William and his contri-

bution to glass in the city, while Part
2 will discuss him further, alongside
the two quite different sectors in
which he was involved: engraving

and machinery glass manufacturing.
Both parts of the article will look at

glass from his perspective and com-
pare him with similar glassmakers

but will also offer some reasons why
things happened the way they did in

the context of Manchester’s history.

A JAR OF MARMALADE
Sometimes the micro illustrates
the macro. Sitting at breakfast one

morning, I noticed something small

and curious on my jar of DUERR’S
MANCHESTER MARMALADE

(Fig.1).
The label had been designed

to reflect the city’s heritage, with a

mosaic of miniatures representing
everything from steam engines to
terrace chimneys. Down in one cor-
ner was a drawing of a gauge together
with the words Ancoats Glass Works

MANCHESTER WM NELSON

Machinery Glass for Mills &c.’ – obvi-
ously part of an old advertisement.

Nelson,
I mused, now why does that

ring a bell? With coronavirus lock-

down beginning to bite and not much
else to do, I began to investigate.
Peter Bone’s dissertation said

that William Nelson was a manu-

facturer of glass for machinery in

Ancoats, Manchester, 1870-1959,

and had also been a glass engrav-
er. On tracing the label’s artist, Sue

Scott, I learned that William was
her great-great-grandfather. A copy
of the family’s history compiled in
recent years confirmed facts and an

advertisement in my previous notes

Fig.
1

Duerr’s marmalade jar label

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

EST.UILISHED

1860. Tel. No. 3029. Telegraphic Address–

oT.”

OLDEST MACHINERY GLASS
MANUFACTURERS IN ENGLAND.

WILLIAM NELSON
Ancoats Glass Works,

MANCHESTER.

Gauge Glassas (Plain or Enamelled), Lubrica-
tors (60 Shapes),
Sight

Feel Lubricator Glasses,

Cylinders, Oil Cups, Insulators, and every de.

scription of Glass required by Machinists,
Steam *Users, Engineers, Electricians.

Write for Cataloaue.

Mention paper.

It3111
11111

2/2111111M

jelt!trultril
F

col,

XX 4.NI FLAT.
0 GLASS CUTTER

R.WRER RIBLIMIT MY LAPIOLOR01.1
Z MY PRIEM IN THE CELLAR.

MY FACTORY FLAT AT MANCHESTER.

MANCHESTER, GLASS & NELSON

described what he’d made
(Fig.2).

So that was why the name had stuck
in my mind. How odd it was that

a glass engraver might become a

manufacturer of glass for engineer-

ing. Why exchange the delicate art
of fancy glass decoration in your

own small, quiet workshop, for the
responsibilities and busyness of a

factory making utilitarian glass for

textile machinery and steam engines?

A MAN OF TWO HALVES
Could these questions be of
interest? From deep in the heart of

Victorian Ancoats, the world’s first
industrial suburb, has emerged

a man of two halves, each with
much to tell us about Manchester’s

glassmaking: the humble engraver

and the prosperous manufacturer.
I’ve found that a careful study of
the life of an individual craftsman

or entrepreneur can tell you a great
deal about the industry or economy

in which they’ve played a part.
William Nelson was born on 9

February 1836, at 23 Hart Street in

the centre of Manchester. He was

the first child of Scottish-born John
Nelson and Barbara (nee Anderson)

who had migrated to the city about
two years earlier from North Berwick,

a few miles east of Edinburgh. As a
blacksmith, William’s father would

have been attracted by the openings

for work that the place offered. But
this was no ordinary opportunity, or

ordinary place: this was shock city.

People were visiting from across the

world, alternately to marvel and be
horrified by its innovation and its

slums, its fine civic buildings and its

spewing chimneys. It was both an

`unending damp and dark labyrinth’,

as de Tocqueville commented,

and a place to live in a grand way.

A COLLISION OF INTERESTS

An amusing but illuminating
story from the early 1830s

offers context. It comes from the

autobiography of James Nasmyth,
Fig. 2

Advertisement, 1896

another Scot, who had also chosen
the city for his home around the

same date as the Nelson family; a

brilliant and most enterprising
engineer, he was soon to invent

the steam hammer. Nasmyth was

one of several important Scottish
figures in Manchester, preceded

by pioneering engineers and

mill owners such as McConnel &

Kennedy and followed by other

Scottish inventors and founders
of big enterprises. These were very
practical men with great drive and

ambition, giving inspiration and

energy to early nineteenth-century

Manchester and contributing a

definite Scottish flavour to parts
of the community. Nevertheless,

as Nasmyth tells us, things didn’t

always go smoothly. He had barely
entered into business as a machine
tool maker in the heart of the city

in 1833 when he managed to bring

misfortune down, literally, upon

the head of an innocent glass cutter.
He narrates that in September

that year he had rented the second

floor of an old cotton mill in Dale

Street that had been abandoned by
its owner
‘in favour of more suitable

and extensive premises’ (Fig.3).

Although he had the entire floor to

Fig. 3
The old mill in Dale Street, by James Nasmyth

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

MANCHESTER, GLASS & NELSON

work on, and also occupied the cellar
as his smithy, space quickly became

a problem. Not only space, but the

weight of his numerous machine

tools and
‘massive castings’,

all being

worked on and dragged about by his

assistants, making the whole build-
ing quiver and quake. Sandwiched
between the second floor and his
cellar was a glass-cutter’s work-

shop, the master of which no doubt
heartily wished that his landlord had
refused admittance to the building of

such a noisy young man as Nasmyth.
One morning matters came to

a shocking head. Part of a massive
beam engine that Nasmyth was

working on, crashed through the
artisan’s ceiling, creating a large
hole and a ‘terrible scattering of lath

and plaster and dust’, at which
‘the

glass-cutter was in a dreadful state!’
Fearing that the whole building
might crumble, the landlord asked

Nasmyth to relocate, which he did
forthwith. Feeling fortunate to have
previously noticed an excellent plot

at Patricroft across the city, he soon
had a large and very successful fac-

tory in operation, the Bridgewater
Foundry, which survived unti11940.
The Dale Street story is inter-

esting from several points of view.

First of all, the condition of the
building. It would have been one of
the city’s early cotton mills, a sky-

scraper for the previous century but
not strong enough for the heavier

textile machines that were being

built in metal and coming into use

by this date. It was for opportu-
nities in such machinery, as well

as steam engines, that Nasmyth
had chosen Manchester. While

he moved to the west of the city
centre, the east was where textile
mills were congregating, beside two

new canals, the super-highways of

their day. Cotton was booming and

the newer mills were stronger and

larger, always looking for stronger
and better machinery. This was

Ancoats, by now already overflow-
ing with workers’ housing, tower-

ing factories, smoking chimneys
and the first large glass factories. It

was here that William Nelson was

to later establish his company, mak-

ing glass for the textile industry.
What about the unfortunate glass

cutter? Nasmyth left him unnamed.

Although he may have been work-

ing on his own account, directories

show no Dale Street cutters, so per-
haps the premises had been rented
temporarily by a glassworks as their
cutting shop. The enterprise that

would become Molineaux Webb

& Co had already been established
for six years, close by in Ancoats.

Whatever the case, the presence of
a large cutting shop here reminds
us that Manchester glass was defi-

nitely underway in the early 1830s.
The smithy in the Dale Street cellar

is also worth think-

ing about. William’s

father, John, was a

blacksmith as was his
father before him in

Scotland. Yet a search
of the city’s directory
for 1841, by which

time John would be
established, lists him

by address only, not

by trade, suggesting
that he was employed.

There were plenty of
jobs for blacksmiths

in the area and times
were good for any-
one prepared to work

hard in metal, work

that many Scottish

men favoured. Heavy

engineering, steel

and precision engi-

neering was to thrive

in Manchester in

the decades to fol-

low, forming a very

important part of
the city’s economy,

Fig. 4a

A
Manchester celery vase,

probably early 1870s,

unidentified. Simple engraving
for large scale production
something that’s easy to forget

with the importance of cotton.

Finally, the rude intrusion of part

of a large machine into the working
day of the glass cutter, in an old cot-

ton mill, forms a useful metaphor for
us about the relationship between

engineering, glassmaking and cot-
ton. In the moment, it was just an
unpleasant collision of interests,

but today, from the perspective of
Manchester’s glassmaking histo-
ry, it illustrates the beginning of

some very important cross-currents.

THE FIRST SURPRISING CHOICE
Moving on a few years, to the 1851

census when William was fifteen

years old, we find that even at this

Glass Matters Issue no,9 October 2020

MANCHESTER, GLASS & NELSON

Enlarged view of the swan engraving

age he has already made a curi-
ous decision. While his father is

still recorded as a blacksmith, he
is apprenticed to a glass engraver.
Usually the first son in a Victorian
family took up the same trade as

his father – perhaps it confirms that

John did not have his own smithy
and William was expected to find
employment — but why in glass?
His later story offers clues. In the

censuses of 1861/1871 William is

shown as an engraver, married and
living in Ancoats, but with the addi-
tion of ‘pawnbroker’ in 1871. The
family today cannot explain the

engraving choice, but it is possible

that his father would have wanted
his son to rise beyond the grime of

blacksmithing and better himself.
By now, Manchester’s glassmaking

was well established thanks to the

gathering stability and strength of
the nation’s mid-century economy.

Decorative and table glassware had

become popular and more afford-

able, and the glassworks of Percival

Vickers, Molineaux Webb, Bur-
tles Tate, James Derbyshire and

William Robinson were very busy
through the 1860s. They supplied

blanks to the engravers, who usual-

ly worked from their own address-
es, often with a small shop. This

would have combined well with
pawnbroking, hardly making Wil-

liam a wealthy man but at least

giving him a relatively clean living.
How did his engraving compare

with that of his contemporaries?

The celery vase in
Figs.4a &b
tells us

everything we need to know, for Wil-

liam would have been one amongst
other British-born engravers whose

work was fairly unremarkable — at
least in comparison with that of the
much better-known Bohemian arti-

sans. Part 2 of this article will offer a
brief survey of Manchester’s engrav-

ers using censuses and directories,

with something of their stories,

showing how immigrant Bohemian
engravers, such as William Pohl, had

settled in the city and were doing fine

work. But there was also a younger

generation, perhaps trainees, who
would have been turning out large

amounts of simple decoration for the
mass market, similar to the illustrat-
ed celery vase. William Nelson was

probably one of those young men.

THE SECOND SURPRISING CHOICE
Recorded in the 1881 census, when

aged 46, he was living at Stone

Street (later renamed Snell Street),

Ancoats, on the south side of Ash-
ton Canal. William then appears

to have changed direction to that

of a glass manufacturer, as accord-
ing to his advertisements, he’s

making glass for textile and steam
machinery. In a chart – from some

incomplete research – Barbara Yates
dated William’s machinery glass
further back, to 1860 in Mount

Street, Ancoats, but the location
of her full notes, and therefore
the detail, is currently unknown.

But several later company descrip-
tions confirm the date of 1860

(Figs.2 & 5).
How can we account
for this change, or the overlap?

Perhaps at Mount Street, Ancoats,

he had a ‘crib’, as did many small

glassmakers throughout the indus-
try. It was a common, back-street

way of glassmaking with little cap-

ital outlay, just a small furnace and
perhaps one or two assistants to

begin with. If prospects looked good

and finance was available, the glass-
maker could start a factory, in the

meantime continuing to support
his family by some other means –

in William’s case, by engraving and
pawnbroking. In fact, it was common

practice in those days for a mature

manufacturing company to claim to

have begun when the entrepreneur

was still only an artisan or craftsman,

so this may explain the early estab-

lishment date in all his later adver-
tisements for machinery glass
(Fig.5).

Why William would go into indus-

trial glass manufacturing is another,

larger matter. On an individual level,

the personality description offered

by his descendants is unambigu-
ous:
“There would have been no way

he would have stayed an engraver. He
was very ambitious and driven.”
Then

there would have been local social

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

ESTABLISHED 1860.

TELEPHONE’

–

No.

William
0 • • • • •

i on

n
D
“‘

Ancoals Machinery Glass
Works,

MANCHESTER.

Telegraphic Address :—” GLASSPOT,” Manchester.

Oldest Machinery Glass Manufacturer in
•
. England.. .
MANCHESTER, GLASS & NELSON

ILLUSTRATED
ICE. LIST.
Fig.

Cover of price list, circa
1923

glassmaking. A Molineaux Webb

advertisement
of 1 834
shows

that glass for textile machines
had been manufactured in the
city since before he was born

and, as a blacksmith, John would
have been aware of such work.

CONCLUSION

Once established in 1876, how did
the Ancoats Machinery Glass Works

in Stone Street fare, and what exact-
ly did it make? Part 2 of this article

will cover the remaining half of Wil-
liam Nelson’s life and the factory up
to its closure in 1959, to see how
this form of industrial glassmaking

adapted to changes in textiles and
the wider world. It will also include

a close look at the city’s engravers

and machinery glassmakers, then
continue discussing the place of

glassmaking generally within Man-
chester’s industry and economy.

influences. From mid-century,

various manufacturers in the city

were looking towards a bright future,
moving out of the cramped streets

into leafy areas, while a future in

simple glass engraving may have

appeared quite dull – neither lucrative
nor exciting for a ‘driven’ man.
(Fig.5)

Additionally, William was sur-

rounded by inspiring figures from

similar humble Scottish back-
grounds, who had settled in Man-
chester and were thriving. This was

his environment, a factor much

emphasised by his descendants

today: from James McConnel and

John Kennedy who, starting as
textile machine makers, became
cotton spinners in their mill complex

on the Rochdale Canal; to men like

James Nasmyth, William Fairburn
and more, Scottish men who came
to take advantage of the enormous

demands of the cotton industry and

later, steam locomotion. Growth
in these industries, as in glass, was

supported by constant evolution
and mechanical invention. Further-
more, as the century progressed

the British Empire was growing in
confidence and exports were multi-
plying. Manchester was the centre

of world trade for many years, and
textile machinery was being sent far

and wide. William Nelson could have
thought ‘even a modest glass engrav-

er might become a manufacturer’.
I would, however, like to sug-

gest that perhaps he had been

thinking about entering industri-

al glassmaking from his youth. It
is only conjecture but could make

sense of the known facts. Glass
and machinery were all around Wil-

liam when growing up. His father
and grandfather had been black-

smiths, and working beside the
forge, melting metal and manual-

ly shaping it into something func-
tional seems to me very similar to
B

IBLIOGRAPHY

•
Bone, Peter:
The Glass Industry in Man-

chester & Salford,
The Journal of The

Glass Association, Volume 8, 2008
de Tocqueville, Alexis:
Oeuvres Com-

pletes,
1835.

Dodsworth, Roger:
The Manchester

Glass Industry,
The Glass Cirde, 4,

1980, pp 64-83.
Miller, Ian:
Percival, Vickers & Co. Ltd,

Industrial Archaeology Review, XXIX:

1, 2007.
Nasmyth, James:
Engineer, An Autobi-

ography.
John Murray, 1883, London.

Yates, Barbara:
The Glasswares of Per-

cival Vickers & Co. Ltd.,
The Journal of

the Glass Association, Volume 2,1987.

IMAGE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Pictures provided with thanks to:

Fig.1

The author

Figs.2 & 3

Grace’s Guide

Figs.4a & b

Neil Harris

Fig.5

Edwina Percival

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

Tantalising Tantalus?

Editor
In The Journal of The Glass Society,

vol.1, in the article by David Burton on
the Sealed Bottles of the Eila Grahame

collection, he wrote about a Tantalus

with three bottles. Our Glass Society
member, Graham Slater, who’d owned

the box and bottles many years before
David Burton had seen them, was
prompted to write to us as follows:

From Graham Slater
In
the interests of accuracy and of

the present owners of the case of

bottles, I’m sending you the enclosed
photographs, requesting you to

print them. I owned that item in the

1960s and then in 1968 decided to
move abroad for health reasons. So,
needing to minimise my collection of

bottles, a large number were sold at
Sotheby’s that Autumn – regrettably,

a collection not mentioned anywhere
in David Burton’s book. But I did not

indude in the sale nine bottles that I

kept, or the said case with the three

bottles, that I sold privately to a

friend, Charles Morse, at Earls Colne.
Seeing the pictures of the case in

David Burton’s article, I was upset
to see that it had subsequently

been “recklessly restored”, showing
it as a case for only three bottles,

padding being added to each sec-
tion, and grooves in the case being

filled in. My photograph shows

that there were originally four

sections in the case, to hold four
bottles: one had either been lost or

broken. As now, the case bore only

one label, but had no padding and
externally was in an original state.
I am attaching the three pho-

tographs
(Figs1,2
and 3) from

my archive, and hope that in

a forthcoming
News

the true

state of the case can be revealed.

Incidentally, to describe it as

a Tantalus is ridiculous. The con-
tents are not on view when the lid

is closed; no viewer would be “tan-
talised” by three or four bottles

that they could not see – the case

might well have been simply full of

papers. To paraphrase Shakespeare,

“worse than Tantalus is my annoy”!
Editor

Three photographs
(Figs.la, 2a

and 3a) were sent to Graham, and
he was asked to recount his story.

From Graham Slater

Thank you so much for the interesting

photographs of the Carrying Case. It is

a relief to see that at least the outside
of the case has not been disturbed –

it looks much as I remember. I note
that the label refers to a “Spirit Case”

– that would do for a name. I would

myself refer to it as a Carrying Case.

After all, think of the many wooden
medicine chests that still exist, full of

bottles and instruments: no one has

Fig. 1

Spirit Case or Carrying Case – but not a Tantalus! Condition in the 1960s

•

Fig. la
Spirit Case in 2019.

LETTERS

Fig. 2
Spirit Case in the 1960s

Fig. 2a
Spirit Case in 2019.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

Fig. 3

Bottle at the far left in the 1960s

Fig. 3a
Bottle at the far left in 2019

ever called them a Tantalus!! The point
of a Tantalus is that you can see and
desire the contents but cannot enjoy
drinking them. When the case we are

talking about is shut and locked, no
one knows the contents – they might

well be medicines or private papers.
I am sure you know that my

“quotation” was from Shakespeare’s
Rape of Lucretia which fully

explains the situation of visibil-

ity as opposed to availability!!
I often wondered what had become

of the case – Charles Morse died

when I was abroad. The subsequent
Sotheby’s sale put Sealed Bottles
on the map and when I returned to
England in 1974, a number of dealers

pulled my leg about causing the pric-
es to rise so radically. When I started

collecting them, the bottles only used

to cost me about ten shillings each;

there was no demand and provincial

dealers often used to keep one, put by
for almost a year until I next visited
them. Once when I was doing a sur-

vey in Bristol, a local dealer told me
about Robin Eden at Corsham who
had just bought nearly 100 bottles.
Needless to say, I had to break my

journey back to London and fanta-

sised about which I would buy, given
my limited pocket money!! I need not

have worried – they were all identical

HHC – Henry Hippisley Cox. Better

still, the call resulted in a long friend-

ship and the gift of a much-loved cat.
When David Burton visited me

after his book was published, I gave
him a copy of the catalogue of the

1968 sale which accompanied my
collection; the high prices achieved

at the actual sale were a real surprise.

About twenty years later I learned
from one of Sotheby’s staff that there
had been a mystery bidder who had

never returned to pay for the lots he

had bought. It had however pushed
the prices up all round. At the time I

knew an Irish lecturer at the LSE who

was great practical joker, but who was
deeply concerned that I was having to

sell my collections to live abroad. Of

course I have no proof and he is long

dead but that is where I would place
my bet to reveal the unknown bidder!!
David Burton’s book is of course a

masterpiece and will remain so. It is a

pity that the auction houses did not

look at their records of sales – both of
glass and of wine – back beyond the

1970s. When I started collecting bot-

tles in about 1952, I knew two other

collectors: the late Ivor Noel Hume and
a Mr Emberson who ran a sherry bar

in Baker Street, London. Additionally,
at that time, Harvey’s of Bristol, Berry
Bros and Rudd, Findlater, Mackie

Todd and others were also accumulat-

ing early relics of the wine trade, many
of which were sold in wine sales. Those

were the days – I had two unsealed

shaft and globe bottles that I bought
in Bermondsey for ten shillings the

pair. The dealer had been to a house

sale and in a moment of boredom had
gone down to the cellar where the two

bottles were sitting on the floor. The
auctioneer told him they were rubbish

and gave them to him for nothing!!

Another time at Bermondsey – my
office was then in the City – I had to
persuade a dealer to take a pound

rather than ten shillings for a sealed

17th century bottle which I still have

in my possession; it being a small

world, that dealer and I met again
later that year in a nursing home,

where our wives were giving birth.

Editor

At the age of 92 and now living in
Cambridge, Graham Slater wishes us all

well and is pleased to know that his tan-
talising memories are being published.
LETTERS

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

LETTERS

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Discussing
–
Cordial Classes 3

Bill Davis to Simon Wain-Hobson

W
e really enjoyed reading

“Cordials and All That” by

Simon Wain-Hobson, a basical-

ly concise and somewhat humor-
ous review of these intriguing

glasses. Collecting glass can be
a `fun’ addiction that opens up
new avenues to the understand-

ing of glassmaking and the use of
the objects produced. One is often

mesmerized by the ‘elegance’ of the

time and the environment in which

those glass objects were used.
Having collected early English

glass over the last 40 years, I some-
times feel that there is little left on

the subject to be published. But in
re-reading
Glass Matters 5,
I found

your paper on cordials particularly

interesting. I have two glasses in my
collection which might be of inter-

est. One is a baluster cordial circa

1715, H144mm, the waisted bucket
bowl has a capacity of 28m1
(Fig.
1).

The other is a very tall cordial,

H178mm, with a diamond faceted

stem and engraved with William lll as
a Roman Emperor, the round funnel
bowl has a capacity of 34m1
(Fig.2).

The bowl is also engraved with

`THE EVER GLORIOUS MEMORY’,

which in
Old English Drinking Glasses,

page 161, Grant Francis notes this is

a new version of the Orange toast.
I dated it to the third quarter of the

18th century, however, the engrav-
ing is likely to be later as the Orange
Order did not commence until

around 1795. Unfortunately, Peter
Francis casts doubt on the Williamite

issue in his paper,
A Reappraisal of

Eighteenth-century Jacobite Glass’,
The

Glass Circle Journal, Vol. 9, page 71.

Over my years of collecting, I have

always admired the elegance of the
ratafia glass, particularly those with

narrow trumpet bowls occupying
roughly half the height of the glass.

The two glasses at either end of
Fig.8

in your cordials article are examples. I

have tended to think of round funnel

narrow flutes – e.g. the three glasses

in the middle of
Fig.8 –
as just that and
not true ratafias. I would appreciate

your thoughts on this distinction.

Simon Wain
–
Hobson replies

Cordials

Dear Bill, glad you enjoyed the article.

Cordials covered a wide range offlavours

and alcohol— some say anything from 20
to 50% plus. Clearly, smaller bowls are

called for. Beyond that anything goes. The
only smoking gun I could find was the cap-

illaire glass which is anything but a cor-
dial glass according to books and auction

catalogues. As we all refer to a wineglass,

even though there are many bowl forms

and sizes, we shouldn’t be surprised.

Ratafias

As Barrington Haynes referred to rata-
fias as flute cordials, I guess it comes
down to what is a flute? Is it a conical

or round funnel shaped bowl? The form

alone, a conical flute, is not enough, for

some are engraved with hops and barley.
Ifin doubt I’cl go with bowl capacity; if60
ml (roughly 2 fluid oz.) or less when filled

to the brim, then the odds are the glass

was intended for something strong – a

ratafla. Any larger, then probably a wine.

A cone is the ideal shape for reducing the
capacity of any tall glass. Moving to a

round funnel bowl means that the height

has to be reduced if the glass is destined
to hold strong alcohol. It is among such

glasses that poetic license with, or abuse
of the word ratafia occurs in catalogues.
Like you, I have a weakness for coni-

cal bowls, especially on heavy balusters.
No doubt we all have preferences which

is as it should be. That said, a true rata-
fia may be in the eye of the collector.

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

NEWS EVENTS

&
APOLOGIES

International Festival of Glass
j
anine Christley of the Ruskin

Mill Trust, running the IFG,

has informed us: “Regretfully we

have decided to postpone the 2021
IFG and British Glass Biennale for

obvious reasons. With the call to

artists for the Biennale due to be

launched in the next few weeks
we have had to make the difficult
decision now. We are intending

to hold the Festival 26-29 August
2022 and hope the Glass Society

will consider remaining a key

sponsor for the British Glass
Biennale. I will contact you in

2021 for final confirmation. We

sincerely apologise for having to
postpone. It is sad but unavoidable.

White House Cone museum

of glass (WIICmog)

T
he British Glass Foundation

(BGF) have received approval

from Richard Jones of the
Midlands & East National Lottery

Heritage Fund (NHLF) to appoint

a new Museum Director for
WHCmog. This is 011ie Buckley,

who commenced on the 1
September. Richard said, “Seems

like a great fit for the post”.

Graham Knowles (chairman BGF)

informed us: “The interviewing
panel were unanimous in their

decision to appoint 011ie and I am

sure he will do a fantastic job. 011ie
has an MA in Museum Studies,

specialising in art curatorship
and heritage education, and a BA
(Hons) in English and History

of Art & Design. With over 25

years’ experience in the museum
industry, the last 17 years were
at Birmingham Museum Trust

where he was responsible for
the operational management
of their six historic properties,

which included events and
exhibitions programming. He

also has a track record of care,
conservation and development

of museum heritage sites.
Correction

-Icv
hen reviewing the Sealed

Bottles article in
The Journal

of The Glass Society, volume 1,
it was

noticed that
Fig.25,

which should be

showing the seal of the ‘salmon bottle’,
in fact repeated one of the seals of the

`Spirit Case’ bottles
(Fig.19).

I apologise

for this error and take the opportunity
of printing the correct seal.

Fig.25
correction. The
Journal of The Glass

Society, vol L
BH5280 seal

Apologies to Broadfield House
Glass Museum

I
n the original article on Frederick

Carder’s sculpture, Triton &

Horses (BH4629), published in The

Glass Cone, Issue 98, in Spring 2012,
the following incorrect information

was printed –
‘the sculpture…was

carved from a block of clear glass’.
This was not noticed at the time

and was carried through to an
updated article in Glass Matters

7, p.16. In Glass Matters 8, p.39,

Dwight Lanmon corrected this

“fake news”. The editor thanked
Dwight Lanmon but carried

through the incorrect information

that the text had come from the
original accession notes. These
notes are now held by the Dudley
Museum Services. I apologise to the

Broadfield House Museum team

for suggesting that their Accession
notes were incorrect – the notes
confirm that the sculptures were

carved in wax and the glass made

using the lost-wax casting process.
Glass Society online

meetings via Zoom

19th November
Titled
‘Time and Temperature’
at

7pm. On the art of conservation,

in particular with stained glass.

20th October

The GS annual meeting with ‘Show

& Tell’ talks at 6pm – see page 3.

Emails will be sent out to

confirm the Zoom meetings, with

information on how to register
and then to sign in on the night.

Glass Fairs

With Covid-19 still with us, the
National Glass Fair for November
2020 has been cancelled. The next

fairs are planned for 9th May
2021, then 7th November 2021.

Class Circle Publications
Graham Vivian, a previous
committee member, is storing
the remaining copies of past GC

publications. There are some
issues of Glass Circle News,
the Glass Circle Journals (not
Journal 1) and a few copies
of
From Palace to Parlour
and

GLASS COLLECTORS and their

COLLECTIONS to 1850.
More

detail of these remainders will

be provided in Glass Matters

10. Meanwhile, for information,
you can contact Graham by
email, [email protected]

The National Art Library at

the V&A also has an extensive

library of GC publications.

The Glass Association and

the Glass Society remainders are

being looked after by Maurice

Wimpory; he can be contacted
on [email protected].

Glass Matters Issue no.9 October 2020

GLASS

Provvtoti.we the

ixwolersta IAA

wol

orpprecisiti,o1A,
of
Lass

M A

–
11
–
‘T F
.

, R. S

The magazine of

THE GLASS SOCIETY

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